5 common business challenges and how to overcome them with a modern intranet

Frequently, a modern intranet is defined by features and functionalities. The more, the better. Right? Well, not exactly. When customers come to Involv, we always start with the question “What problems are you trying to solve?”, in other words, “What business challenges are you facing?”. This is essential information we base on to help customers build an intranet that is effective and meaningful for everyone in the organization.

It’s crucial to figure out business challenges and how the intranet can address them.

These are the top 5 common business challenges a modern intranet can tackle.

1) Internal communication

Many businesses suffer from internal communication problems. News is delivered through a weekly newsletter but gets missed or ignored, the published news and updates are irrelevant to most and thus unengaging, or communication is only one-way, to name only a few. The good news is implementing a modern intranet can help you overcome those problems.

For example, with Involv intranet you can increase relevancy and engagement by adding a target audience to your news, events, jobs.

Especially when communicating changes, you need your message to be heard by the entire workforce. It’s important that your communication channels are fast, targeted, social and mobile-friendly. And that is what a modern intranet can offer.

Social feature such as likes, comments and shares will help to boost engagement, interaction and avoid one-way communication.

2) Company culture

Companies with a strong culture reap the benefits. Their employees are more likely to be more engaged, creative and productive. What’s more, employee retention rates in these companies are significantly higher.

Your intranet is a perfect place to promote your company culture. Here are some ideas:

+ Keep everyone up to date with company news, relevant and engaging information

+ Make your intranet the main platform for the management team to share their vision

+ Engage employees with fun polls or feedback surveys

+ Encourage collaboration by including a people finder in your intranet

+ Promote interactions between colleagues and teams by adding social features and fun stuff such as birthdays

3) Employee lifecycle

“First impressions are lasting”. The onboarding is a very important stage in the employee lifecycle. According to SHRM (Society For Human Resources Management), new employees who experienced great onboarding were 69% more likely to stay with a company for at least three years.

By having an intranet which is enriched with relevant news, events, activities, wikis, a people’s directory, etc., you provide new hires with a great place to get to know more about your company, the company culture and colleagues. Make your intranet become a one-stop-shop for everything an employee needs to get work done from day one.

4) Remote/Mobile workers

Today 80% of the global workforce are deskless workers. When it comes to internal communication, most organizations fail to reach the entire workforce, particularly these non-desk employees. These people are always on the move and often miss out on internal communications such as news, events, announcements, etc. Being able to reach the entire workforce and engage people wherever they are is a real challenge to most organizations.

The good news is an intranet that has a mobile version can help you overcome this challenge. Your mobile workers don’t have regular access to a computer? Thankfully, nowadays, almost everyone has a smartphone, allowing them to easily access whatever digital platform. With the right intranet mobile app solution and the right internal communication strategy in place, a mobile workforce can be just as engaged and connected as the in-office team – in a secure way.

5) Workplace productivity

Many things can affect workplace productivity. Not having the right tools is one of them. Outdated tools or tools that don’t connect well with the other business applications lead to inefficiency and loss of productivity. They cause people to waste time on doing things that don’t contribute to the business.

According to a survey conducted by McKinsey, employees spend 1.8 hours every day – 9.3 hours per week, on average, searching and gathering information. Information spreads across email, files, chat messages and external softwares that are disconnected from each other. Workers, therefore can’t find the information needed to do their job quickly.

Implementing a modern intranet where workers have access to everything they need to get their work done, will certainly improve productivity. Great features such as an FAQ and a powerful search make sure your intranet becomes the go-to destination for finding answers and sharing knowledge.

And there are more intranet features that will increase workplace productivity. A document management system helps people share, co-edit and find documents. A people directory makes sure  everyone can connect with their colleagues and find specific expertise fast. What’s more; there’s the possibility to set up forms and flows that will eliminate recurring and time consuming tasks.

Conclusion:

Chances are you too are experiencing some of these 5 common business problems. Some can be tackled easily but some need their own approach and designed solution as every business is unique and different.

I can’t emphasize it enough, there is no one-size-fit-all intranet platform for all businesses. What you need is to carefully figure out your business challenges and choose the right intranet vendor who understands your challenges and helps you build your intranet solution.

(Photo by Unsplash)