7 Company Intranet Examples and Why You Should Consider Using One

Having a dynamic, modern intranet is a crucial advantage for businesses today. The parallels between superior employee experiences and business performance are striking. According to Gallup's 2016 Q12 Meta-Analysis Report, companies with highly engaged workforces are 21% more profitable than those with poor engagement levels.

In this article, we'll explore how companies from various industries are using innovative intranet solutions and why you should consider implementing an employee intranet portal of your own. We'll examine specific examples of how industry-leading companies are leveraging the best intranet platforms in creative ways to boost employee engagement and productivity.

Before implementing a new intranet for your organization, it's essential to understand the concept. A company intranet is a virtual hub that houses various programs, communication tools, and collaboration software accessed by team members daily. It serves as a central point for employee connection and information sharing. Modern intranet solutions offer a range of features designed to enhance the digital workplace experience and improve overall employee engagement.

7 Examples of How Different Industries Use Intranet

You may be wondering, "A corporate intranet sounds great, but how will it fit into my company's day-to-day activities?" Excellent question. It can be challenging to visualize exactly how an intranet will enhance your company’s culture and operations. That's why we've outlined ways that different industries can use a company intranet to optimize team communication and collaboration. These intranet examples showcase the versatility and effectiveness of modern intranet designs across various sectors.

Example 1: Finance Technology

Financial technology organizations, especially legacy businesses in need of a culture facelift, can use their intranet's powerful announcement feature to improve communications and strengthen their corporate culture. Companies can develop a prominent company feed on their intranet homepage to manage important messages and encourage their entire workforce to do the same. This feed can publish various recognition announcements, such as appreciation posts, automated employee birthday and work anniversary congratulations, and more. This approach can drastically improve employee engagement in a traditionally serious office environment and guide leadership as they work to create a dynamic culture. 

Using features like Workmates' kudos system to offer recognition for employees’ hard work or exemplary behavior is an excellent way to boost morale. This practice is extremely helpful in showing the entire workforce that the company appreciates their contributions—no matter how small—and how their efforts support larger accomplishments. Such intranet engagement ideas can significantly enhance the overall user experience and foster a positive digital workplace.

Example 2: Health Care

Healthcare professionals must work together as a team to provide high-quality care to their patients, but with rotating shift schedules, individual employees' work can often go unrecognized. It can be extremely valuable for healthcare companies to use their intranet sites to focus on employee recognition and rewards. 

Using Workmates’ kudos feature to encourage employees to recognize and reward their peers through an intranet platform is an efficient tool to create a collaborative and enthusiastic work culture in hospitals, clinics, and beyond. Employees can publish a post at any time to officially thank any other employee. A reward program where employees can receive gift cards, branded corporate items, or other thank-you mementos can also be created within the intranet system.

Even better: List top kudos recipients on a prominent leaderboard within your company intranet portal. This lets them receive even more attention and fosters an ongoing culture where all employees strive for excellence and higher levels of job performance. Such HR intranet examples demonstrate how intranet adoption can positively impact employee morale and productivity.

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Example 3: Commercial Real Estate

A commercial real estate company can create an intranet with social feeds and a number of customizable group channels to let each specific team send messages and updates to other departments or the entire company. This approach enhances internal collaboration and information sharing.

For example, an employee can post certain announcements to the social feed, including welcoming new hires, sharing employees’ personal events (a new baby!), shoutouts to other teams or employees (like congratulating a real estate agent for closing a deal), office culture updates, and more.

This experience makes communication and collaboration fun. Employees can upload pictures from a corporate event and share them with the whole company. They can also create and post surveys and polls—for example, “What type of cake should we get to celebrate Susan’s birthday?” 

Employees can also post memes and hashtags to their social feeds, all to increase camaraderie, collaboration, and teamwork. The company can even use a powerful analytics dashboard to track active users and the overall engagement level with the intranet over time, providing valuable employee insights. This intranet example showcases how modern intranet solutions can foster a sense of community and improve corporate communication.

Example 4: The Technology Industry

One leading technology company uses its modern intranet to improve communications and strengthen its corporate culture using a powerful company announcement feature. 
In this case, the company developed a prominent company feed that it used to manage important messages and encourage the entire workforce to do the same. This feed publishes various recognition announcements, such as appreciation posts, automated birthday and work anniversary congratulations, and more. 
The company also used a kudos feature to offer recognition for employees’ hard work or any examples of exemplary behavior. All of this has been extremely helpful in showing the entire workforce that the company appreciates their contributions—no matter how small—and how they support larger accomplishments. This approach significantly enhances the digital employee experience and fosters a positive workplace culture. Such intranet features demonstrate how the best company intranet can drive employee engagement and satisfaction.

Example 5:  Background Screening Services

Another company, one that provides background screening services, chose to use its intranet site as a full-featured content management system (CMS). This company used its corporate intranet as a better way to upload and store documents, which gave employees a much better way to share documents, track activity, and access important information—from any device at any time.

Additionally, this company created a new internal help center for the HR department, which was accessible to all employees through the HR intranet. This helped workers know exactly where they should start if they had questions or issues, gave them self-service access to critical forms and documents, and eliminated a lot of confusion. 

It also saves a significant amount of time over the company’s previous system, where employees would call or email requests for help, and get frustrated when they didn’t know where they stood. This intranet solution greatly improved employee satisfaction and streamlined HR processes. This company intranet example illustrates how intranet services can enhance employee self-service capabilities and improve overall efficiency.

Example 6: Fast Casual Dining

As the name implies, fast casual restaurants move quickly. That means there’s no time to waste when it comes to scheduling shifts. It also means that employees, like servers and cooks, may feel underappreciated. A successful company intranet can improve employee communication and even inspire recruiting efforts. 

A chain restaurant can use its intranet to share announcements with specific updates. For example, an announcement can let employees know they can pick up shifts at another local location. This saves the restaurant from being short-staffed and helps employees earn more. Announcements can even highlight staff achievements by individual staff, like employee of the month, to improve engagement.

Restaurants can also make their employees their best advocates. Using a company intranet, restaurant chains can create pre-written, approved posts designed for employees to share on their personal social media accounts, including job openings. About half of businesses say their top-quality hires come from referrals, and a positive post on social media can get those referrals moving. This strategy can significantly boost employee retention and recruitment efforts. This intranet example demonstrates how intranet content can be leveraged to support various company initiatives.

Example 7: Retail

Retailers need to make the customer shopping experience as pleasant as possible. A company intranet site can help make sure that employees have the training and seamless technology to make that happen. 

A company can create an extensive training site within its intranet to ensure every employee has the information they need in one easily accessible place. A comprehensive training site also makes sure that each employee is given standardized training so everyone is prepared for the job. And if they have questions long after onboarding, employees can always refer back to the training site. This approach supports ongoing employee development and improves overall performance.

The retailer can also develop an interactive shift-swapping app within their intranet platform so employees can easily trade shifts, without bothering busy supervisors. Employees with more connections are happier, and so are customers at a fully-staffed store. This feature enhances workplace communication and employee satisfaction. This intranet example showcases how intranet pages can be customized to meet specific industry needs and improve employee assistance.

Here Are Some Ways To Use the Internet in Your Business: 

An intranet can transform your business operations by centralizing communication, enhancing collaboration, and streamlining administrative tasks. Leveraging this powerful tool can boost productivity, engagement, and efficiency across your organization. Here are some practical ways to use the intranet in your business:

• Internal Communications: Share company news, updates, and announcements. Create newsletters or bulletins to keep employees informed.

• Collaboration Tools: Host project spaces, forums, and discussion boards for teams to collaborate on tasks and share documents.

• Document Management: Centralize documents, policies, and procedures for easy access and version control.

• Training and Development: Offer online training courses, webinars, or resources for employee skill development.

• Employee Directory: Maintain an updated directory with contact information and organizational charts.

• Feedback and Surveys: Conduct employee surveys, feedback forms, or suggestion boxes to gather insights and improve processes.

• Social Features: Implement social networking features for employees to connect, share ideas, and build a sense of community.

• Resource Sharing: Provide access to tools, templates, and resources that employees may need to perform their roles effectively.

• Corporate Culture Promotion: Showcase company culture, values, and achievements through stories, photos, and videos.

These intranet features can significantly enhance team collaboration and overall employee engagement within your organization.

Why Should You Consider Using a Social Intranet?

Facilitating seamless communication among remote workers and fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and innovation, social intranets offer vast and transformative benefits. Using a modern intranet in today's digital world can propel your business forward and support digital transformation initiatives.

A modern-day social intranet can benefit businesses in several ways:

Enhanced Communication: A report from Gitnux found that 63% of organizations use an intranet to enhance internal communication. Social intranets provide a platform for seamless communication among employees, departments, and teams. This can improve collaboration, information sharing, and problem-solving across the organization. 

Increased Employee Engagement: By incorporating social features such as likes, comments, and sharing, social intranets promote interaction and engagement among employees. Gitnux report shows that 74% of intranet users access their intranet daily, and the shows that intranet can foster a sense of community and belonging, leading to higher employee morale and productivity.

Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration: Social intranets facilitate the sharing of knowledge and best practices among employees through features like forums and discussion boards. According to Webinar Care, 85% of employees say they’re most motivated when management offers regular updates on company news, and 92% of businesses with intranets report improved collaboration.

Remote Work Enablement: With the rise of remote work, social intranets provide a central hub for remote employees to connect, collaborate, and stay informed. 60% of companies find employee engagement increases through intranet use, and virtual workspaces enable seamless communication and collaboration regardless of physical location.

Streamlined Processes and Workflows:  Social intranets often integrate with other business tools and systems, such as project management software, document management systems, and CRM platforms. Intranets improve workflow efficiency by 23% by streamlining processes and workflows as well as reducing manual tasks.

Employee Recognition and Feedback: Social intranets can incorporate features for recognizing and rewarding employees for their achievements and contributions. Additionally, they provide a platform for gathering feedback and suggestions from employees, helping to improve employee engagement and satisfaction. Exploding Topics found that employees who receive recognition from management are 69% more likely to do better work, and that 96% of employees say getting regular feedback is a good thing 

Centralized Information Hub: Social intranets serve as a centralized repository of information, policies, documents, and files shared by the company. This ensures that employees have access to the latest information they need to perform their jobs effectively, reducing confusion and enhancing productivity by 20 - 25%.

Workmates: A Comprehensive Intranet Solution

Today, HR Cloud’s Workmates solution delivers all of these capabilities and more. With dynamic features like "kudos" and a variety of company communication tools, don’t be surprised when your employees’ productivity, happiness, and morale increase significantly once you implement a corporate intranet for your team to collaborate in a user-friendly, efficient way.  As one of the top intranet platforms available, Workmates offers a range of features designed to enhance employee engagement and streamline internal processes.

To see how Workmates is revolutionizing the way companies use intranets, request a free, no-obligation Workmates demo today! Experience firsthand how this modern intranet solution can transform your digital workplace and boost employee engagement.

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Author Bio:

This article is written by a marketing team member at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications & engagement, and rewards & recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.