Intranet Solution Not Delivering?
You didn’t jump into your intranet solution overnight. You took the time to do your research, choose the intranet software that would work best for your company, and test out the software before deploying it to the business as a whole. Unfortunately, things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped. If you’re experiencing any of these common problems with your business intranet, don’t worry! You can still adapt your intranet to make it work for your company.
Problem 1: Intranet Software Confusion
Solution 1: Simplify. It’s easy to get bogged down in the bells and whistles that will help take your intranet to the next level. You might have installed multiple levels of security, included a maze of forums, and dumped as much information as possible onto the intranet. Your varied forms, stacks of documents, and other critical information were all uploaded at once. While it’s great that you’ve provided all the information, your employees could possibly need, simplifying your intranet can make it much easier for employees to figure out how to use it. There are several ways to make your intranet simpler.
- Remove unnecessary features, including those you’d like to add back in later. These might include unnecessary forums, documents that aren’t really necessary for your employees’ current needs, and forms that are more easily accessible in other places throughout your office.
- Keep your security simple. The harder it is to log in, the more complicated your users will find the entire process.
- Double check your search function to ensure that it easily pulls up whatever your employees are looking for. Check it from both mobile devices and computers.
- Streamline your homepage. While employees should be able to access the things they need straight from the homepage, you should also prevent it from becoming cluttered.
Solution 2: Provide training. Many employees may struggle to understand how to use the intranet simply because it’s unfamiliar technology. If you want to be sure that your employees understand the new software, it’s important to take the time to train them. It doesn’t have to be a complicated training process, especially if your intranet software is simple and intuitive. Providing basic training, however, will help ensure that everyone understands how to use the new intranet to full advantage–and that includes all those additional features.
Problem 2: No One’s Using Your Intranet Software
You designed your intranet according to the needs of your employees. You took each department from within the business into consideration, and you were sure that you’d offered benefits that were useful to employees across the company. Now that it’s been deployed to the company as a whole, however, no one is actually using it. Most employees seem to prefer their old methods for sharing information, accessing documents, and other critical processes.
- Why is the intranet difficult to use?
- What would you like to see done differently?
- What do you like about the new intranet software?
- What additional features would you like to see added to the intranet?
- Specific questions regarding little-used features or information that’s newly available on the intranet.
Solution 2: Check your mobile accessibility. One of the most critical features of your intranet should be its ease of use from mobile devices. Employees are accessing the intranet from everywhere: when they’re on the road for business, when they’re working out of the office for the day, or when they’re at home, checking up on something at work before returning to family tasks. If you want your intranet to be truly useful for your employees, make sure that it works well across mobile devices.
Problem 3: Use Falls Off Over Time
Your employees started off using the company’s intranet software extensively. In the early weeks following deployment, it was one of the company’s most valuable tools. Unfortunately, the longer it’s been in use, the fewer employees are using it! What you thought was a highly efficient, effective intranet solution simply isn’t working for your company anymore.
Solution 1: Provide new content. Things have changed at your business since the initial deployment of your intranet. The content that was so valuable to your employees months or even years ago is no longer useful, but you may still feature it prominently on your homepage. Your intranet should be a growing part of your business. Anytime your business changes, your intranet should change along with it. Remove old, irrelevant content and look for ways to add new, exciting content. Maintaining an employee blog, regularly updating the employee calendar, and encouraging forum usage are all great ways to improve the odds that your employees will use the intranet as it was designed.
Have you have encountered similar issues with your company intranet, please comment below, we’d love to hear and respond to your questions and thoughts. If your current intranet solution isn’t working for you or if you’re ready to deploy effective intranet software to help increase communication and efficiency within your company, contact us! We’ll work with you to troubleshoot potential problems even before your intranet is deployed to the company. We’re familiar with many common problems and can help you avoid them before they become an issue, but if you do have a problem, we’ll help every step of the way until the problem has been solved and your intranet solution is working effectively once more.
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