Community and engagement features in intranets and EXPs

In our latest Intranets and Employee Experience Platforms report we evaluated leading digital products against eight scenarios. The third of these real-world business scenarios is ‘community and engagement’. 

What we explored 

To really engage employees, we need to give them a voice. We wanted to see how platforms facilitated dialogue with employees, the gathering of feedback, and the ability to take a ‘temperature check’. Some of the best internal content can come from people sharing thoughts and generating ideas together, so we also looked at how internal communities were cultivated. This scenario explores: 

• How people could react to or interact with content 
• What social collaboration or communities of practice features were available 
• How thoughts and opinions could be gathered 
• What other ‘people’ oriented features were included. 

Note that we don’t dictate a long list of specific features, but instead consider common employee needs. We then ask the vendors to demonstrate how they would address the scenario in whatever way they see as the best approach.  

What we found

This scenario offers vendors an opportunity to expand their product’s usefulness within an organisation, potentially removing the need (and associated complexity and expense) for additional engagement products. The areas we explore also bring heart and personality into these platforms, helping to present company culture to employees and making them tools people want to use. For example, a small but significant feature that employees frequently look for is a variety of reaction types to content, mirroring their experiences on external social media platforms. Gone are the days where a simple ‘like’ was enough, people now want to express their opinions but without having to add comments. This is an area where many platforms don’t meet social-media-led expectations and we hope to see it develop over time. 

A small number of vendors choose to rely on Microsoft applications to deliver community features, such as Viva Engage for social spaces or Forms for surveys. The summary of how SharePoint and Viva fared in this scenario is below, which helps add context. Understandably, the vendors that typically choose this approach are SharePoint intranet in-a-box products, although others will also optionally integrate with Microsoft applications.  

Most products offer some form of native community or social features; this might be dedicated spaces such as ‘Hubs’ in Oak Engage or social elements that can be added where relevant across the intranet, such as Unily’s ‘Channels’. Overall, we were generally impressed with the community features that were on offer. 

There are some good surveying tools across the products too, although the comprehensiveness of these does vary. This means some products, such as Workvivo, offer alternatives that are strong enough to replace dedicated tools like SurveyMonkey, while others provide simple approaches that would be helpful for quick surveying rather than an annual employee survey, for example. 

For organisations looking for ‘people-focused’ tools, there’s a real mixed picture in the industry, where some vendors claim to have tools but in fact merely offer content containers. For example, providing content containers for onboarding new employees is common but tools to progress people through these early days (to do lists, workflows associated with activities etc.) is unusual.  

Some vendors do offer excellent features that will improve employee engagement, however. For example, dedicated onboarding tools like the one found in Omnia will provide an excellent initial impression for new employees. Peer-to-peer recognition is becoming a more common tool now, but some products do it particularly well – Workvivo, for example, tie praise into company values to tackle two engagement areas at once. Events (including livestreaming), micro-learning, gamification and badges, wellbeing features, and company awards support are all examples we’ve seen in different products. 

How SharePoint and Viva fared in this scenario 

Microsoft’s primary tool for community and social engagement is Viva Engage (formerly Yammer), although the social side of SharePoint is weaker than rival platforms. Engage provides a good option for communities of practice and more recently for individual creators via the ‘Storyline’ feature. Engage activity can be made more visible with SharePoint web parts that allow flexible embedding of groups, topics or even one person’s posts into a page. ‘Leaders’ are particularly well supported and there are some interesting AI developments coming soon using Copilot. There are polls and more sophisticated surveys are supported via Forms. Microsoft’s play for the ‘Wellbeing’ dimension is Viva Insights, which includes a free element for employees while organisations may have to pay for additional features. 

Scores

Overall, this is how the products scored in this scenario: