10 quick tips to improve intranet engagement

We need to talk about your intranet engagement ...

Did you know that 93%[i] of internal communicators use an intranet to communicate corporate messages? But for many employees, accessing information on the company intranet is seen as the last resort.

In a recent webinar with Sam Marshall of Clearbox Consulting, I learned from attendees just how big an issue employee engagement on your intranet is for most internal communicators.

The good news is it doesn't have to be this way!

Having defined goals, a clear navigation structure, good design, and most importantly engaging and relevant content can transform your intranet from a last stop for information to an essential employee destination.

1. Reviewing your intranet. If you already have an intranet, evaluate the current state, such as engagement stats including what pages employees use most frequently. This will help you identify what to prioritize for improvement, and then make those tasks simpler and faster to complete.
2. Set goals. Set SMART Goals for your intranet that are aligned to organizational goals. Do you use the intranet mostly for top-down management information, or is it used for true social collaboration? Establish your intranet business objective, which in turn will make it easier to measure success.
3. Design for ease of use. Three key components of good design to apply throughout the intranet - especially to the layout of the homepage and sections.
   • A well-designed interface
   • Usability
   • Organization of content
4. Build with employees in mind. Along with ensuring top tasks are easy to accomplish, your intranet should feel like an inclusive forum where employees are involved in meaningful conversations, contributing content and have access to information that helps them with their job.
   • The very best intranets engage in a dialogue. They engage employees (@tobyward)
5. Show teamwork. Show off teamwork. Share great examples in your emails of teamwork or collaboration sites across your business to inspire your workforce.
6. Use rich media. Signpost to rich media content available on the intranet by embedding links in emails to videos, podcasts and webcasts.
7. Drive intranet traffic using a multichannel approach. Use a mix of channels to promote content and drive users to the intranet. Email is the most used commonly used communication channel by internal communicators and can successfully drive traffic to your intranet.
8. Ensuring the intranet is accessible to remote workers. If you want all employees to use the intranet, then it must be mobile-enabled so they can access it wherever they are. Don’t cut corners in your mobile design. It is frustrating for those working remotely to not have access to the full functionality of the intranet – and gives them a reason to not use it.
9. Social networks. Use social networks to help inspire collaboration and open up conversations, highlight discussions happening on your social networks across the organization. Consider putting your social network on the home page, this encourages employees to join conversations and share information across the organization.
10. Define success. Establish what success means for your organization. Measure intranet engagement such as visits, pages and sections, social networks - or other destinations in your organization. Use this insight to understand what content and signposts your audience responds to and to shape future communications.