Building Employee Interaction with an Intranet

By Staff Writer

The Internet is a tremendous tool for reaching your customers and clients. For marketing, sales, analytics, and research, no other medium has such wide reach and immediate return. With it, you revolutionize how your business is done—with an intranet, you can improve how your business is run.

Introduction to Intranets

An intranet is an online private network accessible only by members of an individual organization.

Not to be confused with the free, global Internet, an intranet is an online private network accessible only by members of an individual organization. It looks and acts like a Web site (with Internet protocols), offering the same content and interactivity features. Although formerly used only by large corporations for internal communication, small businesses are increasingly seeing the value. An estimated 700,000 small companies use an intranet, and hundreds of thousands more are expected to add them this year. Why? An intranet brings workplace costs down while raising efficiency, productivity, and interaction.

Putting an Intranet To Work
Intranets are redefining today’s workplace in many important ways. From communication to collaboration, information to organization, your business can run more smoothly and soundly with this simple, low-cost tool. Common uses for a small business intranet include:

Company news, goals and calendar - Your intranet can serve as a central, up-to-date company newsletter. With it, employees stay current on business progress and future plans and stay aware of when you’ll be taking that much-needed vacation.

Benefits and training information - Rather than having brochures and information packets floating around the office, simply post key human resource information on the company intranet. Available 24 hours a day, it allows employees to get what they need whenever, and as often, as they need.

Forms, reports, memos - Emailing forms and memos can lead to unnecessary confusion in some situations and can easily be overlooked or misfiled. An intranet means everyone knows where to find what they’re looking for.

Focused discussions - Meetings get off-track, schedules don’t match, and time gets wasted. A discussion forum or message board on your intranet makes brainstorming easy and convenient.

Directories - You can create a central directory of employee and key client contact information (not to mention the number for the copier repair service) for speedy access at everyone’s fingertips.

Storage - No one knows who made the last round of changes to the presentation or who even has the latest version. Sound familiar? By keeping your files in an easily accessible and common place, everyone stays up to date.

For telecommuters and travelers - Playing phone tag, exchanging strings of emails, and making sure everyone is in the loop interrupts and slows the flow of business—for those in and out of the office. With a simple, central place for information, employees stay on the same page.

More than just the tangibles, an intranet offers a sense of community and can foster collaboration and interaction among employees.

More than just the tangibles, an intranet offers a sense of community and can foster collaboration and interaction among employees. Boosting morale, it serves to reinforce the idea that each individual is a part of a greater whole. Additionally, it empowers your team. They can find the report or training manual, or even just phone number, on their own whenever they choose.

Where to Start
Whether you have a consultant build your intranet for you or you use any of the many software packages available, starting your internal communication site isn’t much different than creating your company’s Web site. Begin by listing what you hope to accomplish with the site and what types of content you plan to host. Consider design elements and usability.

Costs may vary, depending on how you choose to build. Windows SharePoint Services lets you customize, using a template and runs $39.95 a month and up. Other packages, such as Instant Intranet Builder, can be as little as $5 per person per month.

Important to Remember

When designing an intranet site, simplicity and usability should be your priorities.

When designing an intranet site, simplicity and usability should be your priorities. Pages should load quickly, and should be interesting and engaging. Once you have it ready to go, in order for your intranet to be a success, you’ll first need to promote it. Don’t assume that just because it’s there it will get used; you’ll need to let people know how valuable the site is. Once they know it’s there—and they learn how much easier it can make their jobs—you’ll likely reap the benefits of a more interactive team, both online and off.