How to Make Your Intranet a Value-Add for HR

No matter what system you use or where you’re at on your intranet journey, there’s an opportunity to deliver a digital employee experience that everyone can benefit from and appreciate.

It's our goal to build tools that dramatically improve the digital employee experience and give Haystack users superpowers. We’ve been hard at work on one of our biggest updates yet, and we can’t wait to share it with you.

G2’s summer reports are live, and once again, users recognized Haystack as an industry leader. We want to thank every Haystack customer for their ongoing support, their trust, and their dedication to delivering an exceptional digital employee experience.

Translating impact isn’t easy, but it’s essential. And while IC departments have more tooling and data available than any other time in history, it doesn’t craft its own narrative. Luckily, there’s no one better at translating and conveying complicated information than a talented Comms team.

Users recognized Haystack as the employee intranet with the Best Results for the second season in a row. A massive thank you to all our customers and users. Your trust, feedback, and dedication to building an exceptional digital employee experience made this achievement possible.

Let’s expand our perspectives on remote work, dive into common challenges, and explore some opportunities for strengthening the digital employee experience, remote or otherwise.

Without reliable communication, common but crucial tasks can become monumental challenges for employees to conquer.

Poor communication is expensive. By some estimates, it costs businesses as much as $37 billion per year—but that’s only half the story.

It’s no secret comms teams are often under-resourced. Everyone is busy with so many responsibilities that developing a cadence of rich, engaging content for internal audiences can get pushed behind a queue of urgent updates. Luckily, there's a fix for that.

Having fun in the workplace keeps employees engaged, satisfied, and productive. It reduces employee stress, enhances employee retention, and promotes teamwork and cooperation. Infusing the workplace with joy has proven positive impacts that resonate with organizations and individuals alike.

Amidst the chaos of emails, direct messages, video calls and more, lies the pivotal role of internal communicators, working to provide employees with essential information. How can you ensure these crucial messages reliably reach their intended recipients with clarity and impact?

Meetings are an essential part of working together; bad meetings aren’t.

You’ve established the need for a new intranet. You’ve made a sound business case, you have a rough budget, and you’re ready to bring an exceptional digital employee experience to your organization. Now there’s one big question left to answer: Should we build, or buy one?

Speaking to a disengaged audience is always frustrating; for professionals working in human resources or internal communications, it's disastrous.

Employee feedback surveys are a reliable and structured way that an entire organization can become a better listener.

Modern intranets, such as Haystack, are designed to complement, not compete with, platforms like SharePoint. While SharePoint excels in document management and collaboration, intranets like Haystack prioritize engagement, culture, and streamlined internal communication.

Let's explore what psychological safety is, how it can benefit your company, and how to build it into your digital employee experience.

Cultivating an environment of employee enablement ensures members of an organization have the support they need, both inside and outside the workplace. That support provides the necessary space to focus, succeed, and earn career-defining achievements.

Since employee burnout impacts everyone differently, it’s common to compartmentalize it as a personal affliction. In reality, burnout is a far-reaching and multifaceted issue that intentional, effective internal communications can dramatically impact.

Most internal communications teams don’t have unlimited access to design bandwidth, but that doesn't mean you can't create remarkable, engaging content. Read on to learn how you can leverage free tools to deliver content that stands out.

A positive Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is no longer just important for remote and office workers; it’s quickly becoming a necessary component of any productive, engaged, and connected workforce. In this guide we’ll dive into the details of DEX, outline some core pillars to focus on, and share some actionable steps to help support improvements in each of those areas.

Organizations often put a lot of work into authentic communications because authenticity resonates. Internal communication doesn’t always get the same treatment, but it can, and it should.

Employees in a wide range of industries have more access to digital tools than ever before. The first thing they see on the screen can set the stage for a successful day ahead—and that's where an employee dashboard comes in.

New research indicates that employees' attitudes and perceptions toward change contribute to the high failure rate. In this context, the role of internal communications teams becomes crucial in supporting change management.

By examining the primary reasons your internal audience isn't engaging with your content, you can learn how to tailor tone, message, and medium to keep your audience's focus firmly planted on the story you have to tell.

Employee newsletters are a popular standby for internal communications teams to connect with their audience—but just because newsletters are popular doesn’t mean they’re always effective. If your newsletter is struggling to gain traction, this is the guide for you.

From high stress and turnover to low productivity, there are many reasons why businesses need to come up with solutions to communication-related barriers at the workplace.

Whether you’re introducing a new remote hire or an in-office employee, it’s equally crucial to halp them smoothly integrate them into your organization's culture, community, and workflow.

Flexible work isn’t just a fad or a perk that’ll be gone in a year; it’s rapidly becoming the norm worldwide. It’s easy to think of ways a flexible arrangement might benefit individual employees, but can it really benefit an organization as a whole?

Effective communication is the foundation of collaboration and productivity. On the other hand, poor communication can lead to systemic issues across an organization. Fortunately, a cornucopia of team communication tools are available to help employees excel in any work environment.

Internal communications are the nervous system of your organization. The messages flowing through that system set the tone for team member relationships. The style and voice of internal communications also go a long way toward determining the brand image and message employees will present to external audiences.

Communication isn’t always easy, even between two people. Fold in time zones, add a pinch of tense deadlines, a sprinkle of jargon, combine myriad personalities, and it’s a wonder we’re able to bake this cake at all.

Town hall meetings are a powerful way to connect with a large audience in a personal setting. Although they’re a popular format, many organizations still struggle with town hall meeting attendance and engagement—especially when they’re being held remotely.

While the remote work revolution brought numerous challenges, it also pushed communication tooling and infrastructure forward at a pace that would otherwise have been unimaginable. Are you and your team utilizing them?

It’s one thing to understand why companies should focus on organizational knowledge and another thing to know how to put that goal into action. That’s why we’ve come up with this list of five ways companies can improve knowledge management and avoid losing mission-critical information.

A strong and unified communication strategy can help support every stage of the employee journey, from candidate all the way to alumni. We built this guide to make it easier.

Hybrid work isn’t a passing phenomenon—it’s set to take over work as we know it. Are you ready for that? Regardless of the format your company adopts, hybrid work isgoing to require leaders to refocus their strategy and take on some new perspectives.

You wouldn't start on a long journey without a map, and neither should employees. A good map can help make the entire employee expereince more intentional. Improving employee satisfaction and morale stops being a vague company goal and becomes a cornerstone to each stage of the employee journey.

It’s surprisingly common to see an organization out of step with its values.There are numerous reasons for this misalignment. The values may be too abstract, more aspirational than accurate, underutilized, or perhaps they weren’t well articulated in the first place.

Internal communication is an intricate ecosystem. When it's in balance, each element becomes more effective and resilient.

Remote, hybrid, and distributed teams are here to stay. For the foreseeable future, the people you collaborate with may not be in the same office, time zone, or even the same country.

Intranets are often billed as your digital headquarters. They’re meant to be the heart of connection, culture, and knowledge in an organization, so it’s imperative their features and functionalities match its unique needs. The problem is, they frequently fall short—but not always for the reasons you might think.

When bull markets turn bear and uncertainty looms, organizations often ask their employee base to practice resilience. But what does that mean, and how do you translate it to action?

Since the remote and hybrid environment seems to be the new normal, the question is: how do we keep remote employees engaged and motivated at work? Internal communication is a big part of the solution for any company, small or large. It’s time to embrace the remote culture and meet employees where are they are: online. 

If you and your team members are feeling the stretch of shifting abruptly from a more traditional internal comms setting to the workplace of the future, you’re not alone. But stretching is a reliable way of growing beyond the limitations of the past.

As a company grows, it isn’t long before it reaches a size where it’s next to impossible to know everyone you work with. For organizations with remote or hybrid workers, that limit can come at a smaller headcount. After crossing that threshold, it becomes increasingly difficult for employees to build strong relationships without some form of scaffolding.

Just like HR teams a decade ago, the view of internal comms is shifting from cost center (or crisis center) to strategic business partner, and that’s a very good thing. While this shift represents exciting possibilities, it comes with new expectations and noteworthy challenges many internal communicators aren’t yet equipped to overcome.

Chances are you’ve noticed if it’s easy or difficult to access information about your company, but maybe you haven’t thought too deeply about the consequences of it. If you were more informed, do you think that would make an impact on how committed you are to your role or your company?

Organizations are better equipped than ever to open the necessary channels to improve everything from business processes to frontline employee experience, yet those channels still frequently remain obstructed, or even closed.

Corporate intranets aren’t famous for being fun, cozy spaces, but that perception is changing.Your company’s digital workplace can be as unique, inviting, and delightful as its on-site campus, perks and all, because what it lacks in ping pong tables and nap pods it makes up for in flexibility and reach. A corporate intranet can be accessed by an entire organization from practically anywhere, anytime.

While there have been enormous strides made in the way we work across the world, remote and hybrid work en masse are still in their infancy. There are numerous obstacles both organizations and individual employees struggle with—some of which we’ve convinced ourselves may never be possible to fully overcome in the context of remote work. Of all those obstacles, building personal connections with coworkers is one of the most challenging. That’s exactly what we’re going to cover here.

I remember not long ago, I started at a new company. When my colleagues said my name, it never came out right. It felt like there were five different versions of me running around, depending on which department I interacted with.