Case in point: the most recent Intranet Design Annual (NNG) featured 10 winning intranets; the average cycle for an intranet redesign ran 14 months. Eighteen to 20 months is not unusual.

Most intranets need more than a face-lift — most intranets need a complete overhaul or a deathblow. Each organization is unique, with unique cultures, objectives, structures, processes, and employees. So the redesign process can be a long, complicated and daunting process. More than a few intranet managers have been overwhelmed by an intranet redesign.

“We don’t even know where to begin,” Fortune 500 intranet manager.

Your intranet is an ecosystem that maintains a three-way balance between people, technology, and process. In short, strong intranet design depends on your people, and their input. Naturally, your people are the most important ingredient that deserves the most attention and energy. This means that you first and fore mostly need to ensure that you are in a position to align all three aspects of your digital workplace ecosystem – starting with people. So before embarking on your new intranet journey, start with the people at the top; ensure that you have executive sponsorship and support.

People

To succeed, the intranet needs funding, and it needs powerful supporters. Every intranet needs an executive champion — or two.

At GoDaddy, the intranet champion is the CEO. It’s not wonder, they have a successful intranet. In fact, all of the GoDaddy senior management team are active champions. So much so, they don’t consider any one office or building to be their headquarters. GoDaddy considers their intranet to be their headquarters.

“People ask me where the headquarters of GoDaddy is and I say there’s no physical headquarters. Headquarters is The Planet (the intranet). The thing that binds us in our values is our communications. It is the headquarters of good ideas,” says Auguste Goldman, Senior Vice-President of Customer Care.

“We call our intranet The Planet for a reason…because it is our headquarters,” says Kim Clark, Director of Internal Communications for GoDaddy. “The Planet gives equal visibility across regions, teams, cultures and is the home base from where we can connect, have access to the company strategy, values, recognition, and news.”

“It’s democratic in that folks can start their own groups, build their brand across the company by commenting on company blogs,” adds Clark. “The Planet is a reflection, a reinforcement and co-creator of GoDaddy’s global culture.”

Users

Not all of your intranet users will have the same needs. This means that the employee from Santa Monica will look for different resources than the one in Atlanta. Similarly the associate from Communications will need different information, tools, and forms than the one from Sales. Also not to be overlooked are the ways these different user audience types may wish to interact with content, and with one another. It is highly unlikely that your Millennials will wish to consume and communicate information in the same ways that some of your more seasoned employees.

Firstly,  define your audiences by segment and/or role. This can be by departments, offices, regions, or even operations. Determine what executives require from the intranet; document key roles and personas for the most common roles in the organization, down to frontline employees. Examine the information and/or areas of the intranet that most employees need and use. These may include various types of communications, HR applications, finance tools, and even separate portals – each of which may have individuals or teams supporting them whose needs must also be understood.

With your audience defined, you may then tap into various groups and teams using a number of different methods. Some of these methods may include polling users, interviewing management, or conducting focus groups. When engaging with various representatives of your user groups, it is important to gain an understanding of what is important to them. What tools are they using? What content is valuable? Does the corporate culture differ for different groups? How is the existing intranet lacking? What future needs can the intranet address?

You may be surprised what you may learn when looking at different corners of the organization through different lenses, and especially in the context of intranet processes. A thorough understanding of your intranet users needs and requirements will focus your priorities and provide the context and foundation for planning the intranet redesign.

Process

Knowing your audience provides a great foundation for understanding where your intranet is today, and where it needs to be tomorrow. But of course, priorities need to be assigned to the collections of intranet requirements. Should Communications have more of a say than HR? More importantly, once the new intranet is up and running, who is going to be needed to keep it afloat? Of course there’s always going to be IT development and support, but other groups and company processes will be intertwined (e.g. Training, Payroll, Communications, etc.). Knowing the needs of your audience will help you understand where and how the intranet will play within your organization.

Intranet consultants Prescient Digital Media recommends intranet managers follow a defined process methodology, such as their Intranet Project methodology:

Planning

In short, your intranet needs a strategic plan and a rigorous governance model to support the intranet plan. The intranet strategy is essential as it ties the intranet to organizational performance and success. The intranet must be formally aligned to and support the organizations’ strategic directives. If the company’s top priority is to sustain market leadership, then the intranet must directly support that directive. This formal alignment with company strategy will also establish a baseline for tracking and measuring your intranet performance over time. And, a formal intranet plan paves the way to prioritizing the features that provide the most value to the organization. You may then invest resources to focus on specific features, such as knowledge sharing and customer service, as key intranet tools and applications.

Governance flows from the intranet plan and details the assigned roles, responsibilities and rules for managing the intranet. The most important ingredient for any intranet is governance (starting with executive sponsorship). Simply put, governance defines the intranet ownership and management model including the:

• Management team
• Roles & responsibilities of contributors
• Decision making process
• Policies & standards

Like the content of your website or intranet, planning and governance is technology agnostic; whether it’s SharePoint, IBM or another portal or content management system, the necessity for and the approach to governance is the same. Given its technology neutral status, governance is largely applicable to any technology platform.

This may include creating steering committees, designating a dedicated intranet owner, editors, and IT personnel to ensure intranet success. Every key intranet role must have defined responsibilities that should become a part of each member’s job description. Additionally, key policies must be created that address everything from creating and managing content, to collaboration and social media use.

Technology

Beyond the technology itself, will be the intricacies of implementing an intranet platform that supports your intranet plan, and your user requirements. With the people and process in place, now the intranet manager can select the right intranet technology platform, applications, tools, etc. to drive a successful digital ecosystem. This may include integrating existing systems wherever possible, but this further helps to assess and select various intranet technologies, should you be in the market for new software and intranet solutions.

A functional plan should detail the form and ‘functions’ of your new intranet. A functional plan describes the features and functions of the site, including the planned tools, content management system, applications, etc.

Content

While modern web design may ascribe to the ‘three-click rule’ as best practice, this simply isn’t possible for intranets with hundreds-of-thousands if not millions of pages and documents. Your organizational content may require more than three clicks to access, and that’s okay. What’s more important is knowing what should be available within a few interactions and bringing it as close to surface as possible. The best way to do this is to rethink your information architecture.

All content requires a solid schema for cataloguing, storing and tagging. Too often, especially as intranets grow over time, information is segmented (or “silo’d”) by functional area or department. Completely overhauling your information architecture can be risky: employees likely want to preserve what they know and understand. Work with employees in focus groups and card sorting exercises to best understand how users want to group and label content, and therefore how the information architecture can best determine navigation paths.

Tip: Create redundant paths to the same information (via navigating the information architecture, using the search engine, clicking through a site map or My Links functionality).

Additionally, every intranet requires a taxonomy. A “term store” for applying meta tags and keywords to every piece of content — every document and page must have keywords and meta tags that adhere to a central intranet taxonomy. Ensuring that metadata is applied to all content improves more than just the user experience, it will also better supports the search engine and search engine results.

Intranet Design

Whether or you have selected your intranet technology or platform — independent of the technology — the user experience design should flow smoothly from your functional plan and information architecture. Beginning with wireframes with spatially layout the structure and organization of your home page, major sections and content templates.

Wireframes

Intranet wireframes, or page layouts, depict page elements and positioning of content blocks and tools. The wireframe is only structural; akin to a blueprint, with the absence of branding, color and images. Wireframes should be constructed not only for the desktop, but for mobile phone for those employees who access the intranet primarily from their phone.

At this stage some usability testing can be conducted to test the intuitiveness of the navigation. The subsequent design concept can then be applied to the approved wireframes based on brand guidelines.

Design Standards

It is crucial to gain feedback from your stakeholder groups before implementing the intranet design concept. This may be done by presenting different concepts to various steering committees and employee segments via focus groups, and by conducting usability tests to capture reactions and suggestions throughout. Regardless of your implementation phasing and strategy, be sure to capture the appropriate branding and design guidelines to be used throughout the new intranet.

Among the plans that must be created prior to engaging a graphic designer or intranet design consultant, is the creative brief (design guidelines) with detailed design elements including color palettes, font types, iconography, image treatments, spacing, page templates and other preferences. Additionally, your intranet design standards should also detail the particulars relating to the mobile or responsive design. This is critical for ensuring a consistent, unique, modern look and feel across the new intranet and as it evolves over time.

Keep in mind your organization is unique, and therefore requires a unique approach to the intranet. Simply copying or emulating another intranet is not only wrong, it may well alienate your users and lead to a failed intranet. Regardless of your situation, it is important that you devote attention and resources towards activities within each of the intranet redesign stages to adequately ensure the balance between user audience needs, business processes, and modern best practices. This will not only ensure that you have a well-functioning and engaging intranet, but will also serve you well during implementation, change management, and related phases of launching a successful new intranet.

KEEP READING:  Intranet Redesign (Design Process)

“Planning for AI in the Workplace,” offers a pragmatic roadmap for businesses looking to harness AI’s potential effectively. Ward’s insights underscored the critical need for strategic foresight and a proactive approach to AI adoption, moving beyond reactive implementation to cultivate a truly intelligent enterprise.

Core Content

Ward’s presentation distills complex challenges into actionable strategies, providing attendees with a clear vision for AI integration. Key takeaways include:

Selecting Tools: Carefully planning and documenting requirements for AI tools, and selecting technology tools or apps based upon those plans and requirements — instead of being sold a technology solution by an AI vendor.

Beyond Hype to Practicality: Emphasizing that successful AI adoption hinges on identifying real business problems that AI can solve, rather than chasing every new technological trend.

Data as the Foundation: Highlighting the indispensable role of clean, well-structured, and accessible data as the bedrock for any effective AI initiative. Without robust data pipelines, AI models cannot perform optimally.

Upskilling and Reskilling the Workforce: Stressing the importance of investing in employee training to equip staff with the necessary skills to work alongside AI tools, fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptation.

Ethical AI by Design: Advocating for the integration of ethical considerations and responsible AI principles from the outset of any project, ensuring fairness, transparency, and accountability.

Phased Implementation: Recommending a phased approach to AI deployment, starting with pilot projects and iterative development to learn, adapt, and scale effectively.

Problems with AI

Despite its immense potential, AI is not without its challenges. A significant concern, particularly with advanced Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs) and other large language models, is the phenomenon of hallucinations. These occur when an AI generates information that is plausible-sounding but factually incorrect or entirely fabricated. This can lead to serious issues in business contexts, from providing incorrect customer support responses to generating misleading reports, undermining trust, and potentially leading to poor decisions if the output is not rigorously verified by human oversight. Addressing hallucinations requires ongoing research into model architecture, improved training data, and robust validation processes.

Planning for AI

A cornerstone of Ward’s presentation was the stark contrast between two fundamental approaches to AI adoption: “being sold” technology versus “selecting” technology. This distinction, he argued, is paramount for successful and sustainable AI integration.

The passive approach of “being sold” technology often sees organizations reacting to vendor pitches, acquiring solutions based on external pressures or perceived industry trends rather than internal needs. This can lead to a patchwork of disparate systems, underutilized tools, and significant financial outlays without a clear return on investment. Businesses risk becoming mere consumers of technology, dictated by the market rather than driving their own digital transformation. This reactive stance frequently results in solutions looking for problems, rather than problems driving the search for appropriate solutions.

In contrast, the proactive strategy of “selecting” technology is rooted in a deep understanding of specific business needs, strategic objectives, and existing operational gaps. This approach begins with an internal audit: identifying pain points, opportunities for efficiency gains, and areas where AI can genuinely add value. Only after this thorough internal assessment do organizations then evaluate potential AI solutions, ensuring that chosen technologies align precisely with their strategic goals and operational realities. This method empowers businesses to be architects of their own AI future, making informed decisions that lead to tailored, impactful, and sustainable AI deployments. This distinction is critical because it shifts the focus from technology acquisition to strategic problem-solving, ensuring that AI serves as a true enabler of business objectives rather than an expensive, ill-fitting add-on.

Future Implications

Toby Ward concluded his presentation by looking ahead, underscoring that AI is not merely a technological upgrade but a fundamental shift in how work gets done. The organizations that thrive in this new era will be those that embrace a culture of continuous learning, strategic planning, and ethical responsibility. The future workplace, augmented by intelligent systems, promises unprecedented levels of productivity and innovation. However, realizing this potential requires leaders to move beyond superficial engagement with AI and commit to thoughtful, intentional planning that prioritizes human-centric design and long-term strategic alignment. The journey to an AI-powered workplace is not about replacing humans, but about empowering them to achieve more, fostering a synergistic relationship between human ingenuity and artificial intelligence.

Organizations can measure their intranet readiness by considering the following aspects, often highlighted in intranet experts Prescient’s intranet consulting: 

• People: Great intranets require skilled people and dedicated executive champions. User needs and requirements must be the central focus, and employees creating content need proper training.
• Process: This includes establishing clear rules and guidelines for content creation, formatting, classification, review, and deletion. Strong governance, defining roles and responsibilities, is crucial.
• Planning: Successful intranets require comprehensive planning that considers strategy, functional requirements, content, design, and search functionality.
• Technology: While important, technology is the “easy part” and merely enables the people and processes. The focus should be on selecting the right platform and tools that support the organization’s specific needs, such as HR functions, collaboration tools, or mobile access.
• Content: The intranet should be the single, central location for all corporate documents, news, and announcements, making information easily accessible and searchable. 

In essence, Toby Ward’s approach suggests that readiness is not just about having the technology, but ensuring the organization has the necessary human and process-based foundations to support a valuable and effective business system.

The Intranet Project Methodology, developed over and during 12 years working with nearly 200 intranets, takes into account the best practices of the World’s best intranets, and some of the very worst. It is a unique methodology developed specifically for intranets, though equally applicable to websites, and social intranets — because a social intranet has the same needs, requirements, and end employee users as a traditional intranet with the only difference being ‘social’ capabilities.

The Intranet Methodology includes all activities to begin planning, designing, and constructing and implementing a high performance intranet solution – including assessment or evaluation activities (sometimes referred to as ‘discovery’) as well as all of the planning activities ranging from the high-level strategic plans, to the detailed tactical requisites such as the site wireframes and information architecture.

Assessment

Assessment serves two important functions: it documents the needs and requirements of the user population and those of the business and its stakeholders while aligning project goals with corporate goals and objectives. This phase usually includes:

• a heuristic and strategic intranet evaluation (gap analysis)
• business requirements analysis (and stakeholder interviews)
• user research (reviews, survey(s), focus group(s), usability testing, log analysis)
• technical infrastructure analysis
• benchmarking and best practices

Planning

Planning incorporates both the strategic vision and the functional plan and maps out the planning and tactical steps for designing the intranet or digital workplace portal including:

• the high-level vision and/or mission
• specific goals and objectives
• governance / management model
• key performance indicators (KPIs)
• business case and ROI
• content management planning & policies

As well, detailed tactical plans are drafted, including:

• the functional plan
• site or portal information architecture
• page wireframes
• design concepts
• usability testing
• social media policies

Technology

Prescient Digital Media does not use a proprietary technology for building or constructing client intranet sites or intranet portals. We are ‘technology neutral’ which means that we will work with you to identify the appropriate technology solution based on your business requirements, and not “who we know” or based on reselling agreements and commissions. Though we have years of deep experience working with SharePoint and other commercial and open source products, we do not represent nor sell any product.

In identifying the best solution for your organization we manage all aspects of the vendor process including the evaluation and selection of the vendor, negotiate technology licenses and fees, project manage the implementation, and even manage and execute ongoing site operations including custom content development and translation services.

The output of these phases constitutes the Intranet Blueprint for guiding the implementation of the intranet or portal and the underlying governance and technology foundation. The Intranet Blueprint contains the map or blueprint for implementing a new social intranet or enterprise portal.

Finally, the Intranet Blueprint serves as the basis for evolving your site, establishing baseline targets (e.g. user satisfaction, ROI, etc.) for measuring its ongoing and future performance, and achieving its potential and value.

Also read: How To Hire An Intranet Consultant

You can learn more through resources from the intranet consultants‘  Prescient Digital Media website. 

Prescient’s design goal for our clients is to create a strong, dynamic, visual identity while reflecting the company brand and style guidelines.

Our design approach is strategically driven, recognizing that design should help to achieve the measurable goals defined for the intranet or website. Design must facilitate the usability of the site and aid in guiding users to where they need to go while also adding appeal and assisting with engagement.

While employees don’t visit and use the intranet for design, an engaging design will keep them coming back; poor design will drive them away. Our business-driven design approach is strategically driven, recognizing that design should help to achieve the measurable goals defined for the intranet. Design must facilitate the usability of the site and aid in guiding users to where they need to go while also adding appeal and assisting with engagement.

We build intranet information architectures, the key foundation for effective design, by reviewing key findings and strategic plans, conducting card sorts, and relying on experience and best practices for usability. Intranet wireframes, or page layouts, are then developed to show positioning of elements on the page. At this stage some usability testing can be conducted to test the intuitiveness of the navigation. Then design is applied to the approved wireframes based on brand guidelines in order to facilitate achievement of intranet goals.

Just a sampling of some of the best employee rated, intranet home page designs that we’ve designed, tested and implemented for some of our top clients at the Intranet Experts, Prescient Digital Media (www.PrescientDigital.com)

Read more about Intranet Design (https://prescientdigital.com/our-solutions/intranet_design)

When I think back to the pop explosion of social media, around 2005 and 2006, a number of so-called experts proclaimed the death of the email — and the intranet. Today, email continues to be the killer app, and the intranet is very much alive and, in some cases, thriving.

Sadly though, the intranet is not thriving in all workplaces, and it certainly is not the darling of the digital workplace. However, it excels, ironically enough, at the heart of the digital workplace, acting as the gateway to all your digital tools. The best digital workplaces have a great intranet – and vice versa.

As such, the future of the intranet is somewhat tempered. Don’t expect immersive virtual reality, robots and flying vehicles. AI has not taken over intranets or supplanted the digital workplace (not yet, and not with the current tools, anytime soon). No, the future of the intranet is a lot less sexy, but it is slowly, if not doggedly, advancing forward.

People

An intranet is not just a technology project, it’s a digital and living ecosystem, powered by people, process and technology. In fact, it’s more about people and process; the technology just acts as a support and delivers the product. Technology is the easy part: you can buy and deploy it in minutes. Intranets still require careful management, structure and feeding (particularly content).

People still write the content, program the apps, and populate the data. Think about content management: people create and edit the content, and use technology to post it, but even the tags and expiry date are controlled by people and process. So naturally, your people deserve the most attention and energy – as they can make or break not just your intranet, but your organization.

Anyone creating and managing intranet content must be trained in writing, editing, formatting and using a content management system. Rules for content must be established and adhered to – and baked into the system. People create and populate these rules that ensure consistency across the intranet. For example, every page needs an expiry date and should be tagged with keywords from a central taxonomy or managed term store.

In short, people will continue to be at the heart of any intranet or digital workplace for years to come, regardless of any technological leaps forward.

Cloud Intranets

Building a custom employee intranet can be a significant drain on both time and resources. You need a skilled team to design, develop, install and manage an intranet platform. And the capital investment is significant, commonly running into the hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in a large organization, and at times, millions of dollars.

Intranets shifted towards hosted, cloud-based enterprise solutions a decade or so ago. As a result, more than 100 different cloud-based intranets are now available. These solutions range from instantly available (plug and play) to customized with specialized development or third-party applications. Some intranet solutions are generic in nature (e.g. Microsoft SharePoint), some cater to a specific industry (e.g. law firms), others to a certain language or geographic location.

Opting for a cloud-based or SaaS (service as a software) intranet over building one from scratch can significantly reduce the time required for adoption and implementation. The core product is already developed, tested and refined by the provider. After thorough research and testing, you can quickly deploy the chosen intranet. These providers also offer customization options and handle software updates, leaving you to focus on your internal communications strategy. And increasingly, these solutions are more robust than their client-side or on-premises solutions and certainly patched and updated more frequently and easily.

AI

Artificial intelligence promises to change the world, the universe and the intranet. Has it changed your world? Your life? Your work, yet? Almost certainly not.

AI is changing certain elements and enhancing others but also detracting from key components, like content creation. The intranet as you know it, just like email and the pre-AI explosion internet, will remain largely the same.

Read the complete article on Reworked, “The Future of Intranets 2025”

—

Toby Ward, a former journalist and a regular intranet and digital workplace columnist and speaker, is the President and Founder of intranet consulting firm Prescient Digital Media and has been writing and speaking about intranets for 25 years.

Small increases in employee engagement increase the value and ROI of the intranet and increases corporate profitability. An “engaged employee” is one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.

Harvard Business School conducted and ROI-engagement study that revealed for every 1% increase in employee engagement, the return on investment (ROI) for a social intranet increased 1000%.

Though intranet technology is nothing new, using it beyond a document dump and bulletin board or newsletter is still a stretch for some organizations. Very few organizations, in fact, have full social collaboration capabilities. The intranet, at the hub of the digital workplace (all digital tools), can promote two-way dialogue with and between employees, promote collaboration, and foster a sense of community within the organization.

Improving employee engagement

Two-Way Dialogue

An intranet provides a platform for employees to communicate and collaborate on projects, ideas, and feedback. It enables employees to share their knowledge, experience, and expertise with their colleagues, resulting in increased productivity and innovation. Commenting, discussion groups, idea jams, article sharing, wikis and blogs all encourage collaboration and idea sharing.

Adding comments to news articles and content pages can promote conversation, questions and comments. This dialogue can help intercept problem issues by alerting senior management and communicators to potential problems, as well as quash problems before they happen – not to mention promoting an active, connected culture that promotes discussion and idea sharing. This cannot help but pad the bottom line.

Online contests also help promote connection and a sense of belonging and engagement. For example, Canon has been encouraging employees to submit their own personal photos to the intranet and has held regular contests for the best photos from everything to weekend outings to holidays photos. Keysight Technologies won a best of the year intranet award for its collaboration features including an employee photo contest that runs every month.

Employee Recognition

An intranet can be used to recognize and reward employees for their contributions to the organization. This can include employee of the month programs, peer recognition, and other forms of recognition that help to boost employee morale and motivation. Many award-winning organizations ask employees to promote and nominate employees for recognition and rewards right on the intranet – on content pages, in discussion forums and in blogs. Some even add recognition badges and gamification to spice-up the collaboration and recognition process.

Highlight and award an employee of the month: create an employee of the month program and feature the winner on the intranet. Include a brief bio of the winner, their photo, and a summary of their accomplishments. This can then be highlighted on the home page, the employee newsletter and via internal network sites such as Yammer and Teams. Some intranets use recognition platforms and badges and point systems to reward and recognize employees on the intranet.

Employee Feedback

An intranet can be used to gather feedback from employees on various aspects of the organization, such as policies, procedures, and work environment. This feedback can be used to improve the organization and foster a culture of continuous improvement. Promote and ask for feedback at the end of news stories, and have a Feedback link and form in the footer of every page.

Quick polls can also be highly engaging. Quick polls are one question, mini-surveys that you can add to the home page, or any content page. Embed quick polls to related content such as a quick poll that asks what employee think of the new intranet during the first week of launch.

Training and Development

An intranet can be used to provide employees with access to training and development opportunities via the intranet. This can include online courses, webinars, and other resources that help employees to develop their skills and knowledge. Online training seems old-school and passe, but most employees want to continually learn throughout their career.

E-learning, or online learning, refers to the use of electronic technology to deliver online courses and facilitate learning outside of a traditional classroom setting. E-learning has become increasingly popular in recent years, with many organizations and educational institutions adopting online learning platforms as part of their training and development programs. The value of e-learning lies in its ability to provide flexible and personalized learning experiences that meet the needs of learners and organizations alike.

One of the primary advantages of e-learning is that it is accessible from anywhere and at any time. Employees can access course materials and complete assignments at their own pace and according to their own schedule. This makes e-learning an ideal option for individuals who work full-time or have other commitments that make it difficult to attend traditional classroom-based courses – and allows non-office employees who work from home to feel more connected to the organization.

Cost-Effectiveness

An intranet can be an effective tool for improving employee engagement. In the age of short attention spans, high demand for high-technology workplaces and inpatient millennials, the intranet can be a mission-critical force for driving employee engagement. By providing a platform for communication, collaboration, recognition, training, feedback, and benefits, an intranet can help to create a positive work environment that fosters employee engagement, productivity, and job satisfaction.

View the complete slides from: Intranets Drive Employee Engagement

—

Toby Ward, a former journalist and a regular intranet and digital workplace columnist and speaker, is the President and Founder of Prescient Digital Media and the Digital Workplace & Intranet Global Forum conference series.

Also read:
Dissecting Intranet Designs
SharePoint for Communicators: Content Management & Empowering Content Creation

Also find it on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/5BEPJhjyql1WSy9iWiVvhm)

Or listen directly on our Podbean website (https://toby7.podbean.com/)

The details in this case are highlighted and reviewed extensively in a special, dedicated webinar, “The People Behind Leading Intranets.”

Watch the full video replay of the dedicated webinar, People and the Intranet:

Or see the slides and all the screenshots used in People and the Intranet:

People and The Intranet

“The technology isn’t super important – most intranet platforms pretty much do the same things,” says Andrew Jayne, an intranet specialist who has managed intranets for some 20+ years. “Some are better at social, others are better at document management, but they all have the same basic functions.”

“People are far and away the most important thing. You can have the best content in the world, but if no one uses it, it’s not worth the server it’s sitting on. And if you don’t have the right folks at the helm, the user experience can actually make it a hated aspect of the workday”.

People

“People are more important than technology to the consistent management of content and functionality on the intranet,” says Ray Scippa, Publications Director for ConocoPhillips, a Fortune 500 and a global energy company with more than 11,000 employees spread across the Globe.

It will come as a surprise to many, that technology is the easy part – the most important ingredients behind successful intranets are people. As I’m fond of saying, technology is just an enabler: two-thirds of the necessary ingredients for a successful intranet are people and process (think rules and content management), technology is a necessity, but it’s the easy part.

“Our current technology, since the 2019 redesign, using Akumina and SharePoint, has served us well with few issues,“ says Scippa. “However, we recognize that technology continues to progress and will require us to consider changes soon.”

Employees go to the intranet for content. Period. They are not there to surf, or buy, or to socialize. Employees usually seek out forms, policies, phone numbers or some document related to their job – it may be from a static page, library or a dynamic app, but it’s content. Content is king and it’s created by people, which requires process and rules (think content management). Content is created by people, the rules and process are created by people, employees consume the content, and IT, HR and executives establish and support the governance and technology for doing so.

Ironically, it’s the technology that allows for less centralized intranet management: today fewer people manage and maintain the intranet compared to ten or 12 years-ago. Furthermore, the modern intranet promotes greater decentralized participation, and content publishing and sharing, at all levels of the employee spectrum, throughout the organization, from top to bottom.

The ConocoPhillips intranet home page, The Mark

Ten years ago, a company of 10,000 employees might have 4-8 people dedicated to the intranet (some got away with fewer). Today, that number is closer to one to four FTEs, and in some cases, no one is fully dedicated to the intranet. Rather, there are more generalists (not specialists) in IT, HR and communications that have some intranet responsibilities, but have roles for which the intranet is but one part of their work portfolio, one channel across the digital workplace.

Today, a global energy leader, with an award-winning intranet, ConocoPhillips has zero people dedicated solely to the intranet. Zero.

“No one works full-time on the intranet,” says Scippa. “The Communications team in Houston includes four colleagues dedicated to intranet content as part of their daily responsibilities (but are not dedicated solely to the intranet).”

ConocoPhillips communications team has communicators in 14 global locations around the world who manage their local sites. “Large business units, including Norway, Canada, Australia and Alaska have teams of four communicators. Smaller locations (i.e. those with less employees) such as China, Malaysia, Qatar and London, have one or two communicators,” adds Scippa.

ConocoPhillips’ decentralized content model promotes content from all locations and multiple communicators, regardless of their focus, from various business units and functions, who contribute editorial ideas and submit content for posting on the intranet.

Additionally, employees our encouraged to submit content, share ideas and stories, in their own words, to the intranet home page. “Our general employee audience can submit ideas for content via a link prominently displayed on the intranet’s main page,” says Scippa. “When the average employee submits an idea, we evaluate it and decide on the best approach. Often that means encouraging the person submitting the idea to produce a first draft for us to edit.”

ConocoPhillips has two IT professionals on-call to support the intranet for the Houston-based corporate communicators. And that’s it.

Of course, as important as communications and IT is to the intranet, there are two groups, as depicted in the Nexus of Intranet Success, that are more important: employee and executives.

Nexus of Intranet Success

Beyond the showcasing of successful intranet screenshots, the basis for most intranet award contests, which is a mistake for most organizations to copy (every organization is different), The Nexus of Intranet Success is a working model that emphasizes the mission-critical ingredients of a successful intranet. I refer to the collective intranet facets or ingredients for success as the Nexus of Intranet Succes (Nexus [‘nEksIs] comes from a Greek word meaning ‘meeting place’ – an appropriate moniker given the intranet’s position in the average organization).

Intranet model of success, “Nexus of Intranet Success,” © 2003-2023 Prescient Digital Media

Depicting the Nexus as an illustration, the main components required for a successful site or portal can be presented as a set of three concentric levels:

• Level 1, Executive Support
• Level 2, The Foundation (Planning, Resources, Value and Users)
• Level 3, Motivated Users

While some levels or factors may, on the surface, seem more important than others, optimal intranet and Internet success requires success on all levels – each working in conjunction with one another. Hence, the relevance of the ‘Nexus’. In reality, however, intranet success is mostly about people, as denoted by the inside and outside circles. The intranet is mostly about people…

Executive Support

At the centre of the Nexus or the heart of a site’s potential for success, is the backing of senior management – both moral and financial support. Many organizations have intranets that are mid-management or grass-root initiatives, and some enjoy a certain level of success. However, the potential of your intranet will never be fully realized without proper executive support and a senior management champion (ideally either the CEO or CIO).

The number one challenge facing corporate intranets today is not technology, nor tight budgets, but rather internal politics, specifically, the politics of competing priorities and management agendas. The second biggest hurdle is a financial one. To win these challenges you need senior management in your corner.

“Without the support, the site is more of an organizational afterthought and your work is almost an underground effort,” says Shel Holtz, ABC and IABC 20-year veteran of organizational communication. “So, if you want your site to be taken seriously, you need executive support.”

Before the project (build or re-design) can gain executive support, it must be presented and marketed to demonstrate how it can help the organization achieve its goals and objectives. The intranet must demonstrate measurable value insofar as it relates to company profits, earnings and revenue.

“Speak executive’s language, appeal not to technology but results,” says Holtz. “No executive loses sleep because the intranet doesn’t get enough hits or isn’t cool enough. Executives lose sleep over revenues, earnings, and competition. You need to demonstrate how your efforts will help executives sleep better.”

One way of pitching this idea to executives, as Holtz suggests, is to bring the executive team’s attention to articles from business publications that explain how other companies have achieved bottom-line success through the application of online technology.

Before you pitch your proposal to executive management, know what you want your site to achieve. Know the 5Ws for the site:

• Who will come?
• Why they are looking for your site?
• What they want to find?
• When they want it?
• Where they’ll find it?

The Foundation

Resources
Internet and intranet sites can be complex and very expensive. Few successful sites are developed and maintained by a single person using only internal resources. While hardware, software and people are the major resource requirements, specific investments in servers, databases, publishing mechanisms, search engines, self-service applications and editorial and technical staff account for the bulk of expenditures.

The biggest difficulty in conveying the necessity for adequate resources is that there is no rule-of-thumb – every organization is different with differing business requirements, access to infrastructure and internal technical skill sets. There is no standardized budget model for the development and operating costs of a site, many pundits often attempt to frame resource requirements by the annual cost-per-user. For example, at most medium- to large-size organizations, the annual intranet cost-per-user ranges anywhere from $50 – $1000 with $100 – $300 per user being the most common range.

Planning
Without thorough planning, your site could face extinction. Although executive approval and support is vital for the shape and funding of a site, without solid research and clearly stated requirements your intranet could waste considerable time, money, and effort.

An intranet manager at a major communications company recently lamented about the phenomenal amount of wasted time, money and effort exhausted in evolving their enterprise intranet portal that serves tens of thousands of employees. In one year, the intranet was redesigned three times – sucking significant funds and patience from an organization that should be using the intranet to support rather than drain the bottom-line. Of an extended team of more than a dozen people working on the intranet, only one person remains.

“Forget the online “field of dreams” epigram – if you build it, they will come,” advises Holtz. “Find out the who, what and why of the site. Then determine how you can meet your specific, measurable objectives with the audience and its needs.”

For more on Resources, Planning and “The Foundation”, see The Nexus of Intranet Success.

Motivated Users

“Building an intranet is one thing. Getting people to use it is another,” espouses Scott Kirsner, author of Intranet Marketing 101. Internet sites are no different.

Steve Crescenzo, a top-rated communications speaker, and consultant, equips business communicators with ways to motivate users to visit a site.

“Firstly, motivating users requires education and marketing to raise awareness of the site’s existence,” stresses Crescenzo in delivering his Integrating Print and Online workshop. “If you can get people there, you know they’re there because they want to be there.”

One way to get people there is to use a PUSH medium, like print or e-mail. Intranets are PULL communication vehicles – users need to be driven towards it. By integrating PUSH and PULL vehicles, you can combine the use of e-mail and print to help promote your intranet or Website.

If you choose to use e-mail to push users, be sure to use it with caution. Avoid sending too many e-mails – they can be intrusive, like junk mail, which winds up in the trash. Crescenzo offers six tips for maximizing your e-mail readability:

• Simple
• Consistent
• Short
• Scannable
• Not too wordy
• Links

The delete button is easy to get to,” says Crescenzo. “E-mail a little. Link a lot. Make links to different parts of the intranet.”

Once users are aware of the site and are using it, they also need to be motivated in continuing to use it. If users are not compelled to use the site, then they won’t, and it becomes a useless tool.
Intranet Success

True intranet success is rare and often fleeting. It takes a lot of work, with an emphasis on people, and process. To reach the rarefied air of intranet success, your site must be delivering on all three tiers of the Nexus model. Success is often pre-determined by the understanding and support offered by your organization’s executives (senior management) and is delivered by motivated employee users who keep returning. The in-between – planning, resources, use and value – is the foundation or blueprint for success and the ‘devil’ in the details.

Watch the full video replay of the dedicated webinar, People and the Intranet:

Or see the slides and all the screenshots used in People and the Intranet:

—

Toby Ward, a former journalist and a regular intranet and digital workplace columnist and speaker, is the President and Founder of Prescient Digital Media and the Digital Workplace & Intranet Global Forum conference series.

Also read:
Dissecting Intranet Designs
SharePoint for Communicators: Content Management & Empowering Content Creation