“Imitation is the sincerest [form] of flattery” – Charles Caleb Colton famously wrote in Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think Lately (1824). Given this, we decided to share some highly effective intranet examples you could, um…’ flatter’ them, by leveraging the incredible ideas and innovative ways they have been using their intranets.
Digging through our previous blog posts, there were a number of intranet examples we could have highlighted. However, through a diplomatic internal vote and impending time constraint, we have presented the eight fantastic intranet examples below. These gems are from our customers that have been leveraging their intranet in exceptional ways:
Intranet Example #1: Hickam Federal Credit Union intranet
“Hickam Connect”
Thanks to a modern design, Hickam FCU connected their employees on their new internet. Plus, with the new, easier-to-use UI that IC’s software provided, Hickam FCU has intranet admins in each department who take responsibility for uploading and maintaining forms, documents, policies, and knowledge-based content on their individual team sites. Since switching to IC, Hickam FCU’s IT and Marketing departments have been mostly hands-off with the intranet (except for their own department sites, of course!). This was a major accomplishment for Hickam FCU, and a main goal from the get-go.
Intranet Example #2: LOC Credit Union
LOC include social aspects to their intranet to increase engagement and make it a fun place for team members to visit.
Some examples of ways they dial up the fun include:
Quick Polls – Including fun polls on the homepage to survey employee opinions. These can be about anything from “Who is going to win the big game at the weekend” to “What’s your favourite Dorito flavour”!
Buy/Sell application – The Buy/Sell application lets team members exchange goods and services for cash. Think of it like your internal eBay. The application just connects team members, and no transactions take place on the platform.
Staff birthday/anniversaries – The Anniversary and Birthday widgets can be used to celebrate these milestones. Don’t worry, you can hide the birth year to retain some mystery around your employees’ ages!
Staff recognition/kudos – Depending how you want to run a staff recognition scheme this can take multiple forms. You can use the “Suggestion Box” application and corresponding widget to handle submissions and publish them or use Online Forms for submissions and a Message Box widget to update each month’s winner for example.
Get to know your team – Highlight an employee or team on a regular basis by creating a standard form they can fill out and promote their responses using the Company News application and/or Storyboard. You can include a mix of work-related and personal questions depending on your preference.
All Staff Share – You can create a specific Company News feed on your intranet where employees can share anything they like, work related or otherwise. Include some guidelines around what is and isn’t appropriate to ensure everyone’s on the same page – You can include an approval process as well if you would like to.
Intranet Example #3: OUCU Financial
OUCU decided to partner with IC to improve their internal communications by providing a centralized space where employees could communicate and easily find information relevant to their work. IC’s intranet software was also highly customizable and allowed the OUCU team to build a robust knowledge base within the platform.
IC’s intranet software includes a statistics feature that helps organizations measure all kinds of metrics related to their intranet usage. At OUCU, the team is proud to have achieved a consistent adoption rate of 98%. Due to a successful intranet launch, OUCU was also able to achieve this result within the first few months of first adopting IC’s intranet software and maintained its adoption rate over the last few years. With IC’s intranet software in place, it’s now much easier for OUCU employees to find and access the documents and news they need daily. It’s also much easier for them to collaborate.
Intranet Example #4: Frankenmuth Credit Union
“Earl”
Before migrating to IC’s software solution, Frankenmuth CU, with over $1 billion in assets and 400 employs across 30 branches located in Michigan, had a rigid and unengaging SharePoint intranet. The team often described their old intranet as “clunky” and “antiquated”, and intranet adoption was suffering.
After moving to IC’s credit union intranet software, Frankenmuth CU saw major improvements across the board. Today, Frankenmuth CU sees approximately 85% of all employees access the intranet within a given month, and more than half of the entire employee base actively posts, comments, submits forms, and updates their personal status regularly.
Intranet Design Examples:
1. Golden Valley Bank Intranet Example
2. Ohio Credit Union Intranet Example
3. West Michigan Works! Intranet Example
4. Summit Funding Intranet Example
Want More Highly Effective Intranet Examples?
Bonus: San Diego Humane Society & SPCA
Elkie Wills, Director of Community Engagement at the San Diego Humane Society (SDHS), was responsible for planning and implementing an intranet for the SDHS. The intranet, named FEtCH, was designed to align with their current brand, as well as represent the company’s focus in finding homes for animals. In keeping with that theme, Wills created several elements on the intranet with names like, “Meow Madness”, “Most Pawsitive Player” and “In The Mews” (a rather adorable play on words for Company News).
FEtCH has become the go-to resource for information regarding career opportunities, benefits, workers’ compensation, and calendars, which can all be accessed directly from FEtCH’s homepage. In addition, an element of fun was added with the use of Online Photo Albums. The SDHS staff take hundreds of photos each week, so Wills thought it would be fun to have employees upload their photos to FEtCH and implement a photo of the week contest. Not surprisingly, this is now one of the most popular areas of the intranet. There is also an Employee Recognition feature on the intranet where employees can fill out a “High Five” form to nominate peers for a job well done. While many of our other customers term this as KUDOS on their highly effective intranets, this has proven to be a great employee recognition tool for any intranet administrator to deploy.
Another highly effective intranet feature included on FEtCH is “Happy Tails”, which shares animal adoption success stories. Employees can go onto the FEtCH intranet and check in on animals to see how they are adapting to their new home, as well as receive exclusive updates on the animal. As expected, the SDHS employees can get very attached to the animals that come in their facility, so “Happy Tails” is extremely meaningful to them.
FEtCH is a great example of a highly effective intranet because:
- It aligns with the company brand, goals and culture
- It has become an essential resource tool for employees
- It enables employees to do their jobs more efficiently
- It has increased employee engagement with elements of fun
- It includes what’s important to employees (e.g. Happy Tails)
Find out more about the San Diego Humane Society’s Highly Effective FEtCH intranet, by reading: How to FEtCH a Better Intranet.
Bonus: BC Place
BC Place underwent a major renovation period in 2009 to gear up for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. This divided staff between two locations during a time when communication and unity were critical. Luckily for BC Place, Intranet Connections had the solution to their internal communication challenge – a Corporate Intranet.
To ensure all staff was on the same page when it came to renovation information, BC Place included an innovative live webcam feed of BC Place right onto the Intranet Homepage so employees could view the renovations and construction in real-time. This is an excellent way to ensure employees have the most up-to-date information about what is going on in your organization. In addition to information about the facility, the intranet included a People Directory with contact information for all the employees and their locations. This enabled employees to easily locate one another as many of them were spread out between the two locations.
Another important element added to BC Place’s intranet was their Online Forms. Employees had access to important Online Forms directly from the intranet homepage, allowing employees to access the forms quickly, increasing efficiency and productivity.
BC Place’s intranet is a terrific example of a highly effective intranet since:
- It streamlines business processes with quick access to online forms
- It keeps all information in one central location
- It keeps all employees across multiple locations informed and on the same page
- It allows employees to communicate and stay connected
Find out more about BC Place’s highly effective intranet by reading: In the Midst of Change an Intranet Case Study.
Bonus: New Seasons Market
New Seasons Market first opened in 2000 with one location in Portland, Oregon, USA. The store quickly expanded and they now have over 12 stores throughout the surrounding areas. However, with such growth also came some challenges such as ensuring employees were able to communicate across multiple locations. To address this, Reed Coleman, Internal Communications Manager, decided to spearhead an intranet initiative, which quickly and successfully became named ‘The Pantry’.
While installing the new intranet was easy, intranet adoption would be a challenge as 50% of New Seasons Market employees didn’t have email addresses or workstations, ultimately forcing communication to be solely face-to-face. Coleman introduced the innovative and unique “Intranet Kiosks”, touch-screen intranets set up in lunchrooms and meeting rooms throughout the 12 locations.
The Pantry soon became the central hub for information and resources, quickly becoming integrated into the company culture. In addition, it helped facilitate strong employee engagement with features like: “Grab & Go Easy Service Links”, a quick links tab to important information, “From Our Customers”, stories of happy customers and, “Classified Buy & Sell Exchange”, a place for employees to buy and sell items from each other.
Why The Pantry is an effective intranet example:
- It connects all employees across 12 locations
- It enables seamless communication
- It eliminated sending company-wide emails
- It improved employee engagement
- It aligned with company culture and communicates that culture to new hires
Here are a few other notable mentions that we encourage you to check out to inspire further innovation on your intranet:
We love sharing customer success stories and intranet examples, but we need your help to keep ’em coming! If you have a highly effective intranet example that you would like to share with us, please comment below or e-mail connect@intranetconnections.com
If your business is struggling with internal communications, employee engagement, productivity, or employee retention, have a look at our Corporate Intranet. It is an out-of-the-box intranet solution with over 100 features designed to help you better connect, collaborate and create. You can book yourself a 15-minute FREE DEMO call with us and discuss innovative methods to address your business’s internal communications challenges.
Editors note: This blog post was originally posted in 2014 and was updated in 2022 to include additional intranet examples.
