The introduction of an intranet to an organisation or business is often a response to one of three main issues. First – problems disseminating and supplying information to a distributed workforce. Second – coordinating and engaging staff within a large scale organisation. Finally, providing and monitoring the consumption of training and compliance tasks. Let’s look at these three issues and see how an intranet can be of value.
Providing up to date information to your workforce can be difficult. Transferring documents is hard enough already – do you use an external tool (such as Dropbox) to create an online repository? Or an internal server in the office? Maybe give up entirely and use email! An intranet solves these issues by creating an accessible, version-controlled and searchable database that you can populate with essential documents. Because this Document Library is integrated into the intranet platform natively, system administrators have access to the powerful permissions engine to ensure that content is available only to those that need it.
The issue of information supply is also partially solved by KnowledgeBase – an application suitable for distributing organisational knowledge not necessarily fit for a document. Frequently asked questions, relevant links and public forums allow the ‘local knowledge’ of an organisation to flourish. Publishing local knowledge allows staff to ask questions, poll users, and receive answers in a timely and accurate manner. These queries are used to build the KnowledgeBase and can become a valuable resource for onboarding new employees and capturing a snapshot of your organisation.
Coordinating and engaging with staff members in a large business can be a daunting task. A standard solution is a monthly newsletter, though the amount of work required to create and distribute it can quickly render it a waste of time. Another solution is a yearly networking event, and while these are good for engagement, they lack consistent presence in staff’s working lives. An intranet allows upper management to create and publish content for their employees. News articles can be created and distributed quickly, compiling into an archived series of searchable content. Events, anniversaries and training days can be published and passed onto the relevant parties without the need for user lists and endless email chains. Smaller modules such as recognition and polls allow users to give praise and obtain staff input on topics, respectively. With constant engagement comes staff interaction and the collection of useful data for analytics.
Supplying, verifying and managing compliance documentation can be critical in a large organisation. In a disconnected offline office, verifying compliance tasks would involve significant time and effort, resulting in lost productivity. By leveraging the Intranet’s monitoring and data collection methods, compliance tasks are simple and efficient. With robust permissions control, supplying documents to relevant employees is quick, simple and secure. The Intranet is also able to track the status of compliance documents, allowing administrative users to confirm that the information is received, read and acknowledged.
Connecting staff with essential information and engaging them with your organisation is the cornerstone of long term industry success. In addition to disseminating information quickly, an Intranet gives your staff a voice through powerful communication applications. This voice empowers teams and individuals to put their best foot forward, confident not only in their tools but the organisation they represent.
