A Guide to Leveraging Internal Comms Intranet for Employee Alignment

Effective communication in the workplace fosters trust and transparency - as well as productivity. Employee alignment naturally follows, with the whole company enjoying a shared culture and purpose.

An internal comms intranet is a great way to keep employees informed and connected, leading to higher engagement and faster progress toward organizational goals.

But what exactly is an intranet, and how do you make the most of this internal communication tool? Keep reading to discover the benefits for employee alignment and more.

What is an internal comms intranet?

An intranet is a private network for internal use within an organization. It functions like a website, but it’s only accessible to authorized personnel. Organizations can use this for secure communication, collaboration, and sharing information.

You might remember 1990s intranets as clunky, basic corporate homepages. But in the same way that a digital phone service surpasses the capabilities of a landline, a modern intranet solution is a sophisticated platform with advanced features and integrations.

A company intranet can be used for various purposes, and you can leverage all of these for employee alignment. Intranet usage and content will differ between organizations, but here are some of the most common elements for internal comms:

• Company news and announcements (results, events, policy changes)
• Sharing documents and resources (handbooks, policy docs, knowledge bases)
• Discussion forums where employees can connect and collaborate
• Instant messaging and video conferencing
• Employee self-service tools (vacation requests, shift-swapping, job applications when you promote internally)
• Employee directory (a list of everyone working in the organization and contact methods)
• Training and development materials such as videos and online courses
•  Feedback mechanisms (surveys, polls, suggestion box)

What is employee alignment, and why does it matter?

Employee alignment is when every member of the workforce understands the overall vision and purpose of the organization, and how their own role contributes toward it. Aligned employees are all working in support of common goals, and they have a sense of belonging to a bigger whole.

A state of alignment brings many advantages for the organization, because aligned employees who know that their work is valued are motivated, productive, and loyal. Junior staff feel a connection with senior management, while remote workers and on-site staff are equally engaged.

Conversely, a lack of alignment has negative consequences—such as confusion around responsibilities and priorities and lack of collaboration between teams or departments. This leads to lower engagement and performance, and poor communication is often the root cause.

To achieve employee alignment, you need to facilitate clear and consistent communication throughout the organization, breaking down departmental silos and ensuring transparency through shared information.

Benefits of intranet for employee alignment

A recent Forbes study found that poor workplace communication heavily impacts productivity (49% of respondents), job satisfaction (50%), and stress levels (42%). 45% of workers also said it affects trust in leadership and in their own team.

Image from Forbes

An internal comms intranet can be the key to breaking down communication barriers. Here are some of the major benefits:

Centralized resources

When your intranet is a single source of truth for all company-related information and resources, it’s easy for employees to find what they need—with no time wasted on searching through emails, file folders, or different systems. You can publish your marketing and sales handbook containing your company’s preferred sales tactics and strategies for building email lists, for instance, or even upload the client email templates your company uses.

This can help boost compliance, ensure work consistency, and reduce the chances of mistakes. 

Enhanced collaboration

Intranets help to break down silos between departments and teams by encouraging knowledge sharing. You can include collaboration spaces for shared work with task-tracking and project updates, and set up a single location for messaging. Employees no longer have to ping colleagues on multiple platforms to track them down.

Strong connections

Your intranet is accessible from anywhere on any device with an internet connection, which is ideal for keeping everyone—including remote employees and shift-workers—in the loop. This creates a sense of community across the entire team, especially if you include social features for employees to connect with each other during breaks.

Complete transparency

With an internal comms intranet, you can build a culture of open communication, making everyone feel involved and trusted. It’s important for employees to be aware of things like your company history, business model, financial metrics, market position, and the operations carried out by each department.

Efficient onboarding

New hires can often find it challenging to figure out where everything is. Providing quick access to useful information and online training will improve the onboarding experience and help them feel like part of the team. 

Open communication is also important for the post-recruitment part of candidate relationship management, as it leads to better retention. Having everything they need at their fingertips is a great way to ensure they quickly understand and feel comfortable in a new role, which is better for them and for you.

Two-way communication

An intranet allows you to gather employee feedback via surveys and polls. You can also encourage workers to contribute to knowledge bases and submit ideas via a digital suggestion box. Demonstrating that their opinions and feelings are valued is a big part of employee alignment - just make sure you act on the feedback as well as ask for it. 

Best practices for an internal comms intranet

Now we'll share a few top tips to ensure that your intranet is an effective tool for employee communications.

Keep it simple

A corporate intranet must be easy to navigate, so that employees can quickly find the info they need. To centralize your resources effectively, you’ll need to keep things organized. Plan your intranet in the same way as you would a company website, with a clear structure and a consistent design.

Keep it fresh

Update your intranet regularly, adding new content and resources to encourage employee use, and removing or amending anything that’s outdated. Use an email template creator to update the client email templates you want your team to use. If there are new company policies, include these in your uploaded employee handbook.

The last thing you want is for your intranet to fill up with obsolete documentation, which will hamper productivity and might even lead to compliance or security issues.

Communicate clearly

When it comes to corporate communication, you should avoid any technical jargon or unnecessarily complex language. Transparency and clarity are key: explain things as simply as possible, especially if changes that affect compensation or working practices. 

Image from Grammarly

Avoid communication overload

You may not need to share everything with every employee. For example, everyone needs to know about online security training, but only the HR team needs to see a new policy on e-recruitment. Set up dedicated channels for different teams, and use time-zone scheduling to avoid pinging overseas staff when they’re off the clock.

Ensure user adoption

Don’t let your intranet go unused. Provide training sessions to show employees the features and benefits, and set the expectation that this is the first place to go for information and updates. Make sure there’s a mobile version, and use language translation and localization features to keep it inclusive.

Encourage interaction

Use your intranet to get employees talking and collaborating, with features like discussion boards and document sharing. They should be able to chat socially on a dedicated channel, as well as interacting with company news. Encourage them to celebrate others’ successes and nominate colleagues for recognition.

Use analytics

Analytics, which may be built into your platform, help you to track the effectiveness of your intranet. You can check what areas get the most (and least) engagement, and measure employee feedback to find out where you could improve.

Pay attention to security

Although an intranet is a private network by design, you still need to make sure it’s secure. We’re talking about regular security updates for the software, role-based permissions for confidential information, and training on safe usage.

Steps for setting up your internal comms intranet

If you’re going to spend money on setting up or improving an internal comms intranet, you need to make sure it can handle your goal of smooth employee alignment. Here are four simple steps to take:

Evaluate aims and needs

What do you want to achieve with an intranet, and how do you plan to do it? Whether it’s increased employee engagement, improved collaboration, or better productivity, set clear goals and decide on the metrics you’ll use to measure progress. Identify any current obstacles or communication gaps, and ask employees about their preferences and challenges.

Plan your intranet content

Your intranet will be unique to you, but there are a few things most businesses would benefit from. You’ll want to include communication channels for both asynchronous and real-time communication, such as a company news feed, instant messaging, and discussion forums. Plan out sections for sharing documents and knowledge, an employee directory, and employee recognition tools. As well as these basics, ask your staff what they’d find most beneficial: would a list of all your standard operating procedures (SOPs) help? Do they want to be able to see their rota on there? Ensuring it fits your team's needs is key.

Choose the right intranet software

It’s best to pick a solution that lets you build a custom intranet to fit your needs. Look out for customizable templates and channels, search functionality, and an analytics module. An intranet platform that connects to other business tools via application integrations is ideal, as it saves users having to toggle between systems. Robust security and support is also a must.

Monitor and improve

Once you’ve launched your intranet and trained the users, keep a close eye on how it’s working. Monitor analytics as well as taking feedback from surveys, and continue to make improvements as your organizational needs evolve. Remember, technology alone won’t solve your communication challenges, so follow the best practices we outlined earlier.

Final thoughts

An effective intranet can be a powerful tool for employee alignment and for your internal communications strategy, providing a single location where everyone can find company information and connect with their colleagues.

As long as the platform is user-friendly and you manage the volume of communications to avoid overload, your internal comms intranet will enhance employee experiences and boost engagement.