What is intranet and why do you need it?

July 8, 2020 11

When someone says intranet, adjectives such as old, out-dated, and inconvenient come to mind. While that may have been true decades ago, today, the situation is completely different. Corporate intranets successfully keep up with the latest technological advancements. They are user friendly, well designed, and engaging enough.

More importantly, this business solution boosts communication, engagement, and collaboration among employees among other things. That is what makes the intranet a great tool for any organization. Luckily to employers, the intranet provides much more than that. Let’s see why every business needs this platform.

Corporate Storage

Most companies invest great amounts of money in intellectual capital. Those are ideas, practices, inventions, and all other relevant documents and files. Employees spend years in creating and sharing this collective knowledge. If not stored properly, they can easily go to waste.

With the intranet serving as the corporate storage unit of all business-related data, this doesn’t have to be the case. Most of today’s intranets are interactive and come with great storage capacities. This allows employees not only to store all important materials, reports, and dossiers but also to share them with others.

Therefore, all departments can access them which removes all possibilities for creating departmental silos. Also, employees can easily search through the storage and find everything they need in a matter of seconds.

Flow of Information

During a long working day, it is hard to reach all employees, especially if it’s a busy one. Too many notifications, messages, emails, and calls can overwhelm employees. In that state of mind, they can easily overlook important updates and events.

However, with the intranet and its features, employers can be sure their employees are informed on top of their work. As the platform allows employee collaboration on projects, it is impossible to miss the latest news. Employers can display and pin relevant content on the home page for everyone to see.

Equally important is the fact that employees can actively participate instead of passively receiving information. They can ask questions, offer suggestions, or share the content with other coworkers.

HR and IT Support for Employees

Like employees in other departments, those working in HR and IT are always swamped with emails, calls, requests, and work in general. It makes it difficult for them to timely answer all questions and provides the necessary assistance. In this case, they easily become anxious, frustrated, and stressed.

Intranet, as an employee engagement software, can help the organization to avert this common trap. HR and IT departments can predict problems employees might face in the workplace regarding relationships, management, or technology. Using this knowledge and predictions, they can create tutorials, FAQ sections, and other necessary materials for employees to use.

This way, they can quickly resolve any issues they might have and take some pressure off these two departments. Now, they can focus on other top priority projects and problems.

Workplace Culture

Companies can’t exist without employees and intranets bring them together. Employers can use this process and enforce a positive company culture. For example, they can design effective reward and recognition systems.

Accomplishments, big or small, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the recognition. Leaders, team members, or the management itself can use the corporate intranet to show how much they value efforts and contributions. This practice will create a culture that values and nourishes teamwork and engagement.

Some other examples are takeovers, meet the team articles, or team building activities. Employees, especially those in larger companies, can get to know their coworkers through takeovers and articles. They can share interests, recommendations, or hobbies. Such a culture shows how much the company cares about its employees and relationships among coworkers.

Also, through creative and fun content, employees can see that the workplace is much more than pure work.

Organization and Management

Every business is organized in different departments and teams. Human resources, marketing, accounting, production, etc. While each and every one of them is crucial for organizational success, they differ. To greatly contribute, they need to receive different information, tasks, and projects. There is no easier way to organize and manage these sectors than with the help of the intranet.

On this platform, employers can create separate groups or departments. This allows them to filter information and share it with only those teams whom it concerns. When messages are separated and targeted, unnecessary clutter is avoided. Therefore, it is easier to deliver the right message to the right employees. Employers can be sure employees have received the message exactly the way they want them to.

On the whole, today’s intranet is a powerful tool that helps companies reach their goals easier and faster. Apart from enhancing employee collaboration, communication, and engagement, it helps in other fields too. With the intranet, any business can in no time run like a well-oiled machine.