How to Choose the Best Employee Intranet for Your Organization

 Whether you're launching a new intranet or upgrading an outdated one, we’ll help you understand what makes the best employee intranet work—and how to choose a solution that fits your organization’s needs.

An employee intranet CMS (content management system) is the engine behind a modern intranet. It enables your teams to create, manage, and deliver internal content—ranging from leadership updates and onboarding materials to collaboration tools and knowledge hubs.

Unlike a public-facing CMS, an intranet CMS is built specifically for internal communication and productivity. It empowers teams outside of IT—like HR, Communications, and line managers—to publish content quickly and confidently, reaching the right employees with the right information at the right time.

A strong CMS makes your employee intranet an everyday destination that supports employees in their roles—no matter where they work.

Selecting the best employee intranet isn’t just a technology decision. It’s a strategic investment in your workplace culture and communication. 

Here’s why the choice matters:

Content governance: Without proper tools, intranet content becomes cluttered and outdated. A quality CMS supports workflows, ownership, version control, and review schedules to keep your intranet clean and credible.

User adoption: If the CMS is hard to use, your teams won’t publish—and employees won’t engage. A good CMS makes it easy to create content and deliver it in personalized, relevant ways.

Scalability: As your company grows or reorganizes, your intranet should evolve with it. The best CMS allows you to scale content, users, and structure without starting from scratch.

Employee experience: A great intranet provides timely, personalized, and useful content. That leads to a more connected, informed, and productive workforce.

If you’re wondering how to choose the best employee intranet, start by focusing on how well a solution supports these outcomes.

Learn more about how to select the right intranet for your organization.

Not all content management systems are created equal—especially when it comes to internal communication and employee needs. Below are the most important features to look for in an employee intranet CMS that’s built for long-term success.

Your intranet CMS should empower communicators, HR teams, and other non-technical users to create content easily—without relying on IT. Look for drag-and-drop builders, WYSIWYG editors, reusable templates, and content preview tools. These make content creation intuitive and reduce bottlenecks.

Learn more: Check out how Omnia deliver a customized publishing experience. 

Image: Publsihing Experience.

Look for built-in review workflows, role-based permissions, and lifecycle management tools. These ensure your employee intranet stays relevant and clutter-free.

Learn more about Omnia's capabilities regarding content governance.

Image: Configuring information policies.

To boost engagement, content must be relevant. Choose a CMS that allows targeting by role, department, or location and supports personalized dashboards and notifications.

Image: Personalized notifications and content delivery.

Your intranet CMS should act as a digital workplace hub—not a standalone silo. Look for integrations with Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams, HR systems, CRMs, and third-party apps to bring everything employees need into one place. Your intranet should be a digital hub, not a standalone system. 

Learn more: Check this page for an overview of M365 integration in Omnia.

Employees are mobile, and your intranet should be too. Look for responsive design, push notifications, Teams publishing, and content optimized for mobile apps to ensure information reaches everyone, everywhere.

Finding content quickly is essential. Choose a CMS that supports smart metadata tagging, search refiners, promoted results, and even AI-powered or semantic search to make sure employees find what they need fast.

Image: AI-powered semantic search.

A good CMS doesn’t just help you publish—it helps you improve. Built-in analytics and reporting can show you what content is performing, what users are searching for, and where engagement can be improved.

Image: Dashboard in the Governance hub.

Whether you’re choosing a new platform or reassessing your current one, here are key questions to guide your evaluation:

✔ Publishing Experience: Does the employee intranet CMS allow for several roles in the publishing process?How to manage layouts, properties, approval workflows, review workflows, and archiving?Overall, how can our governance concept be implemented across the platform.

✔ Personalized Content Delivery: How does the intranet platform support personalization and multi-channel publishing. Describe the process for surfacing targeted content on specific pages or in decided channels.

✔ Scalability: How does the employee intranet platform support our information architecture? How to create a sustainable user experience when content grows, when properties and navigation structures change, and when the organization grows or is reorganized. 

✔ Integrations: Describe integrations with Microsoft 365 and what M365 apps the product is integrated with out of box? What business system connectors are available and how does the product support further integrations or customizations? 

✔ Analytics: What aspects of usage, reach, user interaction, user journeys, and more are covered by standard reports and dashboards? What reports are available for search, broken links, under-used content, access denied, and more? 

✔ Mobile and Frontline Support: How are frontline workers included in the intranet? What licenses and/or account management is needed for frontline workers? Can the mobile app be instantiated with different profiles/setups for different groups? What applications can be included in the mobile app? Can the mobile app be white labeled? 

Learn more: Get an overview of mobile and frontline support in Omnia.

✔ Employee Engagement Support: How is the employee lifecycle supported, from onboarding and skills development, via knowledge sharing and social connections, to recognition and understanding employee voice? 

Pro tip: Include both content creators and end-users early in the process—when listing requirements and setting up the solution. Their feedback helps ensure your employee intranet CMS supports real-world needs, workflows, and habits that might not show up in a technical feature list.

The right CMS isn’t just about features—it’s about what you can do with them. Here are a few ways an employee intranet CMS can support real business needs:

Onboarding hubs: With pre-built templates, structured task lists, and embedded training, new hires get up to speed faster.

Personalized start pages: Role-based dashboards show relevant content, tools, and links tailored to each employee.

Knowledge-sharing communities: Employees can post questions, share insights, and document best practices through blogs, forums, and wikis. Learn more about knowledge sharing communities in Omnia.

Multilingual content management: Global teams can manage translations and publish content in multiple languages, ensuring everyone stays informed.

Visualize processes: Define and publish business process, phases and activities along with descriptions, documents, tools, tasks and more to implement best practices and a recommended way of working. Learn more about process management in Omnia.

Corporate Design: Implement corporate design guidelines and make sure that you can update it (without the need for programming skills) if changes are made. Ensure that you can handle several design profiles within a solution to handle several brands and subsidiaries. 

Customized Collaboration: Your next intranet should be able to handle customized templates for collaboration within projects, networks, departments, and more. 

An employee intranet CMS isn’t just a back-end system—it’s the engine that powers your digital employee experience. A scalable, flexible CMS helps you deliver consistent communication, foster engagement, and support daily work at scale.

When chosen wisely, your intranet CMS becomes a strategic asset that evolves with your organization and helps your employees thrive.

Ready to Explore a Better Intranet CMS? If you're building or upgrading your intranet, the CMS is one of the most critical decisions you’ll make. Omnia offers an employee intranet CMS designed to balance governance, usability, and flexibility—making it easier to create relevant content and deliver real value across your organization.

Book a personalized demo to see how Omnia supports your intranet goals. Or get in touch to talk to our team about your requirements.