Let’s jump forward in time for some and for others it’s right here and now. You have just launched your new intranet, you took your time and engaged with your end users, understood their needs, the business processes, engaged a great steering committee and now 6 months on you are wondering why your intranet engagement stats are in decline. What’s going on?
Intranet engagement is all about instilling the want and the need amongst all of your end users to keep repeat visiting your intranet site and to do stuff whilst they are there. What they do is down to you and your organisation. You might really want them to download policy documents, update their profiles, join groups, be enthused by the great work you are doing and ultimately use the intranet how you designed it.
But your stats are telling you that your page views, downloads and posts are starting to decline and you are not sure how to reverse this trend. Well, the good news is you can but you need to make sure engagement is one of your key drivers. You can’t be wholly responsible for doing this on your own. The intranet steering committee needs to work together to improve your intranet engagement.
Here are my 5 intranet engagement kickstarts
1. Be Topical
Just as your organisation’s product or service might have an annual cycle, so should your intranet topical content. Where possible, plugging into celebrated events, seasons, or charity events is a great way of making sure your content is relevant to your readers.
For example this week is Children in Need. Is your organisation doing anything? Is it featured on the intranet? To encourage colleagues to explore your intranet site, you could hold a virtual treasure hunt by including special images on various pages that they have to find and helpful clues to find them.
I know I have mentioned Christmas before, but it’s not far away and it’s a great way to ride the wave of goodwill in the office and maybe highlight relevant processes such as how to go about booking annual leave.
2. Don’t forget to educate
Think of ways in which you can gently remind colleagues how to do specific tasks. Engagement may have slowed because they can’t quite remember how to do something or just not sure of where it is. Maybe some helpful and fun “how to” videos might go down well and answer important questions.
3. Recognise great work and achievements
The intranet isn’t just about the Company performance and updates from the CEO. People like to know what other people are up to. So a charity fundraising area, celebrating colleagues achievements in or out of work are very well received along with exciting work projects or news stories would be a great way to achieve this.
4. The Element of Surprise
Delighting your colleagues and exceeding their expectations is a sure way to get them to come back to the intranet again and again. Your continual development programme, tackling user issues, business processes and new functionality should be communicated to your colleagues and celebrate successes.
5. Ask colleagues what they think
Don’t forget to ask colleagues what they think of the intranet and ways in which you can improve it further for them. People like to be asked for their opinions and comments and feel they are valued and as an Intranet Manager looking to continually improve your intranet, their feedback positive or negative is like gold for you.
I hope you can take away some of these ideas and think about how they could relate to your intranet and organisation.
As intranet software and consultancy providers our software powers the intranet and extranet for hundreds of organisations. Our clients cover a wide range of sectors from finance to manufacturing, not for profit organisations (such as charities and housing associations) as well as local authorities and other public sector agencies.