Why Now Is The Perfect Time to Change Your Company Intranet

2021 is here, and now is the perfect time for you to focus on implementing or changing to a new and improved company intranet.

For most organisations, a company intranet makes a fundamental change in employee collaboration and productivity. An intranet will be your company’s digital workplace; one of the biggest trends for businesses in 2020. As time draws on, digital workplaces are only becoming more popular as businesses realise the benefits of going digital. Company intranets are central to the digital workplace, especially in today’s current climate where there is more of a need to connect and engage your workforce and bring them together as one.

A recent survey has shown that 68% of employees use their company intranet but not to its full advantage and only 13% of employees reported participating in their intranet daily. The right intranet for your company should be a well-oiled machine with intuitive features, time-saving elements and an increased capacity for collaborative efforts. 2021 is set for even more advances to allow UK intranets to take businesses to new heights of success and efficiency.

Signs you need to change your company intranet strategy

First of all, you need to find out if your existing intranet is aligned with your company’s long term goals. For instance, if your company’s business objective relates to international expansion, you will need to evaluate whether your intranet caters to a globalised workforce. This entails enabling remote access, facilitating collaboration across multiple time zones and offering the right tools and features for different office locations.

When you should move to a new intranet solution; the main signs:

The number of employees regularly using the intranet is decreasing each year

The intranet is designed to be a tool for collaboration and productivity, where employees can share resources, connect with colleagues and post announcements. If there is a lack of or decreasing communication and collaboration on your intranet, it is a clear sign that you need to adopt a new intranet solution.

At Oak, we’re committed to improving and enhancing our product on an ongoing basis and you can expect to see useful new features and functionality appearing regularly, improving employee retention.

Your company intranet content is inaccurate, out of date or repetitive

Investments in digital workplace technologies and tools is increasing each year thanks to a growing focus on communication and collaboration in the business world.

Creating content is an ongoing life-cycle on the intranet and is not a one-time event. Many organisations lack relevant and fresh content, resulting in these common pain points for employees:

• Inaccurate or outdated information
• Lack of trust in the information on the intranet
• Less efficient means of communicating and information retrieval
• Lack of or difficulty with collaboration

Oak is an out-of-the-box solution that aims to make implementing a digital workplace easy, making collaboration and productivity the main focus for your employees.

The intranet you’re using has poor user experience

Your company intranet is there to add value for your employees who expect a high level of performance from their digital workplace. Without a strong user experience, end-users often fail to take full advantage of the intranet. Many leaders struggle to crack the code for a good user experience, but it comes down to something quite simple, finding out what end-users want and recreating it.

Oak gives your workers an enjoyable experience, wherever they are. Ideal for organisations with deskless or remote workers — we give employees the power to access their company intranet at any time, from anywhere.

It takes a long time to find information on your company intranet

If it takes your employees too long to find important files, forms, documents, or other resources, it is time to rethink your company intranet strategy. Your intranet is intended to be a hub of information while providing the necessary resources for employees to efficiently complete their tasks. If they have to spend a lot of time looking for such resources, the productivity of the employee and company is at risk.

Oak however, provides an intranet solution that is easy to configure and maintain, we’re able to deliver innovative and flexible solutions to suit our customer’s needs and tailor their experience.

Top 4 UK intranet trends for 2021

The past year has been a year of change, a year of never-seen-before digital trends and workplace transformations. So, now could not be a better time to change your company intranet.

The current climate means that more employees are required to work from home and at the same time, businesses are scrambling to adopt digital workplace technologies that enable teams to work efficiently from different locations. So, having the right company intranet to connect your workforce is more vital than ever.

Organisations across the world have rapidly been adopting modern intranets to facilitate communication, collaboration and employee engagement to support their workforce who are remote working. Unlike a traditional intranet, modern intranets bring together knowledge, tools and applications on a comprehensive, collaborative interface, all to access everything they need from one single place. Here are the top 4 intranet trends for 2021, if your company intranet fails to bring in these elements, it may be time to rethink your solution.

1. Intranet as a service

Organisations, no matter the size, are moving towards the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. As more and more vendors offer intranet as a service, modern organisations can benefit from the flexibility of a cloud-based intranet model.

Furthermore, in times such as these, when companies are struggling with revenue generation and are laying off or hiring workers more frequently, they can deploy a modern intranet with minimum expense and have the flexibility to scale the platform up or down as needed. With an intranet-as-a-service model, organisations don’t have to worry about platform maintenance and upgrades.

As a SaaS solution, Oak provides the cloud-based intranet that companies need. As well as the product is easily configurable and usable, the Oak Support Team are always on hand to offer support and advice.

2. Mobile Integration

One of the biggest trends in 2021 will be to optimize intranet features on mobile devices. With your company intranet as a mobile app, remote and frontline workers, desk or deskless, can access the intranet information and stay connected with their colleagues without a desktop. By allowing employees to access information on the go, organisations can enhance engagement, productivity and collaboration in these challenging times.

3. Social Collaboration

Social features in company intranets are just as important as a positive company culture when it comes to productivity in the workplace. Social intranet tools like messenger, team workspaces and timelines encourage engagement between teams and individual colleagues.

The more users engage with the social tools in your company intranet, the more feedback you’ll receive on how to improve and optimise this area of your digital workplace strategy. If you haven’t already implemented a social intranet, Oak is the perfect solution.

Oak messenger and timelines are designed to improve employee collaboration, engagement and workplace productivity, users can send instant messages to one specific person or a whole group. Perfect for department communication, remote workers and general social interaction.

4. Personalised Experience

Personalisation will be a crucial element in all uk intranets in 2021 and beyond. Since hundreds of employees will be using the same intranet platform at work, personalisation is so important to ensure that employees are getting more meaningful and efficient interactions.

If users are seeing what they want and need to see on an intranet platform, they are more likely to enjoy using their company intranet. This could be as simple as showing company news specific to a particular department or team suggesting relevant internal content based on an employees interests and skills.

Invest in a new intranet solution with Oak

It’s time for a solution that brings your workforce together as one and boosts team collaboration, connectivity and productivity. We work with some of the most successful businesses from around the world to help them increase engagement, and our team of experts draw upon years of experience within the internal communications and intranet software industries to help customers overcome obstacles and achieve their business goals.

Now is the perfect time to change your company intranet, At Oak, our pioneering intranet solutions have been designed to help businesses like yours be the best that they can be. If you would like to arrange a demo with one of our experts, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.