Employee Intranet: The Symphony of Employee Experience with Workplace Productivity

“Employees are a company’s greatest asset – they’re your competitive advantage. You want to attract and retain the best; provide them with encouragement, stimulus, and make them feel that they are an integral part of the company’s mission.”- Anne M. Mulcahy.

It’s true that the way modern organizations see their employees has changed to a great extent when compared to traditional workplaces. The then top-down management is replaced with employee-centric strategies offering center stage to today’s workforce.

Why is workforce participation important? Are modern workplace technologies helpful in enriching emplAs the employee intranet centralizes the organization’s confidential information, strategic knowledge, and financial records, security becomes paramount.oyee experience? Indeed, technologies like employee intranet have played a key role in enhancing employee engagement, productivity, and collaboration. Well, for organizations planning for a centralized platform to streamline projects, documents, workflows, teams, and departments, this blog holds relevance.

Let’s dive right in to understand what an employee intranet is and why you need one.

What is an employee intranet?

An employee intranet is a secure internal network within a company that acts as a centralized portal for employees to access key organizational updates, employee profiles, resources, and productive applications all in one place. Furthermore, the modern employee intranet portal, while streamlining and automating standard business processes, also offers simplified channels for uninterrupted internal communication and information sharing.

Simply put, it is an intranet for employees to help them enhance their efficiency, engagement, and awareness, fostering a positive and connected workplace environment.

The transformative impact of an employee intranet platform aptly conveys the explanation for its need in today’s workplaces. From simplified business processes to knowledge sharing and more, countless employee intranet features have reshaped the very fabric of modern workplaces. If you are still unsure how an employee intranet significantly impacts productivity within the organization, let’s explore some of the key benefits of an employee intranet further.

What are the advantages of an employee intranet?

1. Simplified business processes

No organization can deny the fact that paper and email-based business processes are one of the most cumbersome ways of getting the things done. Most of us are dealing with the overflowing trays of papers but it is a very complex and error-prone process. A modern intranet comes to the rescue here and simplifies the business processes while automating most of them. Whether it is sending documents for review, signing up for a company meeting, completing the latest health and safety form, your intranet can easily streamline the business processes. It ultimately saves a lot of your time and energy that reflects higher productivity.

Here are some examples:

• Using digital forms across the intranet to complete the data rather than giving print out of the forms
• Streamlining content approval process such as a new blog post. The writer can complete and upload the content on portal, and then, sends it for approval. The automatic notifications can be generated for the managers to approve the content and once it is approved, the writer is also notified in real-time. Moreover, you can share, discuss, and co-author documents using metadata, groups, and taxonomies for better collaboration.

2. Creates a two-way communication

A SharePoint intranet facilitates clear internal communication between people and groups to avoid information silos and misunderstandings. The co-workers can seamlessly share information and build bonds across the organization. You can see all the positive sides of an intranet if there is a good amount of participation by the employees. Learn effective ways for intranet adoption.

The employee intranet does not only help employees to raise the concerns but also help them receive the accurate answers to questions. Listening to the needs, feedback and recommendations of employees is necessary to excel in the modern-day workplace. An intranet can help you set up feedback loops at the team and company levels to get the actionable business insights. You can also use pulse surveys through a quick survey tool and build a steady feedback pipeline. Listening to the voice of employees boost their engagement levels, productivity, and ultimately, levels up the business growth and revenues.

3. Reduced search time

The core of your intranet has to be a well-organized navigation leading to different organized sites. If the content is hidden with multiple links, the employees will have to spend huge amount of time looking for the relevant information. And a strong navigation is supported by advanced global search options that brings a range of content based on keywords. This is how most of the search engines and modern applications work.

A modern intranet on Office 365 allows employees to search by keywork such as “Holiday”, which results in relevant documents, people, blogs, articles, news and announcements, sites, and more in an organized manner. This is advanced functionality that makes the information architecture planning much easier.

4. Builds a collaborative culture

Creating a successful business in long term requires you to enhance employee engagement and make your employees feel valued. It means that collaboration is the key to business success. It does not only drive employee engagement but also boosts business growth. With a unified platform, you can easily share information across the organization.

This is where a modern SharePoint intranet has its advantages. It allows you to get answers to your questions, store and search content in real-time, locate subject matter experts, streamline training process, encourage employees to contribute ideas. It is crucial for organizations to take advantage of modern collaboration tools and build a knowledge-sharing culture.

Building a collaborative culture is also beneficial when your team is working across different time zones and departments. The intranet becomes the most adequate place for them to collaborate online and enables them, to bring together task management, information, social conversations, people, and more. By bringing this together, the employees can get on to the work that really matters and become highly productive.

5. Simplified knowledge management

Most of the employees waste their productive time in searching the relevant information as they need to search through many unorganized repositories and cluttered inboxes. A knowledge base provides a central platform to make the information easily searchable and accessible. Know why knowledge management is important for your business success.

With a modern intranet in place, you can simplify the knowledge management process and cut down the time users spend on searching for information that should be at their fingertips. For example, the intranet allows the documents to be quickly and easily rolled up, dynamically updated to make it easier for employees to find the relevant information. Investing in a modern intranet can be an incredible experience for employee productivity and long-term success of your organization. Instead of looking for disparate systems to capture, organize, and share knowledge, you can create an integrated knowledge base system with a SharePoint intranet.

6. Streamlined task management

Despite being in an era of the digitized workplace, many businesses are still using manual, document-based processes and emails for managing tasks. Traditionally, the process of task management involves a mix of wasted time, tedious and time-consuming processes and tons of wasted papers. A modern intranet can automate your business tasks and allow you to streamline everything in just a few clicks. The employees can easily review all the tasks, projects, progress within the digital workplace. Learn how intranet portals can automate your business tasks.

7. On the go access with mobile

With the increasing need of mobility, it is important for organizations to offer flexible working solutions to the employees. The employees may have varied work schedules due to distant locations, having children, or alike. Being able to access the relevant information on mobile can be their ready solution to get the work done. In addition to the flexible work schedules, the employees may also require the data on client location, sales trips, networking events, or any other company events. With a modern intranet, you can take your office intranet solution wherever you go. Receive push notifications on your mobile device to have access to information from anywhere, at any time. Having the real-time access to information can make a lot of difference for employee satisfaction and productivity levels.

What aspects to prioritize when choosing an employee intranet

A robust intranet for employees acts as a powerhouse of your organizational digital workplace framework. It’s like taking the foundational step towards building a digital headquarters for your organization. However, choosing a suboptimal employee intranet highlights the risk of low user adoption, communication breakdown, limited customization options, and productivity loss. So, what are some critical metrics that organizations can check before opting for a robust employee intranet?

Below are some key aspects you can add to your employee intranet checklist for successful implementation and long-term effectiveness of the digital platform.

1. User-friendly interface

The effectiveness of an employee intranet depends on how effortlessly your employees interact and engage with digital technology. Indeed, the intranet tracks vital stats like how many employees react to the content or log into the portals daily, which we call user adoption rates. It represents whether users are embracing the technology or not.

An employee intranet thrives on seamless digital interaction and engagement. The key lies in understanding how effortlessly employees connect with the platform. User adoption rates, measured by reactions to content and daily logins, become the pulse of the intranet’s success, revealing whether it’s truly embraced by its users.

Certainly, having a personalized dashboard, robust information search mechanism, navigable design, and easy drag-and-drop functionality are among some of the core employee intranet features offering an intuitive user interface. Eventually, it will improve productivity, information accessibility, and employee experience and, most importantly, reduce the overall response time.

2. Customization options

An employee intranet directly impacts user engagement, employee turnover, business processes, and your organizational branding. It plays a key role in conveying organizational goals, values, and culture to the employees.

Certainly, a customizable employee intranet will allow you to tailor a specifically designed portal to meet your organizational requirements. The ability to design and automate critical workflows, create personalized dashboards, integrate with existing tools and applications, and expand without a complete system overhaul are some of the critical aspects that you look for when choosing a robust intranet for your employees.

3. Secure environment

As the employee intranet centralizes the organization’s confidential information, strategic knowledge, and financial records, security becomes paramount. As SharePoint is a product of Microsoft, it becomes a preferable choice for organizations where security holds a prime position in their employee intranet checklist.

With multi-factor authentication, role-based access, versioning, audit trails, and controlled permission-based access for documents, it ensures a secure environment to collaborate and share information within the organization.

Opting for SharePoint’s Online version to build an employee intranet, the auto-updates and latest security patches promptly address the security issues, offering a resilient security framework to support organizations working in a controlled regulatory environment.

4. Cost-effective solution

Cost is another critical factor for organizations when selecting a digital solution, specifically when operating within a predefined budget. Certainly, the cost organizations bear to implement, maintain, and upgrade a future-ready solution, coupled with the expenses on employee training and development, must align appropriately with the organizational budget. Moreover, the need for an in-house IT team to handle associated security risks, updates, customization, and more can strain your budget.

Cost is a critical factor for budget-constrained organizations selecting digital solutions. Implementing, maintaining, and upgrading a future-ready solution, along with employee training, must align with budget limitations.

However, opting for a cloud-based solution that comes with a subscription-based model helps you cut short the expenses on hardware infrastructure and purchasing software licenses.

In the case of a SharePoint-based employee intranet, opting for a reliable service provider not only saves you from the hassle of regular maintenance but also offers robust ongoing support for a smoother operational experience.

Designing a reliable employee intranet: Must-have widgets for a productive portal

An employee intranet, a multifaceted platform, offers every opportunity to employees to enhance their overall digital workplace experience. It is a unified platform to streamline your employee engagement strategy.

But what exactly should be there on an employee intranet portal? While it’s challenging to cover all the applications and features offered by an employee intranet. Still, here are some must-have widgets to enhance the overall operational efficiency and productivity of your employees.

1. Company News and Announcements

An intranet for employees serves as a ‘Townsquare’ for organizational updates. Let your employees access essential company news, updates, events, and policy changes, or share achievements, success stories, and milestones, creating a positive organizational culture.

2. Quick Links

A valuable application to streamline navigation, making critical information accessible with just a click. Ensure your essential information is readily available to employees by quick links to important content, campaigns, documents, or resources all in one place.

3. My Site

‘My site’ in an employee intranet portal is a personalized space for employees facilitating access to tasks, documents, and projects they are involved in. It includes a document repository, a ‘Quick Launch’ (an application where users can access resources, people, and events they follow), an interactive dashboard, and more.

4. Document Library

Centralized document repositories enable employees to create, modify, organize, co-author, and share documents digitally. Irrespective of the user’s location, these libraries are accessible globally. With powerful features like versioning, check-in-check-out, permission-based access, and meta-tagging, it is a powerful tool to manage and control organizational documents.

5. Project Site

A dedicated space to manage and collaborate on multiple projects an organization is working on. It helps employees keep track of project summaries, tasks (open, pending, and completed), project documents, project updates, milestones, and discussions together in an organized setting.

6. Employee Directory

Leverage a well-structured employee directory to help employees quickly learn about their coworkers, access their profiles and contacts, and share information, expertise, and skills within the organization. Certainly, it fosters flawless internal communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

7. Quick Launch

A ‘Quick Launch’ makes it easy for users to quickly navigate through multiple menus and lists within an employee intranet. Apart from offering a comprehensive dashboard for project rollup, it leverages Kanban board and Gantt chart features to provide detailed insight into dependencies, action items, issues, and more.

8. Ask an Expert

Allow your employees to get in touch with subject matter experts and quickly find solutions to specific issues and challenges. Certainly, the ‘Ask an Expert’ widget is an ideal solution to break down organizational silos, enhancing operational efficiency and increasing the learning curve within the organization.

9. Corporate Calendar

It is a potent widget to manage and organize key corporate events, activities, meetings, deadlines, and tasks so your employees stay on track. It helps schedule meetings, plan projects and tasks, and avoid scheduling conflicts while fostering better teamwork and coordination.

Start harnessing the power of productivity and collaboration with BizPortals 365

Now, you know the reasons to get an intranet, do you still think that you need to ponder over getting an employee intranet for your organization? Tens of thousands of companies are already using employee intranets and astonished to see its power to boost productivity as well as business growth. Effective communication at workplace, easy sharing of documents/data, improved employee engagement, eliminated information silos, access to multiple communication channels, reduced business process complexities, better project management, advanced security are some of the benefits offered by modern SharePoint intranet. There is much more for you to take your business to the next level.

Don’t wait anymore to get your intranet up and running in just a few weeks. Schedule a DEMO to see BizPortals 365 employee intranet in action.