Utilize your intranet to drive employee engagement

Are you ready to boost your organization's employee engagement? If so, this blog post will guide you on valuable features to use and how to get going.

Engaged employees are the lifeblood of a thriving workplace. Research from industry leaders such as Gallup, Towers Watson, and Aon Hewitt consistently highlights the positive impact of engaged employees on culture, productivity, and customer satisfaction. Download the document Driving Employee Engagement with a Modern Intranet to learn more about this.

Now, let's dive into ways to set up a successful plan to boost employee engagement, and see how the intranet can play a key part in it.

Enter the Modern Intranet: A Catalyst for Change

Picture this: a dynamic platform that serves as the nerve center of your organization, fostering collaboration, communication, and a sense of community among employees. That's the power of a modern intranet.

There are plenty of examples of how the modern intranet can support your employee engagement journey. The onboarding portal, the learning center, the people search, recognizing anniversaries and achievements are a couple of relevant suggestions. But let’s now discuss five other ways of delivering value to end-users.

1. Build trust with two-way communication
   With a modern intranet, you can say goodbye to siloed communication. Instead, employees will meet with open channels where they can share ideas, ask questions, and provide feedback in real time. Whether through chat functionalities, discussion forums, or comment sections, fostering two-way communication is key to building a culture of transparency and trust.
   
   
2. Communities connect people
   Gone are the days of disconnected departments. With dedicated spaces for sharing knowledge and driving ideation, modern intranets encourage cross-departmental collaboration. Whether it's network-specific groups or interest-based communities, creating avenues for employees to connect and collaborate is essential for fostering a sense of belonging and connection.
   
   
3. Social features drive interaction
   Building engagement can be fun. Social media-like features such as emoticons, gifs, tagging, and support for sharing content with colleagues will add a layer of interactivity to your intranet. Using elements such as badges and leaderboards will promote activity and engagement, transforming mundane tasks into opportunities for interaction.
   
   
4. Employee voice matters
   Implementing surveys, polls, and pulse checks allows you to gather insights into employee satisfaction and well-being. Feedback channels can be setup for processes and instructions, but also to collect improvement suggestion on code of conduct, campaigns or culture. Setting up a self-service portal for HR tools and personalized experiences will enhance relevance and end-user empowerment.
   
   
5. Humanize the intranet
   But to really drive engagement, you will need to mediate the organization’s culture and values. This is what will the heart and soul of your platform – and what will make employees want to come back day after day. Showcasing employee-generated content, embracing reactions and feedback, incorporating visual elements, leveraging images and videos will help boost pride and belonging among your employees.
   
   

How to get going?

Now then, let’s focus on how to get going on the journey. These are some recommendations to ensure a successful intranet implementation.

Prepare for the journey

These are the main bullets to prepare for a rewarding initiative:

• Start by listing examples of how improved engagement would show in your organization and how that would be of value for you. If you then prioritize the suggestions this will lead you towards objectives and targets for your journey.
• Then move on to how these engagement targets can be reached using a modern intranet. This will point you to capabilities needed within the solution – and this information can also be used when evaluating platforms.
• Form a year wheel with engagement driving activities, appoint roles or functions responsible for each activity, and how it should be delivered and promoted to employees.
• Establish a governance plan to ensure the quality of content, communities, tools, collaboration spaces, and more over time.
• Start an internal Champions team to help drive the adoption of the intranet and any engagement-driving features and concepts.
  
  

Establish, evaluate, and improve

You are now ready to choose a platform that matches your objectives and then start configuring the solution, including the bullets above, to generate the expected impact.

We would also like to suggest that you should decide on a way of measuring effects in the organization. A common way of doing that is to use polls, surveys, interviews, or similar to establish baseline metrics both before and after launching the solution. Maybe even try to find some indicators that can be visualized within the intranet? Such insights will indicate the solution’s effectiveness and its contribution to the organization.

And don’t forget the universal success factor: Continuous improvements! Gather feedback from end-users, improve the solution, and keep on driving adoption.

In conclusion

Now, when you have some feature examples and a fair idea of how to get going, the voyage can start.

And before go, just a friendly reminder that the intranet is not just a digital tool; but a catalyst for transforming culture, engaging employees, and driving organizational performance. By using your intranet to foster a culture of communication, collaboration, and community-building, you can unleash the full potential of employee engagement within your organization.

Good luck on the journey. If you would like help with your initiative or learn how Omnia can support your organization, please let us know.

Download the document Driving Employee Engagement with a Modern Intranet to learn more about this.