2020 intranet trends are always eagerly anticipated. Here at Sorce we have hotly debated our ideas on what's on the horizon and would like to share our top 6 with you to consider when thinking about your own 2020 intranet plans.
1. Mental Health AwarenessAccording to the charity, MIND at any one time, at least one in six workers are experiencing common mental health problems, including anxiety and depression. Depending on which article you read, poor mental health is costing UK employers between £42-£94 billion a year.
Good mental health enables us to thrive and businesses leaders are increasingly recognising this too with importance being placed on wellbeing in the workplace.
Our intranets can support our user’s well-being by providing an engaging, supporting workplace, encouraging connections and removing some of the barriers and anxiety triggers that we experience in our everyday work life. A well-being page, promoting content, resources and what to do if you do feel you need support and where to find it, are expected.
2. Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace
According to the Boston Consulting Group (2019) 74% of those surveyed in the UK earlier this year were aware their organisations had launched a diversity programme but only 33% of them felt they have gained anything from it. Diversity can bring real benefits to your business, helping increase staff retention, innovation and ultimately return on investment.
More and more business are embracing their intranets to help support their Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace initiatives. Pages, showcasing latest news to raise awareness, video's documents and key contacts are all ways of helping ensure information reaches your users. We believe this is an area every business should be utilising their intranet for and we can help show you how.
3. Environmental Consciousness
We all have a responsibility to review our working practices to ensure we are doing all we can to reduce our carbon footprint. Businesses can take the obvious steps of encouraging recycling, refillable water stations, reducing paper and energy efficient lighting and heating. Intranets though can help us go one step further by providing a central document management facility to reduce paper throughout the organisation and by enabling employees to work flexibility and from anywhere, reducing the need to commute into the office.
4. Workplace Flexibility
Today, it's the norm for employees to expect flexible working but how can businesses support this whilst still ensuring the business functions and achieves its goals? We all know a happy team is a productive team, but did you realise that your intranet can support your business in encouraging a flexible workplace? Engaging and connecting your users is a primary intranet function and helps transform intranets into a fully interactive experience that immerses the user wherever they are.
5. Human Resources
From recruitment to training and business processes, the coming years will see a trend in more and more of these traditional HR roles being implemented through your intranets. From personalised bite size video training and new starter inductions your intranet can transform the way your business operates. When employees have trust in their HR team, everyone succeeds.
6. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is already making a huge business impact, with virtual voice assistants, chatbots and connecting our own homes. In our homes, many of us experience artificial intelligence every day. In the future, chatbots will help you find business documents and help you connect with the right employee instantly for specific projects or functions.
Another trend to watch out for is voice recognition. Many of us use Alexa and Siri as part of our daily lives and these virtual assistants can also be a central part of our intranets, helping perform search activities and even voice record messages/video for colleagues. In the future you can imagine a wholly voice activated intranet, without the need for keyboards.
I hope this has given you something to think about as we approach the end of 2019. If you are considering an intranet project please get in touch and let us show you how we can help you.
