Two words that rarely go together: “sexy” and “intranet”, but maybe they should. A recent survey by Prescient Digital Media shows that 13% of employees reported participating in their company’s intranet daily, while 31% said they never do. If your company uses an intranet to communicate internally, it’s a safe bet that some (if not a lot) of your employees are ditching it altogether.
Why Does this Happen?
Employees don’t like to use things that don’t help them or aren’t engaging. Many times a company’s intranet is so outdated and hard to use, that even employees that want to use it have a difficult time. While functionality and design of websites has evolved incredibly over the last decade, the same attention has not been paid to internal communication platforms. When you’re used to using sexy websites, struggling through a clunky intranet just isn’t appealing.
What’s the Big Deal?
Without a sexy intranet, you lose a vital connection tool with your employees and disconnected employees are not a good thing. A study from The McKinsey Global Institute showed that productivity improves up to 25% in organizations with connected employees leading to revenues of $1.3 trillion per year.
Stop Saying “We’ve Always Done It This Way”
If you haven’t updated your intranet platform in over three years, it’s probably losing its sexiness fast. The digital world is changing fast and catching clients with a sexy website is important, but don’t forget about your employees. Effective internal communications are becoming increasingly important to maintain employee efficiency and connectedness and doing things the way you’ve always done them is no longer sexy.
Getting Started with Intranet Design for Dummies
Redesigning your company’s intranet can seem like quite the undertaking, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. Below are some tips to get your wheels turning:
Talk with employees to see what they like and don’t like about the intranet. Find out what they use and what they don’t. Knowing what your employees want and need is the first step to designing a successful intranet platform. 
One of the largest pitfalls with intranets is the sheer amount of information they throw at employees. When redesigning your intranet, prioritize the information and tasks that employees need to see and hide the other stuff.
There are a lot of different business intranet software options and no two are created equal. Understanding your business’s needs and work practices will help you find the best intranet for you.
Let your office culture permeate your intranet. Provide ways for employees to communicate with each other or use inside jokes to name folders. Try to take the boring professionalism out of your intranet.
Let Brandography Build the Intranet Your Company Needs
The web development team at Brandography has helped many companies revamp their intranet to be more user-friendly and functional. Whether you’re looking to add new tools or elements to your intranet or just want to start over, we’re ready to build the intranet your employees expect and your company needs.
