Now more than ever, the digital workplace experience is being shaped by our changing physical workplaces.
Complex organizations in fields as diverse as SaaS, the built environment and education rely increasingly on an enterprise intranet to not only provide the tools and resources employees need to work, but to drive strategic objectives – and knit the fabric of their organizations as well.
It’s a lot to ask of an intranet solution, and not all of them are up to the task.
Therefore, when you are trying to work out the essence of what your intranet needs to do to at your organization, you might be overlooking the simple things that have the biggest impact on your employees’ digital workplace experience.
Keep reading, and we will explain what those three things are.
What does an enterprise intranet need to do to transform the digital workplace experience?
When we spoke to Andy Hodges, CEO of Thinkshare and Microsoft Partner, we asked him what he thinks the best intranets should do.
His response was threefold:
- Increase employee engagement.
- Bring people together and increase an employee’s sense of belonging.
- Help information be found quicker.
Of course, while this is just one answer, Andy’s response is a good guide for prioritizing what you should look for in an intranet solution – simply because these three traits correspond with three key strategic outcomes in any digital workplace transformation project:
So, if these are the three ways you can transform the digital workplace experience, how do you turn an enterprise intranet into a driving force for a digital workplace transformation?
Intranet for increasing employee engagement
With as many as 6/10 workers feeling disconnected from their workplace, engagement is perhaps one of the largest challenges for large organizations to tackle.
However, as Gallup has identified, it isn’t remote work that is behind workplace (dis)connection. It’s about workers feeling seen, heard and aligned with the company mission.
As we have explained previously, enterprise intranet can be the vehicle for that alignment – simply by connecting employees on a social level.
What’s the solution?
You may be surprised to learn that ¾ employees feel like they are missing out on vital company information and news. Perhaps equally as surprising is that it’s not a difficult fix with a workplace intranet.
As a ‘hub’ for all activity, a centralized news feed for the organization provides a familiar and user-friendly means to keep users connected with company goings-on.
Beyond this, however, a ‘social intranet’ also creates a more ‘democratic’ experience in the workplace:
- Firstly, by fostering grassroots, user-generated content;
- Secondly, by creating a more ‘informal’ way for leadership to engage with employees through content such as Q&As.
Simply put, far from being productivity-sinks, ‘social’ features can generate discussion that help make employees feel valued.
Increasing an employee’s sense of belonging with intranet
As you may already know, more engaged employees are more likely to stay at a company: up to 87% more likely, in fact.
However, retention is also boosted by something equally intangible – belonging.
As you are aware, as the replacement for a ‘physical’ workplace, the digital workplace experience increasingly has to be personalized to accommodate the way employees prefer to work – rather than creating a “two-speed” experience.
What’s the solution?
It can be easily understood that an enterprise intranet that adapts to the needs of its users is more likely to foster a sense of inclusion, so a few ways in which an enterprise intranet, such as LiveTiles, can achieve this are:
- Automatic translation of intranet, including all information, messages and conversations.
- Adaptability to mobile or desktop access, ensuring employees can access their digital workplace in a way that suits them.
- Deep personalization, which provides employees control over the content their intranet delivers them.
Beyond belonging, personalization also drives greater than average ROI and user satisfaction.
However, there is one last area we haven’t yet touched on that is critical for transforming the digital workplace experience.
Using intranet to find information quicker
We have already discussed why the best intranets are those that help essential information be found the quickest, but in summary, the greatest impact intranet can achieve in this respect is:
- Reducing the amount of irrelevant information employees receive
- Minimizing the time it takes for employees to find what they are looking for
Of course, there is more than one reason to reduce ‘information overload’ (from increased user satisfaction to reduced stress) but it’s a prerequisite for productivity: most knowledge workers lose up to 1 day every week looking for information in their digital workplaces.
What’s the solution?
In a digital workplace, intranet must be the ‘digital front door’ to all of the resources, tools and contacts your employees need, minimizing irrelevant notifications and streamlining their journey from A to B via targeted search.
That’s why the gold standard of effective internal communication lies in three intranet features:
- Relevant notifications
- Quick Links
- Powerful search
In most enterprise applications, these are three separate tools. In LiveTiles, these are united into one Everywhere Widget.
We explain everything the Everywhere Widget does here, but in short, it transforms the digital workplace experience in a very simple way: by turning the act of information-finding into seamless delivery of hyper-relevant information.
Enterprise intranet needs to do more.
As you already know, your intranet isn’t just a publishing tool or a message delivery service. it’s expected to be a single source of truth, a hub for all your knowledge, and the means to bring your distributed organization together.
LiveTiles is designed to transform how your employees interact with their digital workplace, and if you are one of the 1,000,000+ businesses that uses Microsoft, you can make the most of your Microsoft investment by using a SharePoint Intranet like LiveTiles.
If you are ready to transform your digital workplace experience, just book a demo to see what it can do for you.
