How To Create An Intranet
The entire goal of intranet construction is to create an intranet that your employees will use. You want an intranet that is effective, useful, and contains plenty of information that will help make the work day flow more smoothly for your employees. If you want to know how to create an intranet that works for your employees there are several things that you need to take into consideration throughout the design process.
Involve Employees Throughout The Creation Process
Understanding how to engage employees from several different departments is a critical step in developing an intranet that will provide for all of their needs. An intranet that works for management is great, but what you really need is a functional intranet that will work smoothly for every employee who accesses it. By involving and engaging someone from each department, you can create an intranet that will have significantly better odds of working for everyone. For example, you can:
Construct A Survey to Evaluate Needs
Your survey should be constructed to invite honest feedback. Consider making it anonymous so people will feel more freedom with their answers. Ask clear, concrete questions.
Seek Out Employee Input
An online forum, a specific address where emails can be collected, or even a comment box can all offer opportunities for employees throughout the building to share their ideas. Taking the suggestions doesn’t mean that you have to use them; it just means that you’ll have a better idea of what the needs of everyone in the building are.
Invite Employees To Test The Intranet Software
A great tip is to invite employees to test the intranet software before you deploy it to the whole business. During this initial stage, you don’t want to limit deployment to a handful of departments. Instead, you want to stretch it over as many as possible and invite feedback to help you make those final adjustments that will take your intranet from “acceptable” to “successful.”
Keep An Eye On Employee Workflow
Be Clear About Your Requirements
If you’re using a cloud service provider like MyHub Intranet Solutions for your intranet, you’ll be working with an established company that has a great deal of experience building intranet templates that will work for a variety of different businesses. They can’t help you, however, if they don’t know what you need from your intranet solution! The clearer you are about your requirements, the easier it will be for your provider to help you develop the features you need. Create a spreadsheet or list that is clear enough to help your provider understand your needs and share it with them early in the design process. Don’t limit your explanation to a few short words about what you want. Include why you want it. As you build your unique intranet solution, your provider may be able to offer tips to streamline the process and help you get the results you want.
You Intranet Should Grow With Your Business
- Add new content as it becomes relevant to your users.
- Delete content that is no longer relevant.
- Check regularly to make sure that needed content is easily accessible to everyone who needs it, including performing routine searches.
- Adapt forums and apps to provide the pieces needed by the company rather than keeping them just because “it’s always been that way.”
Your intranet is a growing part of the business. What works perfectly this month may be completely obsolete by next year, and that’s not always a bad thing! Instead, it means that your company is growing and that the intranet must adapt along with it.
Ensure Your Intranet Is Mobile-Friendly
- Keep file sizes small so that they will load efficiently on mobile devices.
- Make sure your search functionality works efficiently. It’s often harder to search from a mobile device!
- Implement mobile responsive design from the beginning. Don’t force mobile users to scroll sideways to finish reading text or to squint at a screen filled with too-small font.
- Check your intranet’s performance on mobile devices just as regularly as you check its performance on desktop computers.
Add Features That Are Important To Employees
If you’re ready to create a cloud-based intranet based on a template that has worked for many businesses before you while working with a knowledgeable team of professionals who are committed to helping you develop a successful intranet for your business, contact us. We’ll work with you to create an intranet that will work for your business, engage all the employees within your building, and help improve employee engagement and satisfaction throughout the entire company.
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