Time for an intranet review and refresh?

Over the last year, intranets have really demonstrated their potential to fulfil a unique role in the digital workplace that’s hard for any other tool or technology to match. With large chunks of the workforce based at home, organisations have relied on their intranets even more than usual to be the credible source of news and information.

For many, the intranet has a vital role as the only tool that provides a visible touchpoint for the organisation’s brand, values and culture in the digital landscape. At a time when it’s difficult for organisations to arrange physical events to recognise the hard work of employees, intranets have been important in thanking colleagues for a job well done and bolstering employee engagement with a sense of community and belonging.

As an intranet communications practitioner, you’re fully aware of this potential and always want the intranet to do more for the organisation and your colleagues, even as it struggles to meet some expectations. Maybe you’d like a new intranet platform to make a fresh start but can’t get the backing or budget right now. Or maybe you are happy with technology and just need some ideas to reinvigorate your intranet for the year ahead.

Audit your intranet employee experience

A good place to start is to take stock of what you have, and listen to what your colleagues say about the intranet – a kind of intranet experience audit. For example:

• Are people complaining about search not finding what they need?
• Do people trust information on the intranet?
• Does the intranet help them complete common tasks quickly?
• Are the same stock images being used repeatedly and out of context?

From here you can work with your colleagues and stakeholders to decide what improvements would bring the biggest benefits and come up with an action plan of things to fix and change. Here are some ideas you can do on your current intranet platform to make things better for your colleagues:

• Improve the usability of content though having a good structure and using lists and bullets to break up the page and increase scanability
• Improve content quality and search results by removing duplicated and out of date information
• Make sure that the most important information is easy for employees to find
• Broaden content contributions and variety
• Look at opportunities to refresh the design.

A fresh pair of eyes

If that sounds good but you’re wondering where you are going to find the time to work out what needs fixing and how, ClearBox can help with our ‘25 ways to improve your intranet’ service.

This fixed-price service will give you practical and actionable recommendations for improvements that you can make on your current intranet without investing in new software and technology.

Give us a week and in that time, we will review your intranet using our tried and tested best practice framework and provide you with 25 recommendations for improvement set out as a year-long action plan.