Whether buying a new banking intranet or updating and governing an existing one, a main challenge intranet admins and internal communicators often face is getting leadership on board with their plans. Of course, no project can move forward without executive approval, and you may be left scratching your head thinking of how to convince your C-suite to understand the true benefit and potential in a purpose-built intranet. At IC, we’ve been in the intranet space for over 2 decades, so we know a thing or two when it comes to the strategic benefits of an intranet, and how it can impact any executive’s bottom line. In fact, we wrote a free eBook about intranet benefits aimed at executives, which this blog series is based on.
Intranets support various key organizational processes that are critical for successful day- to-day operations but also longer-term growth. From internal communications to compliance, the intranet plays a role in a surprisingly wide number of key areas, helping people stay informed, get things done, complete tasks, and find the information they need. The collective value an intranet delivers across these processes is highly significant.
Banking intranet benefits for internal comms
For most organizations, a banking intranet is the central digital channel for internal communications, efficiently delivering targeted messaging to employees across the organization, covering both strategic and operational matters. As a central repository for news and events, an intranet is far more efficient than email, where stories tend to get missed or ignored within an overcrowded inbox. An intranet will usually deliver better, sustained reach.
With an intranet, employees can stay informed about everything from your new five-year plan for growth, to the IT outage affecting their mornings at the bank. They can register for the next all-hands town hall. They can hear about inspiring employees who have carried out exceptional customer service at another branch. You can also execute messaging as part of a campaign or a roll-out of a new tool, initiative, or product, so that the intranet becomes a critical tool in any change management effort.
Is your leadership team ready for crises? A banking intranet benefits crisis preparation!
Intranets also do the heavy lifting for essential crisis communications. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they have played a critical role in being the trusted, go-to channel for employees to stay informed during a worrying and fast-changing situation. Intranets are also excellent for leadership communications, allowing senior executives to deliver more personal messages through blogs and videos, which tend to have more impact. You can also create valuable opportunities for dialogue or ask for feedback through comments, allowing you to interact more directly with employees.
Keep your workers safe and happy with an intranet
Intranets are also at the heart of several people-related processes within your bank. This includes providing easy access to all the different HR and learning applications inside your organization, as well as providing people-related information and policies, so that people can complete different tasks.
Sometimes an HR task such as requesting annual leave can be carried out via the intranet itself using forms and workflows. Other people-related processes within a bank where the intranet can play a role includes onboarding new employees, accessing pay slips, recording time, registering for a learning event, and more.
Ensuring everyone is staying compliant is a key intranet benefit
Increasing compliance and reducing risk is a priority for many organizations and critical in regulated sectors, such as financial services. The banking intranet plays a significant role in risk and compliance in several different ways including providing a trusted central repository for core policies and procedures, with lifecycle management tools to make sure these are kept up to date. It can also provide employee attestation features so that employees must confirm they have they have read a policy; tracking helps drive 100% completion. Compliance-related learning can also be housed on an intranet.
More widely, the banking intranet acts as channel to continually emphasize the importance of compliance in areas such as health and safety through communications and messaging.
But that’s not all the banking intranet benefits…
Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog series where we take a look at how intranets benefit executives by enhancing both customer and employee experience at a bank! For a sneak peak, download our free eBook “Seven ways an intranet delivers strategic value: a guide for executives.”
