Does your company’s web site get a lot more attention your intranet? A bit of attention on your intranet’s usability and you could save $3,042 annually per employee. How? By utilizing it for employee communication, project management and other valuable tasks that you would otherwise spend on.
1. Consistent Design
Has your intranet grown into something unrecognizable over the years? Time to incorporate a consistent layout design and navigation on all pages. After all, you don’t want your users to get confused and disoriented when they visit other pages on the intranet, do you?You don’t.
2. Fresh Content
Want to get people to use the intranet every day? Dangle the lure of fresh, interesting news; funny, enlightening videos and comic strips on management goof-ups. Offer them enough interesting and challenging reasons to visit the intranet every day, and they will visit every day.
3. Central Login
Does your intranet have multiple portals for HR, Accounts, Admin and general info? Do users have to maintain several individual login credentials? In an age when information is expected within seconds and no one has time to taste, surely it’s reasonable to provide a single login?
4. Simple Home Page
Keep the Home page really, really simple. Provide a ‘What’s New’ section along with access to all organizations within the company. Provide a good Search feature that’s easy to find, along with an employee search. Keep graphics minimal and the navigation consistent.
5. Central Governance
Assign a central team the overall rights to intranet maintenance. By doing so, content remains fresh, design remains consistent, navigation is maintained and the intranet is kept clean. A well-maintained intranet is eminently usable, and will attract users.
6. Bookmarking
Make it easy for your internal users to bookmark content. Also allow them to create intranet profiles that save bookmarks and individual user preferences, so they will have the same user experience while using the intranet from any computer.
7. Employee Directory
Provide a central employee directory on the intranet, to allow people from different departments to find each other. This will increase employee collaboration and cohesiveness. The directory should contain every possible employee detail, and should allow multiple search parameters. For example, employees should be able to search for others using Employee ID, first name, last name, department name and so on.
8. Fast And Effective Search
Provide an intuitive, fast and effective Search feature and more people will use your intranet. Make sure the Search feature is prominently placed. If you can provide sorting and filtering of search results as well, all the better for a well-rounded experience.
9. Different From Website
Keep your intranet’s look and feel different from your company website. You don’t want your employees getting confused. Also, maintaining two separate looks will prevent employees from forwarding internal information to outsiders.
10. Minimal Features
Don’t use your intranet as a dumping ground for all kinds of features and info. Minimize the features on offer and streamline the design. For example, tools – provide only those tools that are useful for work, and not a horde of ‘may be useful’ or ‘they’ll like this’ sort of tools. Go minimal.