You’ve gone through the buyer’s process, ensured everyone’s needs are met, gotten sign-off from your leadership team, and spent weeks building a dynamic and purposeful intranet. Congratulations! But the work doesn’t stop there. You need to do a few key things to ensure your new intranet’s rollout goes smoothly and adoption starts and remains high. From personalizing departmental sites to reinforcing policies, here are five ways to ensure your intranet rollout is met with increased adoption.
Personalize your departmental sites
Recently, we launched Hickam FCU’s new intranet, and one aspect their employees loved was the personalization of departmental sites made possible with intuitive, easy-to-use software. In the era of Intranet 2.0 (and the cusp of the Intranet 3.0 era), having a dynamic intranet is key to ensuring your employees utilize your new intranet. Almost every aspect of the world wide web is personalized to our individual tastes, so why should an intranet be any different? Not every employee wants or needs to see the same content, calendars, and resources. Would you ever check Instagram if you constantly saw things you had no interest in? Of course not. Your employees want the same from their intranet.
Use your intranet within your overall comms strategy
Your intranet plays one essential part in your overall comms strategy, but it won’t be the be-all-and-end-all. Everything eventually runs out of fuel if left on autopilot. Ensure that your communications strategy remains strong and that you use various channels to push and pull people onto your intranet.
For example, you may send out Push messages that link back to your intranet or upload the slides from your town hall onto your intranet for future reference. When you incorporate your intranet into your overall comms strategy, you reinforce its utility—and build muscle memory for employees to view it as a single source of truth, driving intranet adoption.
Reinforce your past policies and procedures to drive intranet adoption
When you roll out your new intranet, you want to make it the single source of truth for your organization moving forward. However, that doesn’t mean you should only look to the future. Employees may still need to reexamine old policies, so it’s crucial to ensure that those are uploaded to the same place (your intranet) to reinforce that your intranet contains all relevant and essential information.
Using tools such as Read & Agree and automatic reminders for future policies will help HR stay organized about who has viewed important policies and who may need to be reminded. Read more here.
Intranet adoption is an ongoing process
“Intranet adoption” is not a term that’s only relevant in the first few weeks of your intranet rollout. It is a constant consideration, especially when onboarding new employees. New hires may come from organizations that didn’t use an intranet, and relying on one may be foreign. To ease them into actively utilizing the intranet, make sure that your onboarding process is heavily integrated with your intranet. Forms that new hires need to fill out in their first week should be on the intranet, as well as policies, procedures, and critical tools that are directly related to their department and role. By ensuring essential parts of the onboarding process live on your intranet, you are forming a muscle memory for checking the intranet from the first week—and intranet adoption rates will remain high from rollout to end times*.
Make your intranet fun
Your intranet doesn’t have to be all cut and dry! Your intranet can also be a source for fun in your organization. Exciting news, events, and photos can also lighten up employees’ days, and they know to check your intranet calendars to find out what fun events and parties may be coming up. After all, both work and play are needed for better intranet adoption.
When Hickam FCU rolled out their new intranet, employees appreciated the fun their intranet brought, including informing them of community events, employee milestones, and more!
Work with our expert team to roll out your intranet
At IC, we have been in the intranet space for over two decades. Our expert team knows exactly how to help you launch your intranet with high intranet adoption rates that are sustainable and show real value to your organization. To learn more, book a free demo!
*IC has no insight as to when the end times may be.
