How the Right Intranet Keeps Remote Employees Connected
Remote work has become the new norm for many companies. While it offers flexibility and increased productivity, it also presents challenges in keeping geographically scattered employees engaged with each other and with the organization's mission and values. One important tool in engaging remote employees is a well-designed company intranet. By providing a space for real-time news and updates, centralized documentation, and onboarding and learning resources, your company's intranet can foster a strong sense of belonging and keep remote employees connected to your organization.
Your intranet can keep remote employees informed with real-time updates
Remote employees may struggle with staying up to date on the latest company news and developments. In a traditional office setting, news may spread through informal conversations or in-person meetings. However, for remote workers, these opportunities are more limited. This is where an intranet comes in. By providing a centralized platform for sharing news, organizations can ensure remote employees have access to the same information as their in-office counterparts.
A well-designed intranet allows companies to communicate important announcements, policy changes, and updates on ongoing projects. Remote employees can stay informed about the company's progress, upcoming events, and any changes in strategic direction. This flow of information helps foster a sense of inclusion and transparency, keeping remote employees engaged and connected to larger organizational goals.
Your intranet is a central place for all essential documentation
For remote employees, searching for critical documents or policies can be a time-consuming task, especially when they’re spread across various platforms or shared via email. An intranet acts as a central repository for all important documentation, making it readily accessible to remote workers.
With an intranet, employees can quickly locate and reference company policies, HR forms, or any other essential documents. This consolidated access saves time and ensures remote employees have the same resources at their disposal as their colleagues. Making resources available through an intranet also means keeping them secure. Employees, in and out of the office, can use their SSO credentials to access them.
Support onboarding and learning and development within your intranet
Effective onboarding is crucial for introducing employees to company culture and setting them up for long-term success. Without the traditional, in-person face time, it can be hard to effectively bring new employees onto the team. New employees aren’t able to simply swivel to a neighboring co-worker to ask a quick question. It’s imperative to have comprehensive resources available for new employees to reference. An intranet can serve as a platform for onboarding and learning resources.
By housing necessary training materials, including employee handbooks, written modules, and orientation videos, an intranet creates a consistent onboarding experience for all employees, regardless of their location. Remote employees can access these resources at their convenience, familiarizing themselves with company processes and quickly ramping up their productivity. Moreover, an intranet can host interactive learning modules and webinars, providing ongoing learning opportunities, and professional development resources.
The importance of keeping your intranet up to date
Traditionally, intranets have suffered from stale information and poor user interfaces thanks to the complexities required to update and manage content. However, with the right platform, your team can update content on demand with no special technical skills. Squarespace Enterprise empowers your team employees to contribute and curate intranet content collaboratively (without any coding). With Squarespace, it’s also possible to control who is able to update what.
By allowing remote employees to share their achievements or contribute to knowledge repositories, the intranet becomes a dynamic platform that reflects their personalities and the thriving culture of your company. Customizable templates simplify content management with a convenient editing interface that anyone on your team can use, while page drafts help your colleagues collaboratively make changes before publishing. Remote employees feel a sense of ownership and connection when they actively contribute to the intranet, strengthening their ties with the company.
Measuring intranet success with analytics
Analytics play a vital role in measuring the success and effectiveness of an intranet system. By leveraging analytics tools, organizations can gain insights into employee usage and content consumption. These metrics help gauge the intranet's impact on remote employees and identify areas for improvement.
Analytics can reveal valuable information, such as the most accessed resources, popular pages, or active contributors. This can drive content strategy, identify problem areas, and indicate what’s resonating with employees. Additionally, analytics provide a quantitative basis for assessing the ROI of the intranet investment, demonstrating value to stakeholders.
Learn how Squarespace analytics can help you track your intranet’s impact.
In the age of remote work, an effective intranet is essential for connecting remote employees with your organization. Through real-time updates, centralized documentation, and onboarding and development resources, an intranet fosters a sense of inclusion among remote employees and provides them access to vital information. Having a convenient workflow to make updates is critical to success. Furthermore, data analytics help measure an intranet's impact and allow you to make data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.
Investing in a well-designed intranet system is not just a technological upgrade; it is an investment in employee engagement, productivity, and the overall success of the organization in the remote work era.