Improve Your Employee Experience by Adopting a User-Centric Intranet Strategy

Discover what users need from your intranet, and how to ensure it features high-quality content.

Communications leaders and intranet content creators may struggle with older, low-quality, and inconsistent intranet content. But when a business adopts a user-centric intranet strategy, employees get consistent content that’s high-quality and easy to search through.

This can be difficult, however, because communications leaders have to deal with content coming from disparate sources and older content hanging around on their servers, building up over time. Some also struggle with usability issues stemming from navigation problems. But by following the principles of a user-centric intranet strategy outlined in this article, you can build an intranet management system that fulfills the needs of your company’s community while making sure everyone has access to high-quality, updated content.

What is a user-centric intranet strategy?

A user-centric intranet strategy is one that focuses on the user experience. This is crucial for small-to-medium business (SMB) owners because it helps unify your company by making sure everyone has the info they need to stay on the same page. It also saves you time and human resources because employees and others in your community can “self-serve” the information they need to troubleshoot problems.

For example, instead of tying up an HR manager with questions about how to fill out tax forms, a new employee can simply read an article on your intranet about how to get it just right.

It’s important to note, however, that with a user-centric strategy, the kinds of information you make available via your intranet meet specific user needs. As a result, you can solve multiple business problems, such as:

• Poor intranet quality. You can design your intranet so it’s easy for users to access and search. This, along with relevant, helpful content, boosts the overall quality of your system.

• Outdated intranet content. Company policies and procedures evolve over time as the organization matures, so it’s easy for intranet content to become outdated. But with a user-centric strategy, you’re constantly checking to be sure what’s on there is helpful to your current community.

• Fragmented and siloed content ownership. By systematically defining who owns content and the responsibilities it entails, you centralize your content ownership efforts. This makes it easier to unify content across departments, breaking down information silos.

• Decreased ease of employee navigation. A user-centric intranet strategy aligns your intranet’s navigation with what users are used to. For example, you can transition from a Boolean-esque search mechanism to one that more closely resembles Google or Bing’s services.

For instance, some intranets have been in place for several years, and they may feature navigation that long-time employees are used to but newer staff find uncomfortable. For example, the rise of WordPress sites in recent years may have created expectations for some of your newer users. With a WordPress site, you can often see all of your navigation options clearly within the first fold of the homepage.

With older websites, you may have a list of options sprawling down the right or left side of the page in an extended list.

Some users may also prefer having all options clickable on the home page as opposed to having to navigate through dropdown boxes extending from a few categories at the top of the page.

Over time, unless you optimize your intranet according to user input, it may become more of a hindrance than a resource for some people. But, a user-centric strategy incorporates gathering feedback on a regular basis, making it more likely that your intranet meets the needs of a critical mass of people.

What are the benefits of a user-centric intranet strategy?

A user-centric intranet strategy comes with benefits that boost the quality of your intranet and your company’s information culture.

   Shared intranet vision

It can be challenging to come up with an intranet vision that aligns with everyone’s expectations. For instance, some may see the intranet as primarily a communication hub used to connect employees through forums and chat features. Others may see it as a repository of helpful information. And for remote users, the intranet may serve as their primary connection portal with the company.

By developing a user-centric intranet strategy, you optimize its usage for as many people as possible. In many situations, the features and content of your intranet are a secondary consideration. It may be more important to make sure people can find what they need and easily move from one feature to another.

Regardless of how your intranet strategy pans out, a user-centric approach ensures it aligns with what’s most important for each stakeholder.

   Collective content ownership and accountability

The quality, consistency, and accuracy of your intranet content come down to who assumes ownership and accountability.

For example, let’s say the IT department is judicious about posting and updating self-help content, but the HR department takes a more laid-back approach. This can lead to confusion and frustration for people who need both kinds of content.

On the other hand, with collective content ownership and accountability policies, you can establish a consistent baseline of expectations for content creators and managers. Then, your users get a dependable, comforting intranet experience each time they log on.

Here are some policies you may want to consider when developing consistency in your approach to content ownership:

• Map ownership to content creators, as opposed to someone in a different department or the intranet “overseer”.

• Require content creators to periodically check their content, perhaps once every quarter, to make sure it’s still relevant.

• Encourage managers to include responsible content ownership as an additional plus in performance reviews.

Using this kind of approach, you weave content accountability into your company’s cultural fabric.

   Regular audits that ensure content accuracy and accessibility

Regular audits help ensure your intranet’s content aligns with user expectations, especially when it comes to how accurate and accessible it is. An audit may consist of checking the accuracy of intranet articles, videos, and other content to ensure it aligns with the most recent information.

Auditing your user experience can involve a range of metrics, from surveys to page visit statistics to reductions in IT support calls after users access certain Help pages. For example, suppose employees frequently reach out to IT for help choosing which features of an application to install each time they update it.

In anticipation of questions like, “Do I need X feature to do my job?” you can provide a list of which features each type of employee should install.

Then, you can analyze the number of support calls IT gets in relation to that issue after publishing the article. You could also collect page visit data over time and see if there’s a reverse correlation between the number of page reads and calls to IT.

Prepare your business for adopting a user-centric intranet strategy

Adopting a user-centric strategy for your intranet involves a combination of research, organization, and planning. Using research, you gain a better understanding of what each user needs. By organizing content ownership maps, you make it easier to exercise oversight over the material on your intranet. And by planning how to assess user experience ahead of time, you can streamline the process of evaluating your intranet’s performance.

• Research the current user experience. As you get to understand your current user experience, you’ll likely uncover some areas for improvement. For example, some may invest exorbitant amounts of time trying to find answers to common questions. Or, while answers to common questions are available, they may frustrate users because they’re no longer accurate.

• Map content ownership. By mapping content ownership, you streamline the process of ensuring content is properly posted and maintained. It’s best to establish cross-functional oversight so no single department or person ends up being the “intranet overlord.”

• Plan to assess user experience and content accuracy. Your users’ experiences should shape your intranet as time goes on, so putting plans in place to assess user satisfaction is essential. A plan to maintain content accuracy should involve a range of stakeholders.