CONNECTIONS

An Edelman perspective on making meaningful employee

connections that deepen engagement, build trust
and accelerate business performance

March 2017

OPTIMIZE YOUR INTRANET

Tips for Creating an Intranet Employees WANT to Use

By Loren Stutts, Senior Account Executive, Employee Engagement

Lindsey Schwalb, Account Supervisor, Digital
Charlie Taffet, Account Executive, Digital

Whats the difference between having an amazing tool that informs your employees and creates working
efficiencies, or a sad, firewalled website nobody ever uses? Intranets can be a critical tool in bridging siloes and
ensuring employees receive the right information at the right time but all too often, corporate intranets tend to
be the ignored digital property, like the stereotypical middle child. Exciting collaboration tools like Workplace and
Slack get all the glory, while a neglected intranet collects dust in the corner.

The cost of an ineffective intranet isnt something to ignore; research shows that a poorly designed intranet can
cost a company with 10,000 employees an estimated $15 million per year in lost productivity. Additionally, our
2017 Trust Barometer revealed an implosion of trust, with CEO credibility bottoming out and trust in business falling
considerably; the surest way for companies to rebuild trust is from the inside out, beginning with employees, and a
sound intranet is one step in the right direction. By providing authentic, timely information and opportunities for
collaboration, intranets have immense potential to boost employee productivity but the right functionality and
information are a must.

Here are some suggestions for how best to assess, build, roll out and maintain an intranet that will better engage
employees and, ultimately, drive better business results.

Foundational Elements Sound Governance

Research, Research, Research
Just as any successful website knows its users, a good
intranet keeps your employees needs top of mind and
makes their jobs easier. But without user research,
theres no way to know for certain which features and
content are most important to your organization. From
initial ideation through ongoing maintenance and
evolution, usability testing and feedback should inform
your intranets features, functionality and content.
Who owns the intranet? Its a valid question one that
many companies struggle to answer. Management of
intranet platforms can be complex and unclear, and it
takes a village to keep it on track. Its not uncommon
for companies to throw the responsibility of building
and maintaining an intranet over the wall to IT
without clear purpose or objectives, resulting in a
technology solution that rarely satisfies employees or
fulfills long-term business objectives.

Take a look at the data you have on your current
intranet, whether its anecdotal feedback or
quantitative metrics. If employees arent getting the
information they need, a site reorganization or
relaunch may be in order. Regardless of what state
your intranet finds itself in today, be sure that the path
forward is grounded in research and insights.
Put governance and standards in place to maintain
your intranet with a clearly defined purpose and
ensure your cross-functional team of owners are
focused on the right objectives with a clear
understanding of what success looks like.

2017 Edelman
Content Strategy
A compelling content strategy is a must-have, as it
ensures all content you create and curate aligns with
your overall business strategy. Consider where the
intranet fits within your digital ecosystem. This will help
clearly define where specific content should live (e.g.,
on an intranet or a collaboration channel) and how
best to cross-pollinate content across channels to
ensure it receives the most impactful engagement with
your employees.
Take the time to develop clear criteria that will help
you easily determine whether content is fit for
publication, and be sure to have clearly outlined
processes for both content planning (editorial/content
calendars) and content development (production
calendars). Dont be shy about sharing your strategy
far and wide with potential content submitters the
more they know on the front end, the less rework youll
do on the back end when its time to publish. And
when it comes to sharing info, variety matters; stock the
pipeline with interesting content, beyond long-form
articles, in a variety of formats to test and learn what
content works best for your employees.
Design Basics
Clean Design
In the age of easy-to-use tools, apps and social
networks at your employee's fingertips 24/7, users have
come to expect online experiences at work that mirror
those in their personal lives. Visual design should be
clean and straightforward in support of an intuitive user
experience but that doesnt mean things have to be
boring! Incorporate images, gifs, videos and in-line files
while utilizing a simple design with ample white space
to present an engaging and inviting user interface.
Search Capable
Your intranet will likely serve as a vast document and
resource repository. Creating a powerful and effective
search driven by resource descriptions, categories
and tags is the most useful tool for your intranet users
to overcome a potentially overwhelming trove of
information.
Mobile Friendly
The future is mobile, so wherever your employee goes,
your intranet goes. Sites designed with responsive grid-
based frameworks will resize to fit any screen.
Integrating your intranet with cloud services
particularly those with a secure-but-simple mobile sign-
on process will empower your employees to access
and utilize the full potential of your intranet on-the-go.
2017 Edelman. For more information, contact us at employeeengagement@edelman.com.
Making It Stick
Driving Usage
Driving employee adoption of your intranet is an
ongoing effort last weeks frequent visitors could
disengage completely next week if they arent
prompted to visit. Linking to your intranet content in
everyday employee communications beyond launch
can be an effective way to re-recruit users and
continually drive traffic to your site.
Constant Evolution
Your intranet is the digital manifestation of your
organization, so as employees needs change, its
essential that your intranet does, too. Dedicate
resources to compiling user feedback and tracking
trends and patterns in both tool usage and content
preferences to continually refine and inform your
content strategy.
Two-Way Engagement
Your intranet will reach peak effectiveness if you
elevate the employee voice by offering opportunities
to connect and collaborate through two-way
dialogue. The Trust Barometer indicates that the
demand for discourse is just as much an expectation
inside organizations as it is externally employees want
to be heard. Open forums, blogs, messaging,
comment sections and interactive polls or quizzes can
engage your employees in more meaningful ways.
Above all, keep in mind that theres no one-size-fits-all
approach for optimizing your intranet, and integration
is key. Marry your business objectives with (research-
identified) employee tools to make your intranet a one-
stop-shop that provides access to key business
processes in a central location. This will allow you to
enhance productivity and drive business results.
About Us
Edelman Employee Engagement helps
organizations accelerate business performance,
delivered by highly engaged and trusted
employees. Our global network of employee
engagement specialists develop engagement
strategy; deploy the tools and processes to deliver
it; create the multimedia channels and content
that support it; and design the insight mechanisms
to measure it.
For more information, visit us at ee.edelman.com,
follow us on Twitter at @EdelmanEE or email us at
employeeengagement@edelman.com.