The Intranet – It’s for You Keep it that way!

Within most institutions open, timely and collaborative communication among colleagues is fundamental to achieving institutional goals and missions.

Communicating with employees and engaging them in internal conversations allows institutions to tap into a vast pool of intelligence and expertise. A great way to foster knowledge and awareness and to promote a dialogue amongst employees is through an Intranet.

The Intranet offers a universally accessible place where all of us can share our ideas, concerns and suggestions. It is an indispensable way to keep us informed about priorities, developments, changes or new initiatives that affect our work. A well designed Intranet can help filter out the distractions of mass emails, paper, and other things that clutter our daily work life. It can reach employees where ever they work and provides a unique way to showcase and reflect an institutions culture.

The Intranet is a medium that can evolve with your institution and, properly designed, can be of enormous benefit to helping to manage change and progress. However, to be effective and to identify areas for improvement and enhancement an Intranet site should be reviewed regularly.

Only through review can you hope to build a robust, user-friendly site that makes use of new and evolving technologies, identifies or enhances preferred topic areas, offering unique user features and providing more opportunities for interactivity. The goal is always to create a better Intranet for all.

There are many ways to help make this internal communication medium better but, I think the most important is to invite ideas and input from your users. Feedback whether it be ongoing, an employee survey’s or through focus groups will help you gauge what is working and how you can improve your Intranet.