Insights from Omnia Conference 2025
ClearBox joined intranet and digital workplace professionals at this year’s Omnia Conference to explore how organisations are reshaping their intranets in response to changing employee expectations, new technology, and the growing need for clearer strategy and governance. Across the day, the discussions provided a sharp view of what effective intranets require now – and what teams should be prioritising next. Below, we’ve summarised the key themes and lessons that stood out.
The future of intranets – from insights to impact
As keynote speaker at Omnia Conference, ClearBox’s Suzie Robinson led a session on “The future of intranets – from insights to impact”. She shared an overview of trends in the intranet product market, drawing on her 17+ years’ experience in intranets and internal communications. Her talk explored how the intranet landscape has shifted over time – from early portal models to today’s focus on employee experience, AI-driven search, and rising expectations from frontline workers – while also reflecting on the recurring “big trends” that never quite materialised or have resurfaced repeatedly in different forms.
Suzie emphasised that organisations shouldn’t chase every new feature or hype cycle. Instead, her central message was the importance of creating and maintaining a clear intranet strategy, and adopting technology because it genuinely fits organisational needs, not just because it happens to be fashionable.
This foundation set the stage for the real-world examples that followed, where organisations demonstrated how they are defining success, setting long-term goals, and putting structure and governance around their intranet work.
Defining success and building momentum – lessons from Swegon
Marie Svensson (Swegon) and Jessica Andersson (Omnia) outlined how Swegon reshaped its intranet by taking a clear, staged approach. They began by defining what success looks like, supported by a vision statement that recognises the organisation’s pace of change and the need for a flexible, helpful intranet that supports daily work and inclusion.
They then set long-term goals based on real employee needs. Three top-level aims – organisational alignment, business value, and culture – gave structure to more detailed objectives.
Finally, they created an action plan with defined activities, responsibilities, and measurements. By benchmarking their starting point and reviewing progress regularly, Swegon has moved from an organically grown intranet to one that is actively guided and already showing improved quality.
Re-energising an established intranet – the Køge Municipality approach
Lotte Holle Schneider and Sacha Weile Junget shared Køge Municipality’s journey from an outdated, unsupported intranet to a single, targeted platform on Omnia. After discovering multiple local intranets with overlapping content, they brought employees and editors into the early planning through interviews and workshops, later adapting the process for remote delivery during Covid.
Although the new intranet has served them well for five years, they recognised that limited ongoing maintenance had slowed its development. Their renewed focus includes improving engagement, strengthening editor support, enhancing search and navigation, and making decisions based on fresh employee research – particularly important given the challenges frontline workers face with device access.
To move forward, they plan to work in sprints, use analytics to guide improvements, and introduce AI to help editors manage content more efficiently. It’s a pragmatic approach aimed at revitalising an intranet that still performs well but now needs structured governance and continued investment to meet future needs.
Why intranets succeed – and fail
Christian Heraty (GEODESIC) outlined why intranets often fall short and the essentials for getting them right. Despite the growth of digital tools, employees still expect a clear starting point – the intranet – even if they move elsewhere to complete tasks. Changing workforce dynamics, including more frontline staff and broader comms and HR responsibilities, are reshaping what that starting point must deliver.
He highlighted the most common pitfalls: relying too much on technology, weak governance, and poor content management that quickly undermines trust. Christian also noted that launching with too much creates confusion, while starting small and improving over time leads to better results.
His guidance centred on prioritising adoption over superficial engagement and focusing on six fundamentals: employee experience, governance, stakeholder alignment, continuous improvement, meaningful metrics, and avoiding basic usability issues.
How AI and semantic search are reshaping intranets
Omnia, CPO, Jörgen Bjerkesjö explained how intranet search is shifting from keywords to semantic understanding. Traditional search depends on employees knowing the right terms and puts pressure on editors to tag content accurately.
Semantic search lets people ask natural-language questions and uses AI to surface the most relevant information, supported by source links for clarity. Content is broken into smaller meaning-based fragments, making answers more precise and reducing long results lists.
Omnia recommends starting with broad, formal content such as organisational comms, and noted that clear, Q&A-style content helps semantic models work effectively. As this develops, semantic search will also help identify conflicting information – an area still evolving in available analytics.
The path forward
The sessions at Omnia Conference showed how intranets are evolving through clearer strategy, stronger governance, and emerging capabilities such as AI-driven search. Across case studies and expert insights, a common theme emerged – successful intranets are intentional. They are guided by clear goals, shaped by real employee needs, and maintained through steady, informed improvement.
For organisations looking ahead, the priority is to turn these insights into action – building intranets that genuinely support work, adapt to change, and provide a reliable starting point for every employee.
