Digital Workplace Lessons from Intranet Italia Day
At this year’s Intranet Italia Day in Milan, over 100 digital workplace and internal comms professionals gathered to share what’s happening inside modern organisations. ClearBox’s Sam Marshall joined a wide-ranging programme covering intranet trends, employee experience platforms, and the evolving role of AI.
Rather than hype or big reveals, the event offered something more valuable, grounded insights into what’s working – and where many intranets still fall short. This write-up distils the key takeaways for internal comms teams looking to make progress in 2025 and beyond.
Intranet maturity – stuck or evolving?
Host Giacomo Mason opened Intranet Italia Day by exploring the question of intranet maturity – not as a technology issue, but as a question of purpose, structure, and user value, asking “Have intranets plateaued?”
Sébastien Chatel of Arctus had data in response! He shared findings from the excellent Intranet Observatory study, showing that info-comm intranets – focused mainly on top-down communication – still dominate. However, these are also the least satisfying for users. By contrast, intranets with a “digital workplace” scope, supporting day-to-day work, see much higher satisfaction levels.
ClearBox Consulting’s Sam Marshall
Our own Sam Marshall described Four Trends for Intranet and EX Platforms in 2025, drawing from our current buyer’s guide. Far from a plateau, we’re seeing a great deal of innovation from vendors. The four trends are:
- A focus on employee experience – making it easier for employees to navigate self-service.
- Support for frontline workers – respecting that they have unique demands due to work environment, time and shift constraints.
- More features for internal communications – helping communicators to co-ordinate across a community of publishers and a matrix of channels.
- Embedding of AI tools – not just content generation but help with intranet governance too.
DWXS founder, Sharon O’Dea
In a separate session, Sharon O’Dea offered a design perspective, arguing that trustworthy content is still the cornerstone of a good intranet – and still a challenge. She also pithily argued that visual clutter on the homepage is often a symptom of strategic confusion. “A cluttered homepage is a cry for help,” she said – pointing to the need for clearer ownership and editorial discipline.
Adding another angle, Marko Cincar spoke about intranets in SMEs. He argued that their agility gives them an edge, and that larger organisations could learn from the way smaller deployments stay focused and adaptable.
AI in practice – grounded, not grandiose
Artificial intelligence featured in several talks – rather than sweeping predictions, speakers shared pragmatic examples of how AI is being tested, deployed, or deliberately avoided.
Sharon O’Dea described a recent intranet project where her team chose not to use generative AI, despite pressure to produce content quickly. The reason? GenAI tools struggled to reproduce the organisation’s house style, proving more of a burden than a benefit.
Stefano Besana of Deloitte
Stefano Besana of Deloitte presented evidence that while AI can improve perceptions of team performance, it may also limit creativity by narrowing idea diversity. He also highlighted that employees with lower performance levels report the greatest satisfaction from AI use – raising questions about how AI shapes team dynamics.
From EY, Greg Nemeth introduced a practical example – a tool that allows users to search for individual PowerPoint slides across past presentations – directly within PowerPoint. A focused solution to a common productivity barrier.
FATER’s OperA assistant
Meanwhile, FATER’s Fabio Pistilli and Carmela Scaffidi shared their OperA assistant – an AI tool that helps line operators troubleshoot issues using past documentation. The assistant breaks down large sets of technical data into step-by-step diagnosis. This seemed a particularly powerful and practical application of an AI agent, and one they hope can be replicated across their many other production lines.
Final reflections – a clear-eyed view of progress
Intranet Italia Day didn’t promise radical reinvention – and that’s what made it valuable. The sessions surfaced a clear picture of where intranets and digital workplaces stand in 2025 – moving forward, but with many challenges to address. From the persistence of low-impact content models to thoughtful experiments with AI, the day offered honest insights from people doing the work.
For internal comms teams, the message is a useful one – real progress is less about chasing trends and more about clarity, context, and care – in content, in design, and in the way we use technology to support people, not distract them.
Rather than see intranets as hitting a plateau, we should be reassured that the practice of managing intranets has matured to the point where good practice is widely understood, allowing people to focus on a more wholistic set of organisational needs.
Many thanks to Giacomo Mason and Elisabetta Armentano of intranetmanagement.it for putting together an excellent event and inviting ClearBox to participate.
