Five intranet trends redefining employee experience in 2024

The intranet industry is always changing. Microsoft, the giant in the room, often leaves vendors scrambling to integrate, complement or replicate the newest features it offers. Microsoft also frequently removes and reimagines features that have previously been heavily promoted – such as the recent retirement of Viva Topics – which forces vendors to consider whether they should also retire any associated features, or keep going with their own version.

Then there are broader digital developments, such as the explosion of AI, nibbling at the edges of the industry. Some vendors choose to adopt these developments and work to introduce solutions in their platform, while others wait to see what the world of work gets hooked on before making significant strategic decisions.

I’ve noticed five trends among the best intranet products, which are now starting to drive employee experience across the whole industry.

One: Embracing artificial intelligence (AI) 

Intranet and other digital workplace technology vendors worked incredibly quickly throughout 2023 to introduce AI features to their products. These are largely effective tools that fall into four categories: 

1. Generative AI 

Over half of the products we’ve reviewed now have generative AI features for written content. The way they approach these features does vary, however, offering some or all of: 

• A natural language prompt for publishers to instruct AI to create a page of text 
• Settings for tone, length, formality – applied as part of generation and / or to guide the AI to edit text 
• Generated summaries of written text. 

A few of the features we were shown particularly stood out as being innovative (in an already innovative space!). The below example is from Oak Engage, which has an inbuilt policy template that is applied when a publisher wishes to create a new policy page. The AI then completes the template, generating a draft policy for review and editing. This is a helpful approach, although the template might feel too restrictive (and overly comprehensive) for some. 

2. Search and information finding 

AI generated ‘likely answers’, improvements with search result accuracy, chatbot / digital assistant interfaces (with integrations to other business tools) and AI-driven search analytics are among the features I’ve seen more frequently. However, very few products have introduced AI into the search experience, which is a surprise given how often ‘search’ appears high on the list of improvements employees wish to see. Granted, issues with search aren’t typically associated with the technology itself, but there is a lot of potential for AI to make real improvements here – for both end users and admins.  

3. AI support for admins 

This aspect is getting less attention, but for intranet managers I see great potential for automating routine tasks. For example, Copilot in SharePoint will soon be able to generate a SharePoint site from a prompt such as “Create an employee onboarding site featuring our company logo and using the Welcome to Contoso.pptx file.” Think of it as being a little like the ‘Designer’ feature in PowerPoint. Just like fine-tuning AI generated text, additional prompts can be used to adjust the layout, branding and so on.  

I like the concept of AI-driven analysis, to give greater depth to analytics (see further below). There’s also real scope for AI to assist with governance. Admin experiences are often considered secondarily to front-end users, yet this is where the real difference could be made where AI features do this right. It’s less alluring than generative AI tools, but I hope we will see more in this area in future. 

4. General UX enhancements 

The final area is a catch-all for other AI features, which are smaller tools that still contribute towards improving the overall user experience. Auto translation and audience targeting are good examples. As another example, MangoApps has an exciting AI audio generation tool that renders an audio version of a page without the need for publishers to record anything. This is a great accessibility feature and is a pseudo podcast feature, that will allow people to keep up to date with news without having to read something. We hope that the next step is audio translations. 

Overall, I expect to see AI features expand in number and improve in quality over the next few years, so this will be a topic I return to again.  

Two: Internal communications as a focus 

I’ve seen an evolution of these platforms over the past couple of years, where many vendors have focused on internal communications teams as core product owners or stakeholders. While internal comms has been important for a long time, we’ve seen a shift in the functionality on offer so that these platforms are addressing internal comms needs and challenges head-on. Given the importance of these platforms in organisations, I think this is sensible.  

AI has emerged to support internal comms (see above for generative AI) and some do this particularly well. For example, Sociabble has among the most advanced generative AI tools we’ve seen, where company and an individual’s context are applied by the AI to whatever it generates. This is still a fast-evolving area and we’re looking forward to seeing how it develops. 

Another area of this scenario that stands out is news flow management, such as through a calendar or Kanban board or something similar. This is still an area that’s hit-and-miss, with a lot of products relying on simple publication dates which we think is a shame. Finally, there are inconsistencies around multi-channel approaches across these products. Internal comms folk will likely have to manage multiple comms channels and having a tool that will allow them to create once then share in many places is incredibly valuable. I expect to see a good range of additional channels, but it’s not unusual for platforms to only work with one or two. While all of this has improved over recent years, there is still room to grow and for these platforms to become even greater support for internal communicators. 

Three: Analytics have improved 

I’ve seen enhancements in analytics over the past year or so, where a good number of vendors have introduced a greater range and depth of reporting. There have always been vendors with strong reporting (such as Staffbase and Firstup), but more are approaching analytics by thinking “what improvement can be made using this data” rather than simply presenting lots of numbers. 

However, this remains the area that would most benefit from improvements across the industry. I’ve been talking about it for years and vendors are listening, but it’s a slow-paced change. As mentioned above, AI in analytics would be a welcome addition. For example, with Viva Engage storylines, leaders can see a summary of popular and trending themes in employees’ posts. I’ve not seen much evidence of vendors are exploring AI in analytics, but I think this would be a greater help for intranet managers than some AI features that have already appeared. 

Four: Engagement and people-focussed features are strong 

I’ve been impressed by the engagement and people-focused features that vendors have introduced over recent years. Historically, intranets offered a place for people to collaborate but this has now largely moved to other tools like Teams. Social tools have also been around for a long time, evolving as consumer-facing social media sites have (although there is still room for improvement here). It’s in the other engagement and people-focussed tools that products are really standing out.  

For example, Unily has an excellent ‘employee journeys’ feature where information is presented to people based on a trigger date and associated workflow. This could be an onboarding date, or even a parental leave date, and provides a personalised experience while removing admin burdens from HR, comms etc. Another example is the way Workvivo presents company values, allowing communicators and employees to tag posts with appropriate values like “going the extra mile”. 

Peer-to-peer recognition features, events management, company awards management, livestreaming, and more are now more frequently inbuilt in these platforms. For those organisations with multiple tools offering these services, these platforms offer an opportunity to successfully consolidate.  

Five: Product categories are more defined 

The products we’ve reviewed have started to fall into four categories: social sites, communications platforms, modern intranets, and mobile-first products.  

Social sites and communication platforms typically focus on community content (such as mentioned in ‘engagement’ above) and / or internal communication needs (also mentioned above). Often there is a parity of experience across device types because products take an overall simpler approach to features, for example navigation doesn’t tend to have multiple menu layers. An example here is ahead, where features particularly suit a mobile environment and so the experience is strong.  

Modern intranets typically serve the needs of a classic intranet – document / policy storage and presentation, top-down communications, a good search, engagement tools, and a variety of other features that vary between products. We find that many of these products lift and shift their platform into an app environment, which can be overly comprehensive for frontline or other mobile users. Some allow admins to control what mobile audiences see and simplify the experience. Interact is a good example here, where admins have a great deal of control over both desktop and mobile environments. 

Some of these products are then reliant on SharePoint / Google / something else, or are ‘independent’ and operate without other software in the background. Understanding these categories and what approach is right for your organisation will help you choose the right solution. 

What this means for you 

Many of these technology trends are also being echoed in our work with clients, showing that vendor roadmaps are being influenced by real needs as well as by technology advances. When you next review your intranet strategy, take the opportunity to identify new business and employee requirements to see whether these new capabilities will help your organisation. If your vendor doesn’t offer these features, then it might be time to consider a new platform. Download our free review report to help you choose the best solution for your business.