Enterprise intranet are central hubs where employees can find information and resources. They help to align company culture, streamline processes and connect employees.

Before launching an intranet, perform a needs analysis with staff. This will help ensure that the intranet meets both short and long-term requirements. Then, implement a strategy to drive adoption and use.

Employee Engagement

As employees are increasingly asked to be brand ambassadors in addition to their day jobs, it’s important for an intranet to make this easy. A modern system allows for employee content creation and distribution via multiple channels including social media, email, and a company blog. It also has features to encourage and reward employee advocacy.

For example, allowing employees to use the corporate branding in their social media posts will help to build brand awareness and engagement. Likewise, many systems have content templates that can be reused and a taxonomy to guide people on what keywords or tags to use when creating a document.

Lastly, it’s important that the system meets workers where they live. For example, if a large percentage of the workforce are active on LinkedIn then providing them with training and content on the company’s platform is going to be more effective than only encouraging them to post on your company’s blog or intranet.

An intranet should also provide a central hub for all knowledge and information sharing. This may include a Q&A forum for employees to ask questions of their peers. It could also be a repository for critical documents that can be accessed by all employees. Some systems even allow for more focused information wikis and subsites that are easily searchable. Having these tools within the intranet can reduce the time it takes for employees to find and access key information.

Business Collaboration

For companies that employ remote workers or have a mobile workforce, the enterprise intranet provides a central hub for communication and collaboration. It also helps to foster a company culture that’s focused on employee engagement. This helps drive better business results, such as increased productivity and improved customer service.

The best intranet software programs include tools to allow employees to work as a cohesive team across distances and time zones. For example, a collaborative intranet software solution such as ClickUp includes a shared home portal for everyone, a messaging app that allows teams to exchange private messages, and an online workspace that provides the foundation for collaboration on any project.

Another great feature is the ability to share dashboards of key metrics from analytics platforms. This can help eliminate the need for dozens of email exchanges with coworkers and keep the whole team aligned on high-level goals.

For small businesses, an intranet platform such as Firstup can be a powerful tool for communicating with employees in a highly-effective and engaging way. It’s easy to set up, has pre-built templates, and can be used by anyone – even the office technophobes! It’s also simple to customize with a five-step site builder process. Plus, it offers a mobile-friendly design and supports right-to-left language support. Try it free for a week today!

Document Management

A document management system within your intranet allows employees to easily store files and access important documents from a centralized location. This saves time in searching and finding the right document as well as provides an easy method of collaboration with colleagues. Documents can be marked as required reading or tagged to notify a specific team member for review, so the content is not overlooked or forgotten about.

In addition, many systems allow users to annotate documents with comments or questions without editing the original document. The check-in/check-out process also prevents multiple parties from editing the same file at the same time and helps track changes in real-time. Documents that have been edited can be rolled back to previous versions and the system will keep record of the entire edit history.

An intranet with integrated forms and workflow tools can help automate common business processes, such as submitting travel expenses or requesting a new project manager. These capabilities are useful for reducing the number of manual steps needed to complete these requests, resulting in increased productivity.

Providing employees with a single source of truth for important corporate information can strengthen company culture and employee engagement. Intranets can also help companies attract and retain top talent by providing a more engaging way to communicate with leadership and other team members.

Security

As the workplace adapts to digitalization and remote work becomes more common, it’s important that employees are aware of how to keep information secure. A strong awareness of digital security, including passwords and how to share files safely, can prevent accidental leaks and ensure a more secure intranet. It’s also essential that employees follow company policies around sharing files and remote working to mitigate risk.

For example, employees should not save their login credentials on laptops or mobile devices, and should only access the intranet through the company VPN. If you’re looking for a more robust security solution, consider using firewalls to protect the network and verify incoming data packets against suspicious activities. These tools can stop cybercriminals from breaching your intranet network and exposing confidential information.

Employees should be educated on how to identify phishing emails, and on how to report them. Additionally, it’s important that the workforce understands that physical theft of company equipment is a serious threat, and they should lock their laptops when they leave them unattended in public places like airports or coffee shops. It’s also vital that employees don’t download apps that are not vetted by the company, as these can contain malware or adware and could cause their computer to crash. In addition, they should always use a VPN when accessing the intranet from an external device.