An employee’s main window to critical work tools and news is their intranet. It should act as a hub for streamlined communication online for potentially thousands of colleagues worldwide (when done right!). However, simply setting it up is not enough; to fulfil its purpose effectively it must be made appealing for your staff and stimulate engagement.
Overview: Why Optimising Intranet Communication is Vital to a Business
For example, companies with employees worldwide can publish announcements, advertise policies, or recognise outstanding employees etc. This improves collaboration and lessens feelings of isolation that workers may experience from home. However, this peak communication only occurs when we cover important details e.g., team culture.
Businesses are always looking to improve productivity, efficiency and overall performance. Yet many overlook the way in which a well-organised intranet brings us closer to these goals! To achieve this, a well-organised intranet is needed as it reliably pushes productivity, streamlines processes, and manages company knowledge. An intranet, put simply, is an internal communications platform for reaching your broader business objectives.
Foster an Effective Team Culture
If staff feel supported, confident to ask questions, and are rewarded for superb performance, you have formed a healthy team culture. If unhealthy, colleagues can drift away from the company’s mission and values.
As individuals, the personal touch is meaningful to us: SharePoint features like virtual rewarding systems, and special welcomes for onboarding, allow members to feel recognised and valued on a human level. As a common virtual space, when your intranet hosts positivity, it benefits staff morale.
Lastly, encourage two-way communication, this highlights the importance of staff comments and your interest in hearing them. SharePoint allows communication between all corporate levels, and an open culture allows a team to cooperate fully.
Encourage Workplace Collaboration
Teams that collaborate tap into the well of diverse knowledge, skills and experience, provided by all members. Regularly receiving and providing feedback is a vital component of the workflow which SharePoint offers many features to encourage:
- Discussion Forums: via SharePoint settings you can create discussion boards which are useful for quick problem-solving. Here, members can contribute and read messages quickly, and save important messages to later return to.
- Quick Polls: this feature lets you create surveys with short questions that multiple users can answer. This promptly provides insight, and all voters matter equally making for a fair and impartial feedback system.
- Anonymous Suggestions Boxes: for sensitive matters, SharePoint can host anonymous comments that only an administrator can read. This empowers contributors to feel unafraid in speaking out on delicate topics.
Connect Staff to Company News and Resources
If staff aren’t linked to your business’ updates, achievements and more, then what motivates their interest?
Fortunately, this is easily resolved, by sharing your company’s latest updates (e.g., via newsletter or an announcement portal) you improve transparency in the workplace and keep everyone informed. The SharePoint homepage can also be customised to create a digital workplace that includes engaging content like company activities etc. Even more usefully, you can attach links like ‘Employee Support for HR and IT’ to ensure your team has vital resources that can be easily accessed from the click of a button.
Facilitate Convenient Access to Critical Work Information
The need for a business to delegate work efficiently while equipping its staff with essential work tools speaks for itself. SharePoint allows users to allocate work and specify deadlines, for improved communication details like who the pending task is assigned to, its due date or priority, can be found via built-in filters. What’s more, with easily accessible libraries and internal documents on SharePoint, staff efficiency and independence improve immensely.
This streamlines the workflow and removes the need for excess dialogue to cover these details. After all, optimising communication is as much about hosting necessary conversations as it is removing others not required.
Create an inspiring, engaging intranet platform with SharePoint.
To learn how to maximise SharePoint, contact our team today. We look forward to empowering your business to reach its full potential.Microsoft are constantly updating the platform with new features which can help your business. ThinkShare’s experts know this can provide a full range of tailored services based on your needs.