THE ULTIMATE GUIDE

Company intranet: 20 ideas to grow it in 2024

 

In this article, we have gathered everything you need to know to create your intranet. We will show you practical intranet examples of how to use it to provide services to employees, offer each user a customizable space, and create gamification experiences to increase engagement in your company's initiatives.

Additionally, at the end of the article, you can download our free guide with over 100 ideas and use cases that you can use as a starting point for your intranet site.

What is a company intranet?

A company intranet is a corporate web portal that is only available to employees of your company.

It's usually the first page you open when you get to work, and it's the gateway to the company's digital workspace where you can find information, tools, and services that will help you with your daily tasks.

For example, on the company intranet you can find:

• updated communications and news.
• work material.
• employee services, such as pay slips and bookings.
• tools for everyday life (room bookings, help desk, etc.).
• training areas.
• information on welfare and employee conventions.
• shared workspaces for project management.
• areas for conversation and knowledge exchange.
• ideas generation initiatives.
• and much more...

Companies that provide this information and services digitally use the intranet to centralize information for all employees in a single location, allowing access from the office, home, or on the go.

The company can provide an intranet to increase employee engagement and participation and make those who work for the company aware of and involved in the business plan, thereby increasing the productivity of many internal business processes.

In this article, we'll show you how to use a company intranet, why it's an essential tool for your daily work, and what it can do for your company.

 

Company intranet: why?

1 - Digitization is becoming more prevalent.

Nowadays, company digitization is an unstoppable race that businesses can no longer avoid if they want to stay competitive.

Although this may appear to many as a discouraging situation, it serves as a springboard for achieving the growth every business wants, regardless of sector or size.

Growth, on the other hand, is only possible and sustainable if the key business processes in place:

• have been standardized.
• are easily accessible to all.
• are always available.

Simply put, a company can truly grow if its processes have been adequately digitized, allowing information to flow cross-cuttingly and collaboratively among the people who require it in their daily work.

Imagine an employee who, once they have turned on their computer, can easily access communications, business services, and their workspace regardless of where they are and collaborate on projects with all their colleagues in real time.

A company that invests in and provides collaborative tools to simplify corporate communication receives better performance from its employees, thus reducing the amount of time spent searching for information within the company, completing internal processes via mail, or printing sheets of paper.

According to IDC's white paper, organizations lose nearly $2.5 million per year due to employees' inability to locate and retrieve critical information.

2 - Giving voice to people

Who better than people who work in the company every day to know what makes things better or worse in the workplace?

Giving these people the opportunity to share their knowledge, interact with each other to improve one another, and join forces allows the company to improve productivity and results.

Giving voice to those who work in the company every day and listening allows us to solve problems, avoid unhappy people and lose them, better understand our customers' needs, and choose which service or product to launch ahead of the competition.

In fact, within the corporate intranet, the employee must be considered a participant who can actively contribute across the entire perimeter rather than merely a passive user of company information.

Any company can seize this opportunity by using all the digital collaboration tools currently available. Tools that can be activated with a few clicks and don't require technical knowledge are designed to bring people from the same organization together.

A corporate intranet is a private group of people from the same industry who work in the same field and understand what they do, which greatly benefits a company.

 

Intranet site: How to create a company intranet for your employees

 

When creating an employee intranet portal, remember that it will be used by all company employees and provide them with the tools they need to do their jobs in a single location.

Before deciding which platform to use, keep in mind that the intranet is designed to support employees, who are any company's actual assets, so they must be involved in the analysis phase.

As we stated previously, only those who work in the company daily understand exactly what they need to work and collaborate with their colleagues.

The intranet must be designed with the worker in mind, be simple to use, and include all features that will make work easier and improve business processes.

Questionnaires are an excellent way to collect employee feedback during the design phase. Meetings, workshops, and a variety of other initiatives can be organized. Still, a questionnaire allows you to collect feedback from as many people as possible, ensuring that the entire company's needs are met.

You can learn how your coworkers communicate collaborate, the company's productivity, which processes should be changed, and how they search for information useful to their jobs by conducting a survey.

Intranet.ai has created a simple questionnaire that you can send to your coworkers to get their feedback during the intranet's analysis and design stages. The questions provide a basic structure for your survey; all you need to do now is add a few more pieces to contextualize the questions for your specific business situation.

What intranet software should you use?

When it comes to choosing the best software to create an employee intranet portal, many factors must be considered, making it nearly impossible to determine which is the best software.

If you consult a software vendor or system integrator, they will advise you to either buy the seller's product or use a solution that allows the supplier to maximize their profit based on their existing skills. We believe it is more useful to describe the considerations intranet.ai made in implementing our intranet to help you determine which solution best suits your needs.

An ecosystem as standard as possible

With Microsoft 365, Microsoft has positioned itself as the undisputed leader in collaborative business solutions and has become a cross-cutting tool for most businesses.

"Microsoft is again recognized as a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Content Services Platforms Magic Quadrant Report, with over 200 million users relying on SharePoint."

To understand why SharePoint is the ideal tool for building the corporate intranet, read our article on SharePoint Online and its key features.

Companies that use Microsoft 365 gain access to all the perfectly integrated applications, single management of permissions, and tools that can collaborate with other companies in a single ecosystem. In this scenario, intranet.ai is a single access point for all employees, with native integration with all Microsoft tools.

Up to date

All of Microsoft's monthly features are immediately tested and integrated into intranet.ai, ensuring that the added value of your Microsoft 365 subscription is realized as soon as possible within the intranet.

No maintenance costs

Intranet.ai is available as a SaaS subscription, similar to Microsoft 365. As a result, there are no additional costs associated with your digital workplace, which is always online and operational.

Your information is stored in your tenant

Your company's information is stored in your Microsoft subscription and will remain there indefinitely. What exactly does this imply? Intranet.ai was built to keep all your business data and documents within your Microsoft account, ensuring maximum privacy.

Other software alternatives

We also wrote an interesting article about CMS features that software of this kind should have and some alternatives in case your company cannot adopt the Microsoft 365 solution.

 

20 examples of intranet uses for your business

Let's look at the 20 ideas every corporate intranet could use to improve its digital employee experience, which are divided into three categories:

• services to the employee
• the employee’s area
• how to increase involvement

Also, if you want to read more ideas on improving your intranet, you can download the pdf with all our 100+ ideas for your intranet at the bottom of the article.

Examples of intranet to provide services to employees

In this first chapter, we will explore some examples of services that can be offered to employees through the company's intranet.

• Meeting room booking
• Corporate vehicle booking
• Leave requests
• Quick leave approval and counting
• Pay slips
• Job postings

Meeting room booking

Do you need a room in which to hold your meetings?
Within the intranet portal, you can book an appointment by specifying the day and time that interests you, inviting people, and sending them an appointment according to your schedule.

As a result, your meetings can take place whenever and wherever you want without a hitch.

 

Reservations for general company spaces

Through the company intranet, it is also possible to reserve a parking lot, a desk, or other environments where workstations are not fixed.

As a result, you can plan your movements within the company ahead of time.

When users first enter the employee portal intranet during the day, you can automatically suggest their most recent choices, such as the most recent meeting room where they had a meeting or the desk that they booked for most of the month.

The platform will display when a specific room, desk, or resource is available for immediate booking.

Requests for holidays, permits, sick leaves

You can use the corporate intranet for vacations, permits, and sick leaves.

You can provide employees with ways to submit requests and receive approval from their bosses based on their position in the company hierarchy, thereby streamlining processes and saving time.

The intranet is the ideal platform for integration if the company already has specific external applications for these business operations.

It allows you to fill out the request form directly from the intranet site and displays the status of all previous requests.

 

Quick requests and holiday calculations

Users of the company intranet can log in to their personal area, where they can request vacations and see how many hours and days are left over in their annual budget.

When a manager accesses the company intranet, they can access a widget for holiday approval and receive real-time notifications of employee requests.

It should be possible to add a related reason if the request is denied.

Online pay slips

You can give employees access to their pay slips via the company intranet, along with all related history dating back to their first day on the job.

If you want to offer your employees this kind of experience, remember to keep security in mind.

You can, for example, grant access to pay slips only after the user has re-entered their credentials or entered a temporary access code via email or telephone.

This will prevent unauthorized access to confidential company data.

Daily menu

If your company has a canteen, you can give employees access to the daily menu via intranet software even before they go to lunch. As a result, you can plan what you'll eat and optimize your daily schedule.

You can also order food to be delivered. This is a fantastic time-saver.

This is a good option even if there isn't a canteen. You can indeed post the restaurant's menu near the company or schedule a lunch reservation to avoid long lines during peak hours.

Company car booking

If your company has a service that makes cars available for employee travel, the company intranet can help with the sharing mechanism.

You can book a car by using a booking form, which may be preceded by an approval flow if necessary.

Job posting

The intranet site can post all open job positions within the company.

This is especially useful in large companies because it allows you to check for internal availability before looking for new candidates outside the company.

Every employee has a list of alternative positions they'd like to apply for, application deadlines and the new role's requirements, all of which are just a click away.

 

As a result, HR may have access to an application management area where they can look at the profiles of colleagues who have decided to apply for specific open positions.

Human resources can also have direct access to all employees' areas, allowing them to evaluate the application through a digital resume that colleagues keep up to date.

"My Profile" area

In this section, the user can find all the information concerning them that the company has knowledge of, such as:

• Date of recruitment
• Position
• Department to which they belong

Within the framework of a digital resume, the user can input information such as their skills, interests, previous experiences, and much more, in order to introduce themselves to their colleagues.

If the user, as the owner of the data, expressly shares this information, it can be very useful for building a network and introducing oneself within the company.

This leads to the creation of a true database of employee profiles within the company, which will be particularly useful for Human Resources to better understand colleagues and facilitate the search for internal skills.

This will also allow for quick access to employee-centered services, such as pay slips, the list of training courses, vacation and leave requests, goals, etc.

Form for updating your data

Whenever an employee's personal information changes, a form can be made available on the company intranet for them to fill out. The company will then update and receive the information.

Having a direct channel between the employee and human resources is extremely useful during the employee's journey in the company when the person changes residence, banking information, marital status, or the list of dependants.

Address book and My Profile

If an employee wishes to be better known and, consequently, to know others better, they can choose to include personal information in the directory of the intranet portal, in addition to the data to which the company has access and which all colleagues can view by clicking on the profile in the company's intranet address book.

These pieces of information are obtained from the "My Profile" section and can be updated at any time by the individual concerned.

Corporate training

The employee can view all the training courses they have completed and scheduled for future periods in the user's personal area.

Even if the company already has an external LMS platform, it can be integrated with the intranet to give employees exclusive access to its content and capabilities.

Request for new company training

The employee could request new training courses from human resources or their direct manager on the company intranet.

The company could offer various options or allow employees to choose their own training based on their interests.

Training portal

The company intranet can serve as a single point of access to all the company's information and services and its investment in employee training.

It would display all past and upcoming webinars as if it were a real archive. All "on-demand" and "live" content is available.

This single area of the intranet contains all training activities that are strictly e-learning in nature, such as quizzes, videos, and documentation.

Each training course can be evaluated based on end-user feedback, and training adoption can be easily monitored by those in charge of training in the company.

Engaging intranet training

Intranet-based training can be made more engaging.

Employee demand for training content, qualification achievement, training courses, and any feedback that improves training services can be rewarded and stimulated by the company by establishing a point system for achieving objectives such as the awarding of a virtual badge.

Any such success can be viewed in the user's My Profile area or made public in the company section.

 

Examples of intranet for creating gamification experiences

With the concept of "Gamification," in this third chapter, we want to assist you in introducing or implementing an intranet site in your company.

To do so, we propose ideas for increasing platform engagement and facilitating learning new information by incorporating concepts, scenarios, or techniques from the games.

Gamification: definition

Gamification, derived from the term "game," is a technique that uses game-like procedures and structures to achieve specific goals, in this case, in business.

This tool takes advantage of the interactivity of today's digital media and can convey various messages, resulting in a high level of active participation among stakeholders.

Gamification in the company

Consider how difficult it is to transition people from sending emails daily, which they have been accustomed to for the past 15 years, to using a conversation system like Microsoft Teams.

Consider how much easier it would be for the user to go to the intranet and find a game that explained how to use Teams in the company to solve all the problems they had with emails at work.

Consider how many users you could attract to the intranet if you decide to give people identification badges or rank users who use the new platform more frequently than others.

Consider how you can improve teamwork in the workplace by allowing people to form groups, choose their group's name, and compete to win the competition.

Through the targeted use of gamification in corporate strategy, even corporate values or vision can be conveyed indirectly but much more effectively.

"High five"

On the intranet site, public endorsements that represent positive feedback for a colleague can be shared.

As a result, imagine a section on the home page where each employee can give a virtual high five to show their appreciation for others and share their contributions to the company.

As a result, you can create a fun environment that will appeal to everyone in the company.

Inspiring ideas

The company intranet can be a great place for employees to develop new ideas.

We've used intranet contests to generate new ideas, both to identify new business services or products and to improve employee well-being and internal communication.

People were required to work in groups, which increased interaction and collaboration among coworkers and allowed them to consider how to achieve the company's goals.

When the ideas were ready, they were posted directly on the intranet, subject to approval, and everyone was given the opportunity to vote for them through likes, increased visits, and general intranet engagement.

When people saw their ideas rise to the top of the rankings and be implemented by the company, they became fully engaged.

Who better to than those who work in the company every day know how improve things?

The killer app

A "killer app" is an application that generates visits within the intranet site.

Each company intranet must have its killer app to bring as many colleagues as possible into the site and ensure that, together with the use of the specific application, these people can also:

• read company news
• be informed of specific initiatives
• learn intranet possibilities
• learn more about the contents of the company portal.

Examples of killer apps are all the employee services explained in this guide, such as pay slips, which attracts visits from employees at least once a month. This is a great chance for your business to convert an "operational" intranet visit into an "exploratory" one.

Use of surveys

Surveys are a useful tool to engage employees, thereby raising employee engagement.

On the one hand, you give people a chance to be heard, to participate in company decisions, or to give feedback on specific initiatives.

On the other hand, by publishing the results, you give everyone the opportunity to see what their colleagues think about other infrequent topics that otherwise may cause communication issues.

To keep engagement high, always do closed-question surveys to make filling them out easier and publish the results quickly.

Faq about the intranet

1. What is a company intranet?
A company intranet is a private web portal accessible only to employees. It serves as a centralized hub for information, tools, and services relevant to their daily tasks. It provides employees access to internal resources, communication channels, and collaboration tools within the organization.

2. What is an example of intranet?
An example of an intranet is a digital platform accessible only to employees of a specific company, where they can find company news, access work documents, collaborate on projects, communicate with colleagues, and perform various administrative tasks like leave requests and booking meeting rooms.

3. What do you call a company intranet?
A company intranet is often called "the intranet" within the organization. It may also be given a specific name or branding that reflects the company's identity or culture.

4. What are the benefits of intranet?
The benefits of intranet include improved communication and collaboration among employees, streamlined access to resources and information, increased productivity, enhanced employee engagement, centralized management of documents and processes, and cost savings through automation and efficiency.

5. How to use intranet?
To use an intranet, employees typically log in using the credentials provided by the company. Once logged in, they can navigate the intranet's various sections to access news, documents, tools, and services relevant to their roles. They can collaborate with colleagues, participate in discussions, complete tasks, and engage with company initiatives as the intranet platform facilitates.

6. How do I create a corporate intranet?
Creating a corporate intranet involves several steps, including defining objectives, gathering employee requirements, selecting appropriate software or platforms, designing the intranet's structure and features, customizing it to fit the company's needs, testing, and launching. It's essential to involve employees to ensure the intranet meets their needs and fosters engagement.

7. What is the difference between intranet and intranet?
There seems to be a typo in your question. If you meant to ask about the difference between "intranet" and "internet," an intranet is a private network accessible only to authorized users within an organization. In contrast, the Internet is a global network of interconnected computers accessible to the public. Intranets are used for internal communication and collaboration, while the internet provides access to external resources and services.

8. What is the value of intranet in business?
The value of an intranet in business lies in its ability to improve internal communication, enhance collaboration and productivity, streamline processes, foster employee engagement, facilitate knowledge sharing, and centralize information and resources. A well-implemented intranet can contribute to organizational efficiency, innovation, and competitiveness.

9. What do you put on a company intranet?
On a company intranet, you can put various resources and information relevant to employees, including company news and announcements, documents and files, employee directories, calendars, and event schedules, training materials, discussion forums or chat channels, HR forms and policies, project management tools, and employee engagement initiatives such as surveys or recognition programs.