Tips for improving your intranet - what works

27 feb 2007

2677 viewsrating: rating: 3 of 5

comments: 1

You can enhance your online internal communications. Just follow the ten tips for tools and services for an effective intranet.

You can enhance your online internal communications. Just follow the ten tips for tools and services for an effective intranet.

Provide possibilities for personalisation (RSS feeds and alerts)
Corporate websites increasingly offer the visitor means to select the content he is looking for. News feeds on Intranets are not new. The success of the feeds depends on the degree of specification (by organisational level and by topic). Especially for the Intranet, RSS feeds per webpage update are useful. Visitors will receive an alert only when a specific page is being modified. Another way of personalising is offering an alert service to remind employees of important upgrades or corporate events. Employees can subscribe to be notified by email, Outlook or SMS.
Invite employees to state their opinion (reviews and ratings)
In the world of e-commerce the opinion of other users is becoming more and more important. What did other customers think of this new digital camera or the latest Harry Potter? And what books did Harry Potter fans order as well? The opinion of other – unbiased - consumers is very powerful. This principle goes for Intranets as well. In fact, employees are supposed to have similar goals and interests. An opinion of a colleague is more likely to be appreciated than his master’s voice. Offer employees the opportunity to rate news articles, tools and services on the Intranet and let them do the talking their selves.
Invest in archiving
Started in the mid nineties, the Intranet site of an average corporation contains 1-2 millions of pages. The ever growing amount of data requires a profound archive. The challenge lies in optimal archiving, meeting usability standards. Make sure your employees can easily find their way: provide full text search options.
Create a Best Practice Platform
Employees can motivate and inspire each other by exchanging best practices. For example, a checklist or Top Ten Tips for success. Depending on the size or nature of your company, you can consider to establish several platforms: per function type, business unit or department. The success of such an item depends on two things:
- regular updates are needed (e.g. every month)
- contributions need to be practical. What is the issue, what is the solution and what needs to be avoided?
Involve your employees in optimising content (wiki)
Stimulate employees to describe and explain business processes and terminology. Wikis can help to create a company specific corpus and brand identity. This is particularly useful for new employees, who can be helped with a detailed and practical explanation of specific terminology or company processes. Let employees create a user account and let them log in before they can contribute to the wiki. In this way you will encourage relevant and meaningful contributions.
Allow employees to connect (e-cards)
There are several ways of connecting employees: e-rooms or e-conferencing. Nielson Norman Group (Intranet Design Annual 2007) notices an upcoming trend. A more personal way of connecting people is the possibility of sending an e-card to a colleague. Just a thank you note or a congratulation for a closed deal. These cards are work related, and not for personal events. When they are attractive and meaningful to the job can they can enhance company pride and community building.
Enrich your message by multimedia
The Intranet offers a variety of ways to enrich and enforce the corporate message. In general, Internet and Intranet users are more and more used to audiovisual content and Rich Internet Applications (RIA). You can think of photos and video in a company history section, video testimonials in career or HR sections or video Q&As. Huge amounts of information can be attractively and quickly disclosed by RIA (See previous newsletters on multimedia and Rich Internet Applications. )
Offer services that make your employee’s live easier
Offer employees services to make practical arrangements, e.g. delivering groceries, bringing clothes to the dry cleaner or buying /offering second hand goods. Offering simple services that cost little time can help employees efficiently deal with practical arrangements during office hours. Keep in mind that these services form killer apps, and help getting the Intranet in a top of mind position.
Provide branche news and nice-to-know news
News still is an important motivator to check the intranet. Make sure you publish enough topical content. News can be made more attractive and diverse by including branche news. This is a good way of positioning your company against peers too. What do you generally see in the market and what has your company achieved? Providing automatically generated nice-to-know news, like traffic information, highlights of sports news or weather forecasts, stimulates employees to check the intranet rather than consulting external websites. Advocates say that allowing highly appreciated non company news on the intranet leads to better motivated people who work more efficiently…
Identify targets and monitor results
A lot of companies use web analytics to identify the visitors of their website, getting an idea of the number of visitors and the most popular pages. However, web analytics don’t allow you to determine success rates or to identify user needs. Therefore you need to conduct interviews and online surveys to investigate the wishes and expectations of employees. Determine the ROI of your Intranet, in terms of:
- Financials
- Required content and functionality of your intranet site
- Organisation needs
- Wishes and expectations of employees
Formulate specific targets and measure your results once or more times a year. Use several research methods to identify possible issues.

Join our Intranet round table debate

On May 15th, Jungle Rating organises a round table debate on Intranet for communication professionals of leading companies. Would you like to join this discussion group and find out how others use the Intranet? We provide you with an in-depth perspective on successful cases and broaden your knowledge of online internal communications.

Pre-subscribe by sending an email to info@junglerating.nl. We will keep you informed and send you the programme.

The topics include:

Best practices in the field of online internal communications
Trends and developments
Effective application of tools and techniques
Structuring your organisation behind the intranet

Practical information:

Date: Tuesday 15 May 2007
Location: Amsterdam, Regardz Planetarium
Time: 1.00 pm - 5.30 pm (drinks afterwards)
Costs: €245,- (excl. VAT)
Language: Dutch or English (depending on participants)