How to make your intranet more useful, relevant and trusted
"Pointless. Out-of-date. Confusing". In our channel audit and measurement work with clients, we frequently hear these words used by people to describe their intranet.
And another complaint we often hear is that employees just don’t trust the content they find on their intranet.
So how can internal communicators turn that around – you’re investing money and time in intranet platforms to be the ‘source’ across our organisations?
Our 2023 Q3 trends topic focused on governance. It’s the necessary mix of rules, guidance, policies and processes that keep an intranet in tip top shape.
When an intranet is first launched, the focus on populating it and planning it is likely to be high, but this can sadly drop off as the weeks and months go on and that sense of ownership can slip.
Equally, it’s important for comms departments to plan content going forward and, worryingly, a recent Gallagher State of the Sector Report reports that only 33% of respondents planned their intranets using a specific editorial calendar.
Sequel has a huge amount of experience helping clients avoid the pitfalls and create and maintain intranets that engage and inform. Here are some quick actions from the Trends Report to get you started:
- Develop a community of intranet content owners and published, but make sure they are trained and that you have regular meetings
- Create and keep a content lifecycle process that ensures your intranet doesn’t become bloated. Archive where necessary
- Have a triage process for what goes onto the intranet – it isn’t the right channel for everything. Consider whether the content is better suited for other channels, be it Teams, email or face-to-face communication.
Request our guide on ‘how to maintain an effective intranet’ here How to guides – Sequel Group
Go to Intranet solutions – Sequel Group for more details of how we are helping clients solve challenges and delivering impact.
