22 Intranet Engagement Ideas to Enhance User Adoption

This leads to the question, how do we improve employee engagement? One major factor is implementing an intranet solution and making sure that employees adopt and use the platform regularly. In this post, we'll share an expansive list of intranet engagement ideas to enhance employee adoption. You'll learn:

1. The characteristics of a modern intranet and how employee engagement and user adoption are defined in this context.
2. An extensive list of intranet engagement ideas for organizations.

 

Quick Definitions: Modern Intranets, Employee Engagement, and User Adoption

What is a Modern Intranet?

A modern intranetis one of the most dynamic and powerful communication tools for employees. These platforms serve as information repositories and knowledge-sharing systems. The digital workplace is essential to keep employees engaged, which directly impacts productivity levels.

 

What Is Employee Engagement

What exactly is employee engagement, and how can it be measured? By definition, high employee engagement results from the right working conditions for workers to become more productive and invested. Unlike employee satisfaction, which only addresses how satisfied the employees are, employee engagement focuses more on how passionately (physically, emotionally, and cognitively) the workers perform their job functions.

 

What is User Adoption?

As it relates to company intranet engagement and employee engagement, user adoption is the process of employees (users) becoming daily participants and accessing company information through the intranet portal.

 

What are the Main Characteristics of Modern Intranets?

Modern intranets have features geared toward companies and different types of employees. The modern intranet provides employees with timely, relevant, and engaging content to make their job easier. Other capabilities include:

— Cloud-based solution

As with any software decision, the choice between on-premise or cloud-based has to be made. For the intranet industry, a cloud-based capability provides the reliability, security, and flexibility for today’s enterprise needs.

— Seamless integration

A modern intranet solution offers seamless integrations with third-party applications, from the major collaborative suites, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, to social media apps, chat tools, proprietary apps, and more. This capability brings internal communications into one central hub.

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Why are Engagement and Adoption Essential?

The benefits of engaged employees are endless. One distinct benefit is reducing the company turnover rate. Disengaged employees tend to become bored and eventually unhappy to the point they quit. According to research, “nearly one-third (30%) of employees feel undervalued and under-appreciated.” Adopting unique solutions to engage your employees is critical in order to sustain growth, and an employee engagement intranet can be that solution. Engaged employees are also more motivated which leads to higher productivity.

With that said, user adoption of the intranet is also a critical factor. If an intranet solution lacks intuitive features and is cumbersome to use, you'll achieve little to no ROI.

Which leads to the question, how do I make my intranet more engaging?

As mentioned, you can boost intranet engagement by integrating the work-critical apps that employees rely on every day. To go further, here is an extended list of intranet engagement ideas.

How did we go from intranet to employee experience platform? 

Download our free guide to understand today's modern intranet and how it can help your business succeed.

 

22 Intranet Engagement Ideas:

1. Use Feedback Surveys and Polls

After implementing an intranet software, one of the most effective ideas to boost intranet engagement is to roll out surveys and feedback polls.

Avoid asking general questions and think of thoughtful ones. Highlight specific areas of the system and determine how to improve them. Deliver the surveys regularly, usually every one to three months. Ask questions such as,

Design feedback

• Is the design attractive and intuitive?
• Are things easy to find?

Communities and topics feedback

• Which communities are missing?
• Which are underused or could be separated?

Content feedback

• What type of content is most helpful?
• What are the opportunities for content?
• Do employees feel comfortable creating content? (Content analytics can assist with these questions)

Integrations and platform feedback

• Do processes take more or less time after intranet implementation?
• Which systems are not integrated?

 

2. Develop a Content Strategy Plan

Another way to drive intranet engagement is to create a content strategy plan. Employee-generated content is one of the most crucial parts of an intranet solution. Some employees want templates to create quick updates while others might be looking for more advanced capabilities. Some of the basics include:

• Templates – Create pre-built templates so employees can move concepts from ideation to publishing without a lot of hassle.
• Taxonomy – Create guidelines around content tags so people will know how to quickly find content via search and navigation.
• Content Planning – Work with team leads and other contributors to develop repeatable content ideas such as newsletters, monthly reports, and team building ideas.

Deliver a better user experience by maintaining and improving the intranet content strategy. Learn more by reading Building an Award-Winning Intranet: Content Strategy.

 

3. Be Transparent About the Goals

One cause of poor company intranet engagement is the lack of transparent goals. Employees should be able to answer this question, “Why exactly are we using an intranet solution?” If they’re not able to, it means the company goals are not transparent.

Goals pertaining to improving internal communication, collaborating between departments or regions, and improving employee engagement should be presented at the company all-hands meeting or any appropriate method.

Being transparent about intranet goals is the first step towards achieving them.

 

4. Simplicity is Key

Besides being transparent with your goals, another straightforward but effective idea to drive intranet engagement is simplicity. This goes for intranet content, design, and usability.

Previous ideas such as feedback surveys and content templates help improve intranet simplicity. Go further with user testing to make sure employees are finding what they need quickly without unnecessary clicks. Another idea is to make sure employee-generated content is digestible and easy to understand. Lastly, a key component is navigation menus and the intranet interface. A new employee should be able to log on and navigate the portal with little assistance.

 

5. Beautiful Design

From a design perspective, simplicity includes a beautiful, eye-catching, and engaging design experience. Apply the right fonts, imagery, colors, and styling to match your brand identity. When done well, this is how design impacts employee intranet engagement.

Design teams should work collaboratively with project managers to implement navigation menus and layouts that serve both purposes – ideal design aesthetic and user efficiency.

 

6. Offer a Customizable Intranet Experience

One of the best ways to drive intranet engagement is by providing your users with a personalized experience. The one-size-fits-all approach is not effective. Our society is accustomed to tailoring their social media feeds to their liking, and this concept should be reflected in the intranet.

Make sure employees have the option to follow and receive alerts for the content they’re most interested in. And make sure they are getting served the most relevant and important information each time they log on.

Take advantage of our preference of personalization to boost intranet engagement for your employees.

 

7. Encourage Content Creation

Another essential intranet engagement idea is to encourage content creation. This can be done by incentivizing intranet content creation such as offering an award to the employee with the most viewed or helpful articles. Intranet admins can also gamify the process by creating checklists for employees to complete i.e. a digital scavenger hunt.

 

8. Offer a Mobile Experience

About half of the world's population now uses a mobile device. Furthermore, studies have found that more than 60% of internet traffic to U.S. websites is attributed to mobile devices. This is translating to the workplace as more employees rely on mobile devices for work actions.

Modern intranet solutions should have full mobile capabilities and be available via an app. This helps the intranet become a part of an employee’s daily routine.

 

9. Gamification and Competition

A gamification strategy is another intranet idea for employee engagement. Gamification is the process of applying game elements to non-game contexts. There are several ways of introducing this technique in your workplace.

You can hold company-wide content generation contests, reward complex task completions, and more. Present these employees with digital badges or level progression so they can showcase their personal and team achievements. Gamifying employee engagement activities on the intranet is an effective and fun way to boost intranet engagement.

 

10. Schedule Calendar Events

Keep employees coming back to the intranet by scheduling unique and repeatable events. This works great for team building and the intranet provides a central hub for organizing it. Some examples include holiday-related posts and challenges, new year’s resolutions, cook-offs, and family or children photoshoots.

11. Rich Content: Videos, Images, Etc.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Encourage employees to create content with multimedia and design elements. This makes content more engaging for visual learners.

You can use infographics, images, and charts to support your text-based content. Introduce short videos when necessary to guide your employees on specific tasks. Certain company or feature updates are best presented using videos rather than images or texts.

 

12. Funny and Entertaining Content

Like gamification, using humor is an effective way to keep employees engaged. This is done by allowing employees to use memes and gifs in their content posts. Set up fun challenges for employees to participate in such as photo contests, nostalgic questions, trivia, or exercises such as “two truths, one lie.” Set up discussions for commentary on current events such as sporting events, award shows, or viral stories.

Introducing relevant entertainment and funny content will undoubtedly have an impact on employee engagement.

 

13. Employee Recognition

Recognizing and rewarding active users in terms of intranet usage and contribution is another intranet engagement idea. Many people tend to contribute their ideas in your intranet community, not because of monetary rewards but because they understand the essence of knowledge sharing in an organization.

Take note of the most active users on the platform and recognize their efforts. By doing that, many employees will feel motivated to contribute and exchange ideas. Not only will you be driving intranet engagement, but you'll also foster an excellent knowledge-sharing culture, which will undoubtedly increase your company's productivity.

 

14. Celebrate Employees

Your employees will have moments in their career where they will reach a new milestone or go above and beyond. You can always take advantage of this situation to drive employee intranet engagement.

All you need is to celebrate their wins, no matter how small, on the intranet community. This can be a manager-led initiative or be done through a #LoveWall or #ComplimentWall community. Additionally, organizations can celebrate employee birthdays, anniversaries and establish semi-annual award ceremonies.

 

15. Dedicated Team for the Communities

Recruit a team of dedicated employees to oversee intranet communities and planning. This will boost employee engagement, especially if the group includes senior employees and department heads.

These workers have the skills to keep the community engaged using their behavioral and leadership qualities. Senior employees should also be provided with the necessary training to help them achieve their best results. This group would be in charge of creating new communities, archiving communities and content, encouraging employees to post content, etc.

 

16. Encourage Posting Content at the Right Time

Another practical intranet idea for employee engagement and enhancing user adoption is by making sure content is posted at the right time. The time of day and frequency of posting content impacts the engagement level. You can't post content exclusively on Mondays and expect good engagement.

Use analytics and research to learn the most active vs. quiet times then encourage employees to post content at ideal times. This helps the authors get feedback while improving the reach of content.

 

17. Host Important Information and Resources

One method of improving intranet adoption is to make the intranet a source of truth for important information and resources. This includes features such as the employee directory and the integrated work apps but extends to resources such as sales and marketing assets. This accomplishes the goal of having a convenient yet safe document storage system. Tools like Google Drive and SharePoint can be integrated into the intranet for further convenience.

Additionally, training presentations and courses can be built directly into the platform. This gives an employee a central place to complete training courses and gives companies the ability to implement a learning management system.

Lastly, intranet solutions have become the ideal way to send company newsletters. HR updates, marketing reporting, or product roadmap presentations can be sent with intuitive templates. Improve the reach and engagement of newsletters.

 

18. Create a Hub for Industry News & Insights

Create a system so industry news, analysis, and insights are frequently posted by a diverse set of authors. This could mean a competitor review posted by the content team, an analysis of a competitor merger by the COO, or a new technology being implemented by the engineering team.

This type of content makes the intranet, “sticky,” as employees log on to stay informed and gain valuable industry knowledge. This is a great example of why an intranet is better for engagement than email. News and insights could be shared via email, there’s a good chance that more things would get missed and looked over as inboxes fill up. Intranet analytics are used to make sure news and insights are being consumed.

In addition to the industry news, another opportunity is posting company news. All content relating to the company usually interests employees. Create a monthly report about the performance, upcoming events, and general updates about the company.

 

19. Encourage Discussions

By encouraging collaborative discussions on your intranet, you'll also be able to boost employee engagement. Encouraging discussion is not as easy as flipping a switch. A few keys include:

• The platform needs to easy-to-use and reliable so employees don’t run into issues when posting content and comments.
• All levels of employees need to be active to encourage group participation. As mentioned previously, this highlights the importance of an intranet council.
• There should be a balance of work-related topics and fun.

An internal communication system is essential in encouraging an organization's collaborative efforts. When individuals chat and work together, there are big chances that goals will align.

 

20. Link Remote Teams with your Company Intranet

For companies with remote workers, it can be tough to engage workers. Modern intranets offer a host of unique features, including social and communication tools. These features bridge the gap between a company and its remote workforce.

Create a community on the intranet that enables remote workers to post their photos and share videos of the workplace setup. Give non-remote workers the ability to work from home or off-location to make the initiative more collaborative.

21. Post Content Regarding New Hires

The intranet is an excellent way to facilitate onboarding and welcome new hires on board. The HR team can make company announcements welcoming new hires and introducing them to the team. New hires can also write an introductory post to give their coworkers an insight into their personalities.

Modern intranet solutions have social features, such as comments, links, and likes. This creates the opportunity to give new hires a warm welcome and a lasting first impression of the company culture.

 

22. Create a Question and Answer Forum

There are lots of benefits attached to having a Q&A forum in your organization. A key benefit is driving product ideation. Apart from that, it enables your employees to ask burning questions related to their job functions and hiring decisions. A Q&A forum also helps employees can get answers to seasonal questions, regarding upcoming events and the company vision. Drive more employee intranet engagement with a strategic Q&A approach.

How did we go from intranet to employee experience platform? 

Download our free guide to understand today's modern intranet and how it can help your business succeed.

 

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