The Intranet: An Essential (But Sometimes Overlooked) Component of Employee Engagement

Employees are not only the face of a company, they are the company. Employees can be trusted brand ambassadors, and it’s vital that a company’s employees are included in and given avenues to be involved in company communications. However… with so many competing priorities, active internal communication efforts often get pushed to the wayside, and they shouldn’t! Companies must remember that when employees love their job, it shows, and the ripple effect of that honest and organic company adoration can be greater than any pre-planned marketing campaign.

An Intranet is a great place to start! It’s a venue built to provide staff with news and upcoming events as well as allow for employee interaction. While a company Intranet can be an amazing employee engagement tool, unfortunately, many companies allow their Intranet to be an afterthought to external communication efforts. From the employee perspective, we all have experienced an ineffective Intranet. Not only does it not engage you, but it can also be a labor intensive, jargon-laden, top-down static-content filled monster. But when built and used correctly, a company Intranet can be an important venue for employee collaboration and communication.

Does your company need to take another look at its Intranet strategy? If so… keep reading, this post is for you!

Get started by listening to employees. It is important for companies to periodically do a “pulse check” with employees to help select and then effectively use the most appropriate communications channels– be it the Intranet, face-to-face meetings, newsletters, or social networks. Employers must pay attention to what works effectively within their own organization. As communicators, the phrases, “know what the audience wants” or “know where the audience is” are used when building any outreach strategy. The same questions apply for any Intranet manager, except in this case; the “audience” is the employee. In order for an Intranet to be successful, it is essential that companies understand the needs and wants of employees.

Then develop a team. Along the lines of being an afterthought, a pitfall for many companies is having only ne person in HR, Marketing or Communications manage the Intranet alone. Much like anything else in IMC, building an effective Intranet takes resources. The Intranet team should be comprised of a cross-section of employees from nearly every department. In fact, in 2014, the average intranet team size was 16 members!

Work on an Intranet is never truly finished, and too often, companies build an effective Intranet and then it dies due to lack of updated content and technology. Like with any social media channel, it is essential to continue to add and update content on a regular basis in order to keep people engaged. Companies can also engage employees in publishing content, which even further expands the Intranet team and helps to build employee ownership.

Incorporate new tools and think “CONTENT”. The goal of an Intranet is to make engagement and participation easy for employees. Some key Intranet tools include:

Creative Content: Follow the rules of external communications! Intranets should be filled with short and easy-to-read text along with multi-media videos and photos. Compelling content can include everything from training materials and resource links to bullet points, interactive company manifestos and storytelling. Homepages must be dynamic, engaging and ever changing. The Intranet should showcase information that is relevant to topics being discussed across the company, as well as tailored to the individual.

Personalization and Customization: Move beyond the dreaded list of employee photos and instead, allow employees to connect with one another, upload profile information and add interests and skills. Connective features that link the Intranet to social media networks like LinkedIn can make it easier for employees to participate.

Communications and Feedback: Allow readers to react to and interact with the content, either through feedback, comments or liking a page. Top Intranets, allow employees to provide feedback instantly via comments or like/rating systems. This can help companies learn what types of content are most important to their users as well as allow for employee engagement and ownership.

Quality Search: Ineffective search is one of the biggest criticisms users have of any poorly designed website or Intranet. Having a powerful, intelligent search allows employees to access what they are looking for quickly and efficiently.

Peer-to-Peer Recognition: With a peer-to-peer recognition tool, the ability to thank those who go the extra mile is put in the hands of colleagues rather than just supervisors. Small thanks can often be a stimulus to keep employees working hard. Allowing employees to thank one another also encourages interaction.

Reflect Company Culture: While the intranet is primarily a ‘tool’ for getting work done, it should also be used to express the company culture, mission and values. The Intranet can help everyone in the company understand the company brand and how they fit into it.

Then put it together and what have you got? A great Intranet!

If you are looking for inspiration, one fantastic example comes from National Geographic who, in 2014, was named the creator of one of the world’s 10 best Intranets. Their rebuilt Intranet allowed National Geographic’s 2,000 employees to interact with one another using real-time information exchanges and social collaboration tools.

The new National Geographic Intranet is highly visual, social and content-relevant. It has made employee collaboration easy and exciting. The new Intranet design opens information-sharing and content ownership to the entire user population at National Geographic. The site also effectively conveys the culture and history of the company through stunning photography and storytelling.

Since the redesign at National Geographic, about 70 percent of the staff uses the intranet at least twice a day to catch up on news or use resources such as the company directory. More than two thirds of the employees have updated their directory profiles and the venue has become a great tool for skill sharing within the organization and helping employees to connect.

Think of a new Intranet as “paying it forward” – it’s a worthwhile investment in the future of a company. It’s a tool that unites employees and opens information-sharing. Additionally, by allowing for employees to take ownership of content and personal profiles, employees will be more likely to visit and use the site more often as well has have a deeper investment in the organization, its mission and each other.

Don’t Forget Public Relations

As practitioners of Integrated Marketing Communications, one aspect of the marketing mix that I often see as an after-thought is what I refer to as Marketing Public Relations.  It is an integral piece of the pie and can reap measurable benefits to all sizes of organizations. And, best of all, many of the tactics are free.

Most of the time, PR is a separate department housed in the Corporate Communications group.   And, they are focused on what I label, as mentioned above, as “Corporate PR” versus “Marketing PR”.  In my opinion, Corporate PR covers investor relations, crisis management, media editorial board management and internal communications, while Marketing PR covers things like press relations, events, sponsorships and community outreach. Marketing PR is what I feels gets lost in the shuffle.  The fact is most marketing departments at medium to small sized companies simply do not have the resources to put a whole lot of effort against Marketing PR.  Sure they participate in events, set-up sponsorships but have a hard time with activation of these due to time constraints and resources.

Both are very important but need to be integrated either by combining the functions, or better yet, developing a team that functions together to tell the corporate story.

Marketing PR’s value is that it can help companies that are smaller get their message out quickly and extend the promotional time period of their efforts through repeated media relations efforts and social media efforts such as blogging.  You no longer just have to launch an advertising campaign and let it run, you can create other stories around the advertising program in the form of on-going public relations.  Let’s not forget about it as an integral part of the integrated marketing mix and work with our corporate PR partners to find and execute on the value it can provide.

When Your Coworkers Are Your Clients

You go out to lunch with them, vent to them, and stand around literal or proverbial water coolers with them. They’re you’re coworkers. If you’re in the world of internal communications, they’re also your clients.  Lunches turn to question-and-answer sessions about benefits; venting about system error messages is directed at you; and water cooler banter becomes a forum for employee engagement discussions.

Yes, things are different when your audience is an employee population rather than an external market. With that said, they must be treated the same.  They deserve the same level of empathetic, reliable, and timely service.  They create value, and they should in turn be valued.

This is one of the reasons the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Program is a perfect fit for anyone communicating to internal audiences. It takes a very client-centric approach, promoting a detailed understanding of the behaviors, attitudes, and needs of consumer segments.

I have been particularly excited about my next course, Internal Brand Communication, because it will be highly applicable to the campaigns I lead in Human Resources (HR).  The reality, however, is that every course I have had thus far in the program has helped me enhance my role as an HR communicator.  Here’s how:

• Introduction to IMC: The program’s first course lays the framework for consistency in communication. This consistency is important to the HR department, as they must be a recognizable, trusted voice. It is equally essential for the department’s messages to fit into an overall communication strategy that furthers the organization’s mission.
• Marketing Research and Analysis: It is important for organizations to keep a finger to the pulse of the people. Are employees reading and responding to communications? What opportunities are there to increase understanding? How does the workforce feel about the organization as a whole? Questionnaires and engagement surveys are some of the tools this course helps practitioners deploy.
• Brand Equity Management: The basis for the HR communicator lies in promoting and protecting an organization’s internal brand. This course puts this in context by emphasizing that a brand is the perception that exists in the mind of the consumer (in this case, the employee). It can also prepare professionals to ensure the internal brand supports – and is supported by – the external brand.
• Creative Strategy and Execution: Daily, employees receive urgent email requests, countless voicemail messages, and lengthy meeting agendas. From the HR department alone, they are inundated with policy updates, newsletters, benefit reminders, training materials, and more. This course shows how to increase readership by producing messages that “break through the clutter.”
• Direct Marketing: The focus of direct marketing is on utilizing client databases to drive targeted communications. HR communicators maintain files of current employees and retirees, and must work with them to create distribution lists. This course can help you organize, utilize, and scrutinize data for your entire organization in a secure manner.
• Emerging Media and the Market: New forms of media hold great potential for the world of HR. Blogs, for example, can provide a window into employee perceptions. Social media outlets can support the onboarding process. This elective analyzes these opportunities, while offering caution as to how emerging media can be equally detrimental to employers.
• Healthcare Marketing: As wellness programs continue to grow in popularity as part of an organization’s Total Rewards, this elective is incredibly relevant.  The science behind the curriculum shows how theories of behavior change can help associates adopt and maintain positive lifestyles. This can provide a significant opportunity for employers to control healthcare costs and increase worker productivity.
• Visual Information Design: Everything that comes from the HR department – or any department for that matter – should be impeccably designed. Benefits information should be digested at a glance. Training guides should be easy to follow. Internet and Intranet sites should be readily navigable.  This course shows you how to improve the look, feel, and overall user experience. Your employees will thank you.
• Sports Marketing: Measurable objectives take center court in this elective, as they do in the arena of HR. From hiring to retention to addressing the employee engagement discussions at the water cooler, it is important for the HR professional to set goals and demonstrate achievement.  And, of course, the coursework helps make you well-versed when the water cooler chat shifts back to sports.