Too often, when discussing “employee engagement”, intranet vendors and internal communication vendors focus their messaging on people in HR, Marketing, or Internal Comms roles. Usually, the emotional side of internal comms and intranets is discussed with individuals in those roles, and the timesaving and efficiency sides of an intranet are discussed with IT.
We want to break that stigma.
In fact, IT, employee engagement is just as important for your KPIs and reducing your workload as it is for other stakeholders in your intranet project. Let’s examine a few ways that IT and employee engagement go together like mice and keyboards.
1. Employee engagement = checking the intranet = checking your FAQ/knowledgebase
Your intranet has long remained the best place for a knowledgebase, full of the most frequently asked questions for IT staff. It is a proven way to save IT’s time and increase the efficiency of fielding tech-related requests and questions. However, these efficiencies can only be enjoyed if the workforce is actively using the knowledgebase. Having to continuously redirect people to it for every request is time-consuming.
When employee engagement is high, intranet utilization is usually also high. When the workforce is engaged with an organization’s internal messaging, they are being pulled into the intranet and other important channels more and more, resulting in more self-sufficient problem-solving that does not require IT’s hands-on assistance.
To help pull people into your intranet, partner with other intranet stakeholders to build internal campaigns that promote materials on your intranet through news and events, push messaging, and newsletters. Also, ensure that the link to your knowledgebase is “above-the-fold” on your intranet homepage—so users notice it right when the page loads.
2. Engaged employees are more likely to remain compliant with important policies
As IT, you go to great lengths to make sure your organization’s technology remains compliant with rules and regulations applicable to your industry, and that Shadow IT and rogue policies remain at the wayside. Purpose-built intranet software has features such as version management, read and approves, and automated workflows that can help ensure your workforce is up-to-date on all the latest policies.
If compliance is lacking at your organization, in many instances, IT may bear the burden of the blame, especially IT directors and managers. It is your job to ensure that every employee, from onboarding to offboarding, is well aware of all the regulations set in place for their use of company and personal tech. And while your intranet is a great place to store these policies outlining rules and regulations, it is largely useless if you don’t work to actively promote them on the appropriate channels.
For example, when there is a new policy that all employees must conform with, it is not enough to just drop it into the intranet and be done with it. Work with your internal comms team to create push messages, automated workflows, and automatic reminders for users who haven’t read the policies, to ensure that there is no room for “oh I wasn’t aware” excuses from your colleagues.
3. Ensuring employees can deliver on your organization’s mission
As IT, you are one of the key stakeholders in your organization’s intranet project. Your intranet serves to accomplish many things for your workforce, with many different KPIs and measurables, but it ultimately comes down to the ability to ensure employees are delivering on your mission.
With every tool introduced to your workforce, the bottom line is always greater output (regardless of whether your product is a good or a service), and to accomplish that, you need to ensure that employees are using the tools you are convincing your leadership team to pay for, such as your LMS, collaboration and project management tools, and finance automation tools.
Your intranet is no different. By having a workforce that is engaged with your communications, and thus your intranet, you can prove that the investment has a high ROI to your leadership team, and it allows your colleagues to work better because of it. Failure to convince your workforce to adopt the new intranet is failure on your part to use technology to better the employee experience, so work closely with internal comms and put together a plan on how to achieve high intranet adoption rates!
Your partner for high employee engagement
At IC, we work closely with IT—and we specialize in the finance sector—to use intranet software to create a more efficient, complaint, and engaged workforce. To see our product in action, book a no-obligation demo today!
