Company intranet - is it worth investing in?

What is corporate intranet and when its implementation inside the organization is profitable? We decided to look at this modern form of intra-company communication between the employer and employees.

The larger the enterprise, the more employees inside it and the more they deal with. While communication in small businesses is not difficult and a quick conversation or meeting is enough, the further into the forest, the correct communication becomes more and more blurred. How can I fix it? Investing in an intranet may be a good option.

What is a corporate intranet?

A dozen or so years ago, the equivalent of a corporate intranet were showcases with advertisements, regular meetings with management or even company magazines. The need to communicate with employees about the company's condition, the most important changes or even new products has been of key importance for a long time. Currently, however, employees' expectations regarding this issue are much higher than they used to be. In order to meet them, a company intranet was created, i.e. an intra-company communication platform that enables the management of employees' knowledge about the company. Thanks to it, it is also possible, among other things, to provide the latest information and constant access to the most important data and contacts. The company's intranet most often functions as an internal website or application, which functions similarly to the most popular social networking sites. Its creation requires appropriate IT knowledge and qualifications. If we decide that it is necessary in the company we manage, it is worth outsourcing its creation and subsequent administration to professionals.

What should be in it?

The corporate computer network should contain all the information that employees can learn. The more the better. This system should make it possible to exchange this data, add your content, and also communication between employees, on-line training or even access to the company's CRM. In order for our corporate intranet to be a lively place, willingly visited by employees, it is worth ensuring that it is exclusively published with exclusive content, without access to other sources. It is also worth including all the most necessary documents, such as work regulations, vacation applications or even a description of the settlement of business trips. In addition to the quality of data, the form of their presentation is also important - interesting messages equipped not only with texts, but also videos, infographics and sounds can encourage employees to visit this place. Interviews with hard-to-reach board members, competitions or company news are another added value that can be attractive. As part of the corporate intranet, it is also worth encouraging individual teams to create their own pages, where they can, for example, look for a joint travel / return from work or arrange a corporate tennis training.

What systems are the most popular?

In the largest corporations, the corporate intranet is built on the basis of a dedicated application that works similarly to well-known internet portals.It is the most popular in the IT industry and all those in which already existing systems could be used to create their own internal network (internet portals, banks). Another well-known intranet platform is the Microsoft SharePoint program, mainly due to the popularity of the Office suite. Between Word, Excel and Outlook, which we already know, SharePoint is a program that should not cause us many problems. The application is ideal for online collaborative work and data exchange. On this platform, we will also get the ability to manage users, create common tables (for example, holidays), texts or pictures, and even play multimedia and blogs.

When is it worth implementing a company intranet?

Before deciding to invest in creating a professional corporate intranet, each company should analyze its usefulness, capabilities and, above all, the needs of employees. The costs related to the introduction of an intra-company network in large enterprises will pay off very quickly thanks to its functionality. It is enough to create it in a professional manner and administer it regularly, taking care of the quality and timeliness of data, and it will quickly fulfill its basic role - effective employer-employee contact. This is a lot of value. The application can become an interesting form of internal communication that will allow you to obtain relevant documents, information and announcements at various levels of access. Depending on the rights granted, users can use it to download (and / or edit) information on salaries, holidays or even analyze reports important for the company.

Good communication with employees is the basis of a conscious and modern enterprise. The corporate Intranet satisfies most of the needs in contacts between the employer and employees, and has recently become a key tool for communication between the aforementioned parties. Cork information boards and regular company meetings are slowly becoming a thing of the past. Although the corporate intranet in Polish companies is only informative, there is a chance for development in this area in the context of employee involvement. A model internal system would be one in which employees themselves would use it both at and after work. For this to happen, it must first be supplemented with appropriate and good-quality content.