You’ve gone through the entire intranet evaluation process, selected the best intranet solution to meet your company needs, learned how to use the software, and uploaded all your intranet content. You’ve spent all this time working away at a solution to help your employees build a thriving workplace and you are extremely excited about your intranet rollout.
The only problem? That one, underlying fear that every intranet manager faces….“Will employees use it?“
When implementing a new intranet solution, there are five things that you can do as an intranet manager to help ensure your employees are happy with their new intranet:
1. Keep It Simple – Less is More
Giving employees too many options overwhelms them and makes your intranet seem complicated even if it is not. To learn more about this Paradox of Choice on how more is less watch this popular TED talk from Barry Schwartz.
Consider the top tasks your employees perform on your intranet and make them quickly and easily accessible right from the intranet home page, in a single click. Find out how to make more resources accessible on your global menu navigation with the use of Mega Menus.
Design your menus to be task-based. That means, instead of saying “timekeeping”, describe this option as “Fill Out Your Timesheet” in your menu. This verbiage is more intuitive when employees are looking to perform tasks on the site.
2. Introduce Your Employees to Your New Intranet
Simply sending out an email with a link to the new intranet site will not promote a flurry of engagement. Set up a session, or multiple sessions, with small groups of employees to give them a tour of their new intranet site and show them where to go to find things. This will reduce the need for them to use the search box, as they will be more familiar with your navigation structure.
3. Push Out Site Alerts
Especially if you have never had an intranet, your employees will not be used to going to the intranet to find the information they need. Rather than pushing them onto the site, try pulling them in! You can push Site Alerts via email to your employees for new content being added to your applications. For example, any items being added to the Company News application. The email contains a link to content on the site, which will pull them into the intranet to interact with that posted content.
4. Build a Survey to Gather Feedback
Your Online Forms tool includes the ability to build out anonymous Employee Surveys to gather feedback on your intranet site. Add a link to your survey right from the intranet home page and ask employees to fill out radio buttons, checkboxes, drop-downs, and even text boxes with their feedback on how easy it is to find content on your site. Employees will be more engaged if they feel their opinion has been heard.
5. Track Employee Activity
Your intranet includes a built-in Stats & Analytics application through the top right-hand corner of the page. Once your employees have been engaged with the intranet for a month or two, use the stats utility to track which areas of the site are most popular. Is the Employee Recognition application getting more traction than you first thought? Add a direct link to this application directly on the intranet home page to ensure employees are finding it easily when they access the site.
Your Intranet Rollout
The rollout of our intranet is easily overlooked with all the planning, prepping and execution you have done to launch your new intranet. But don’t be naive, thinking “If You Build It, (They) Will Come”. This isn’t the Field of Dreams and while you may have star power, I doubt it is the likes of Kevin Costner.
In turn, take the time to carefully plan and strategize your intranet rollout for not only a successful intranet launch but also ongoing intranet success.
