Improving employee engagement with an intranet scavenger hunt

According to a 2020 report by Gallup, only 36% of the U.S. workforce is engaged and this percentage is dropping. In this blog, you will learn how an intranet scavenger hunt can aid in improving employee engagement in your organization, what some suggested tasks for an intranet scavenger hunt are, and how to design your own scavenger hunt.

The importance of high employee engagement in the workplace is undeniable. Engaged employees are more motivated to reach their full potential, inclined to contribute to positive company culture, and committed to shared values and goals.

This holy grail of organizational development should be a key focal point for your company’s success strategy, and your intranet is an indispensable tool. But is your intranet being used to its full potential? The Intranet Connections platform provides a rich assortment of applications and widgets, but some users may not be utilizing them as much as they could be. Furthermore, intranet admins may not have certain features enabled, so users may not even be aware of their existence. Leveraging the full potential of your intranet will go a long way in helping to bolster employee engagement.

The intranet scavenger hunt & employee engagement

In this blog, I propose a fun intranet scavenger hunt to help introduce and familiarize employees with these various intranet features. So, your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to execute an intranet scavenger hunt to spread awareness of what hidden treasures are available on your intranet. As a result, more people will start using these features more effectively, and more frequently.

Resource: Read Super Search Launch Scavenger Hunt

How you communicate and organize your intranet scavenger hunt is entirely up to you. Feel free to tailor this list to meet the individual needs of your organization. If there is any specific content you’d like employees to find, go ahead and add it to the list. Anything from completing a test using the Online Tests application, to ordering a product from the Online Company Store, you can customize your intranet scavenger hunt any way you’d like!

Below are a few tasks I’ve put together to help you get started on your intranet scavenger hunt, utilizing various engaging and collaborative features.

Suggested tasks for your scavenger hunt

For your first intranet scavenger hunt task, begin with something simple such as asking employees to find out whose birthday is next. This task requires the Employee Milestone widget, which displays upcoming employee birthdays or work anniversaries. You can add this widget to your intranet home page, team/department sites, or your Mega Menus. Next, you can ask employees to share their favorite recipe using the Recipe Exchange application, or leave a suggestion using the Idea Share Exchange. These tasks are simple and fun, and allow users to see some different engaging features they may not know even existed on their intranet.

Another suggested task is to recognize a colleague for a job well done by using the Employee Recognition application. This application allows you to send a virtual kudos to colleagues who have gone above and beyond. Employee Recognition is a customer favorite and is a sure-fire way to engage employees and boost morale. Next, get employees to update their status. This requires the Status Updates widget to be turned on in your settings.

Now that you get the idea, here are a few more fun task suggestions for your intranet scavenger hunt:

• Send an instant message to the scavenger hunt judge via Live Chat.
• Follow at least two colleagues using the Follow Colleagues feature.
• Add a skills tag to your Employee Profile that will help others find you in search results, such as First Aid Certified.
• Answer a Quick Polls question. This can be displayed on any page on your intranet.
• Fill out the ‘about me’ section on your Employee Profile so others can learn more about you.
• Add an upcoming event into the Events Calendar.
• Reply to a topic or post a new topic on the Discussion Forum.
• Go to the Photo Album and  rate or comment on your favorite photo(s) (Requires the comments and ratings option to be enabled)

Designing your intranet scavenger hunt to improve employee engagement

When designing your intranet scavenger hunt, it’s best not to cram as many features as possible onto the home page or Mega Menus. While this makes it the easiest and quickest way for employees to complete the scavenger hunt, it doesn’t allow them to really dig deep into your intranet to locate various features. A good practice is organizing resources throughout the site using consistent patterns and an intuitive visual hierarchy, which empowers users to explore and find them on their own, familiarizing themselves with your intranet site.

Many of these suggestions require prior setup. The corresponding widgets and apps must be added to pages or menus that are accessible to your employees, and the relevant options must be enabled. For example, employees can only see birthdays if the Employee Milestone application is added to a page or Mega Menu, and the option to show birthdays is enabled in Admin > Directory > Manage Fields.

Add application owners

Empower your employees by giving them ownership of some of these apps. Some apps require employees to be given ownership (either individually or by a group) so they can add and modify content. For example, to allow users to add their own favorite recipes to the Recipe Exchange application, go to the application, click on App Owners in the menu on the right, and add owners. You may also implement an Approval Workflow to review items before they’re published to the site if needed. This ensures any content posted to your intranet goes through an approval process so that it meets company guidelines or policies.

Improve employee engagement for your organization

So there you have it; some great suggestions on implementing fun and an easy scavenger hunt to familiarize your employees with your intranet and help you improve employee engagement. Have you executed your own intranet scavenger hunt before? I’d love to hear about it, please comment below.

Don’t have an intranet to conduct your scavenger hunt? Book your free demo for IC’s intranet solution software! Not quite ready for a demo? Take our free assessment tool to find out how an intranet can improve employee engagement at your organization!