According to research from McKinsey, nearly three in four companies (72%) use social technologies in some way within their organization—including intranets.
Intranets can drive a variety of positive changes at your company (for example, according to research from Deloitte, when organizations implement social technologies like intranets, they see a 20 percent increase in employee satisfaction). And one of the major benefits of intranets? Improved internal communication.
You can use the intranet to empower better communication with and between your team members—but only if you understand how to use the intranet from an internal communication perspective.
So how, exactly, do you improve your internal communication using an intranet? Let’s take a look at four strategies for leveraging intranets to improve internal communication within your company:
Use the intranet to push out important information to your entire team…
Your entire company has access to the intranet. And from an internal communications perspective, this makes the intranet a great tool for pushing out information that impacts your entire team.
You can use the intranet to share news that’s relevant to all your employees—for example, news about a new product launch, a revised PTO policy, or information about a new office location. Then, employees can publicly comment, ask questions, share their opinions, and have conversations with company leadership and colleagues about how the news impacts them and their teams. This ultimately leads to more open, transparent communication across the organization, fostering a deeper sense of trust, community, and connection with your employees.
The point is, intranets allow you to share news with your entire organization and foster an open dialogue around that news—both of which can lead to improved internal communication.
Also read: 4 ideas to improve information sharing within your organization
…and create dedicated channels for team-specific communications
There are certain pieces of information that impact your entire team. But there are far more communications that only apply to specific teams, departments, and/or employees—and if you want to improve internal communications within your organization, you need to create space for those conversations to happen.
Creating dedicated channels on your intranet for team-specific communications allows your team to chat, collaborate, and share information with (and only with) the people that information is relevant to. This can help to streamline communications—and ensure that employees aren’t overwhelmed with information, messages, or emails that they don’t need.
In addition to team-specific communication channels (for example, your marketing team, sales team, or engineering team), you can also create additional channels to foster other group-related communications—including professional communications (like a channel for HR-related questions or for team morale ideas) as well as channels for fostering more laid-back communications with employees (for example, a channel to share pet photos).
Create a knowledge base of internal communication procedures
An intranet is a central place where all of your employees can access information—which makes it a great place to house your organization’s knowledge base.
So, if you want to improve internal communications within your company? Create a knowledge base on your intranet dedicated to your internal communication policies, procedures, and best practices.
By creating an internal communications-focused knowledge base on your intranet, you can ensure that all of your employees have access to the information they need to effectively communicate within your company. For example, you might include a copy of your organizational chart so your team understands the chain of communication (and who to reach out to with different types of questions or requests), a list of communication best practices (for example, which communication channels to use for different types of communication), and a directory of employee names, phone numbers, and email addresses.
By using the intranet as a central knowledge base for all your internal communication-related information, you can ensure that your entire team understands how internal communication functions within your company—and the better they understand it, the more it will improve.
Use the intranet to gather feedback
You may have ideas about how to improve internal communication within your company—and many of those ideas may be valid. But the truth is, the best way to understand how to improve your internal communication is to ask your employees—and the intranet offers a great opportunity to collect that feedback.
When you have an intranet, you can use it to gather feedback from your employees on what’s working with your current internal communication procedures, what’s not working, and what they’d like to see changed—and then use that feedback to make the improvements that are going to have the most impact on your team.
For example, you might make a post on your company intranet asking your team for their insights into what they believe to be your company’s biggest internal communication challenge—and then use their answers to identify what changes need to be made to your policies to foster better internal communication with and between your employees. Or, before rolling out a new internal communication policy, you might consider posting it on the intranet and asking your employees for feedback. That way, you can use their feedback to make any necessary changes or adjustments before rolling it out company wide.
Bottom line? Internal communication directly impacts your employees. So, if you want to improve your internal communication using the intranet, use it as a tool to collect their feedback—and then use that feedback to drive communication-related decisions.
Talkspirit can help you improve your internal communication using an intranet
Clearly, intranets have a variety of features that can benefit your organization’s internal communication—benefits you can experience with Talkspirit.
Talkspirit is an all-in-one intranet solution that gives teams and employees the tools they need to better communicate together—and gives organizations the framework they need to take their internal communication to the next level. It includes a chat platform; a newsfeed feature, which curates information for employees; and a member directory. Talkspirit also offers other intranet features to help your team do their best work, including an internal drive, project management and collaboration features. It’s everything you could want in an intranet—and then some.
Want to learn more about how Talkspirit can help you enjoy all the advantages of the intranet? Schedule a demo today!
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Author : Deanna deBara
