How to Make Your Intranet A Value-Add for End Users

Intranets are an integral component of the modern digital employee experience. Everyone in the organization, from new hires to the CEO, and even intranet admins themselves are its end users. With that much exposure, it makes sense that the company intranet should provide a standout experience.

Luckily, there’s no shortage of things you can do to improve that environment. Whether you have a dedicated modern intranet already, or you’re on the path toward rolling one out, there’s no better time than now to deliver a priceless digital experience for end users.

User Friendliness

If there’s one thing to get right, this is it.

A powerful system is useless in the hands of someone who can’t or won’t get past its learning curve. And while simplicity and ease-of-use are crucial components of user friendliness, they’re really just the table stakes for an exceptional experience.

User friendliness fundamentally relies on spaces that people appreciate and want to return to, regularly. There are a lot of factors that contribute to a space like that, and we’re going to outline some of them below.

Intuitiveness

What does it mean for an intranet to be “intuitive?”

In essence, your intuition should be enough guidance to get you where you need to go.

But you’re not just designing a system that meets the standard or perspective of your own intuition. A widely-used platform should be exceptionally, generally intuitive.  Think about it this way: you, your mom or dad, your nephew, your electrician, and your accountant should be able to pick it up and start using it effectively, with minimal training.

In the world of consumer apps, that level of intuitiveness is common—and there’s no  reason your company intranet shouldn’t meet that bar.

We’re all surrounded by exceptional User Experience (UX) in our home life. We’ve been trained to recognize and interact through common patterns that entire teams of talented developers and designers have pruned and perfected over generations.

Some of these patterns (think “tap to select” or “swipe to scroll”) are so well-designed and deeply ingrained, we often follow them without even thinking about it.

Finding what you need

Intuitveness also demands that resources, people, and knowledge should generally live where you expect to find them. That’s where organizational knowledge management becomes crucial.

There are three main components to a great organizational knowledge management system. Each is equally important. If one component is lacking, the others can help compensate, but over-indexing on one to the detriment of others will reduce the effectiveness of the entire system.

• Organization: Things should be placed in thoughtful, reasonable locations. Imagine you had no search function to rely on: how would you organize the information so that finding things still feels intuitive?
• Governance: Information should be up to date, accurate, and non-duplicative. Imagine you had no formalized way to organize information, and had to dig through it manually. How would you govern and curate the inputs of that system to make finding the correct information as easy as possible?
• Search: Queries should be semantic; results should be integrated and comprehensive. Imagine your organizational knowledge base lacked organization and/or governance. What sort of search experience would best support users, even if the data they’re searching is unstructured and ungoverned?

So, if you want to have an ideally intuitive user experience for finding people, information, and resources: organize it as though you don’t have a great way of searching it. Govern it as though it won’t be well-organized, and find an advanced search tool that can help users find what they need, even if it’s poorly organized and governed.

Accessibility

Accessibility is essential for a user-friendly system. A successful intranet can provide everyone with access to the people, resources, and knowledge they need to thrive. Similar to intuitiveness, accessibility is multi-faceted, and may look different across organizations; however, there are a few core principles a successful intranet should exhibit.

Accessible from anywhere

Now more than ever, the concept of work as a physical space is coming into question. Even people who work in traditionally office-based roles increasingly utilize and rely on mobile devices. Your intranet should be just as easy to access on the go as it is at a desk.

Accessible to everyone

The system and content within it should be easy to access if you speak a different language from some of your peers, it should have enough contrast to be legible if you have a color vision deficiency. Content should be accessible to someone using a screen reader, speech-to-text, or any other assistive technology.

Additionally, the greater accessibility across different roles in the workforce, the better. In an organization with deskless workers, an intranet that only office workers can access is a barrier to knowledge sharing and access.

Reliability

A true value-add intranet must be reliable for end users, as the go-to source they can count on. Just like many of the other traits discussed above, reliability can be broken down into a few core areas.

Availability

Uptime is essential for an intranet. No system can truly claim 100% uptime forever, but the closer one can be, the more likely it is to succeed. Each time someone tries to use the company intranet to get a question answered, share something, or solve a problem—and can’t—they’re one step closer to giving up on it.

Speed

Waiting makes people frustrated. Frustrated people often give up and move on to try and solve their problem somewhere else, or may even decide solving it isn’t worth the effort.

A modern intranet that brings true value to end users feels instantaneous to use. Clicking through a notification to read a post? Instantaneous. Searching for a colleague to team up with on a project? Instantaneous. Finding out your open enrollment date? You get the idea.

Trustworthyness

Having a system that is fast and available means nothing if it’s full of unreliable information. Much of this relates back to the core concept of governance discussed above, but there are also ways to provide quick visual cues for end users, and help intranet content creators keep information up to date.

Certified content allows subject matter experts to add their stamp of certification to a resource. For example, an HR leader could certify the employee handbook hosted on your intranet, signifying that its contents are accurate and current. Governance tools like Haystack’s freshness engine make it easy for administrators to ensure important documents are up-to-date, in addition to being accurate.

Personalization

We live in a personalized world and the expectations that come with it. Like most other consumer-grade applications, a value-add intranet is flexible enough to fit your preferences, and even offer avenues for expression.

Relevance

A value-add intranet should present relevant information to you. Group memberships are one way modern intranets like Haystack address this through group memberships—some of which you may be added to based on your role, and others you’ve chosen to join.

Delivery

An intranet that provides maximum value for end users delivers information and updates where users want to be reached, leveraging the communication tools they prefer. For example, many employees don’t check emails often and prefer to be reached through Slack or Microsoft Teams. Some spend more time on mobile and prefer to receive a push notification. Some still prefer email.

That information should also come through at a comfortable cadence. Saturating users with too much irrelevant info can lead them to tune out, and that’s why notification preferences are an essential benefit of an intranet employees get value from.

Captivating

Looks aren’t everything, but design and presentation do matter. An intranet that adds value for employees isn’t boring to look at—it delivers information in an engaging format.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, video and third-party app embeds are worth at least a million. An intranet that draws users in with content they truly care about, in formats they want to engage with, can add value to their day-to-day experience.

Engagement

Intranets can be a key player in the effort to foster employee engagement. Some have out-of-the-box tools designed to support engagement, but even if yours doesn’t, there are a lot of ways to support employee engagement through the intranet. Below are a few examples—some of which are universally applicable, while others might require a modern intranet like Haystack.

Recognition / Shoutouts

It’s important to receive recognition for the work you do. Understanding the impact your work has on the world around you matters. It’s essential for building a connection between your own goals and values with the organization’s.

Giving recognition to colleagues is equally important. Taking that step not only builds and strengthens interpersonal bonds, it also further reinforces your own understanding of which contributions really move everyone forward.

Anniversaries and Milestones

Celebrating milestones like work anniversaries shows appreciation for the collective contributions individuals make throughout their tenure. It showcases the value an organization places on the unique cultural and business impact each individual brings throughout their employee journey, and helps strengthen the connection supporting that journey.

Badges

Badges aren’t essential. Neither is graduating with highest honors, or winning the Super Bowl—yet, people still find those pursuits motivating. If your intranet, like Haystack, has a customizable badge system, adding exclusive, authentic, and meaningful badges related achievements can be fun and motivational.

Groups

Connecting people across the workforce is one of the key benefits of an intranet, and groups do several valuable things in that regard.

Groups can help introduce people who might not otherwise have connected. In large organizations, achieving that is often a challenge, as large departments can become insular and siloed.

Groups also help sharpen the focus of discussions and collaboration. Larger groups, like department-specific groups, are often widely populated, and as such, usually cover high-level topics while more specialized groups get into the details.

Specialized groups, like Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) can provide a safe space for people to commune, converse, and collaborate on initiatives.

Affinity groups can provide a place for people to connect over shared interests, hobbies, skills, and more.

Company News

Staying up to date with news and events important to your organization is valuable, not just from a practical standpoint, but also as a bridge between individual and organizational values. A modern intranet that supports more transparent sharing of news can help employees better connect with the organization they're working for and the goals they’re working toward.

Events

Company events offer a great way to build stronger connections between colleagues and the organization at large at the same time. Your intranet can be a helpful tool for planning and organizing these events—whether it’s keeping everyone notified of the time and place, tracking RSVPs, or accommodating things like allergies or dietary preferences for in-person events.

Feedback

Employee feedback is priceless. More often than not, the people closest to an issue have unique insights that can support better decision-making at a higher level. Intranets provide numerous ways to capture those insights. Feedback also supports engagement—especially when it influences action at the organizational level—because employees know that not only their work, but also their opinions and knowledge matter.

Polls and Surveys provide a mechanism for employees to share their thoughts and sentiments. They can also provide optional layers of anonymity, for cases where candid feedback is required.

Post Comments and Replies are a direct, personal way for employees to participate in organizational conversations, gain clarification on issues, and share feedback related to company news or policies.

Emoji reactions reduce the effort barrier for sharing feedback even further, by giving employees a simple way to share their sentiment in seconds. It’s also helpful to consider the lack of reaction as its own data point, if effusive reactions are the norm.

Collaboration

Intranets can support greater cross-departmental collaboration, as well as collaboration within departments. Increased collaboration not only supports productivity, but also provides greater opportunities for building relationships that enrich the employee experience.

Connecting Quickly

The easier it is to connect with someone in your organization, the more likely you are to do that, and enjoy the benefits of a tight-knit employee community. Intranets like Haystack include org charts, search, and rich employee profiles that make it easy to find colleagues through their skills, hobbies, interests, and roles, but also to connect with them instantly by phone, Zoom, Slack, Teams, or email.

Meeting New Colleagues

In addition to all the ways intranets can help colleagues connect, if you’re a Haystack user, employees can use Haystack Connect to be paired up with others in helpful ways. For example, connecting employees who work in different departments, have shared interests, or setting up mentors with mentees.

Sharing Knowledge and Resources

Providing a place to capture and share knowledge and resources is a crucial way intranets can add value for end-users. Many times, the focus of knowledge and resource sharing is at a high level, but there’s an enormous wealth of organizational knowledge held by individual contributors.

Providing a place to share that knowledge can help improve process efficiencies, spark innovations, and shorten learning curves for employees at all levels.

Bringing it Home

End users are the largest and most important cohort to consider as you hone your digital employee experience. There are nearly limitless ways to make your intranet more valuable—even indispensable—for them. If you’re a Haystack customer, and want to explore more ways to drive maximum value for your organization, check in with your CSM for a strategy session!