Building Engagement for your Intranet

A new Intranet for your Organisation is an effective way to get your entire team on the same page, collaborate effortlessly together, accelerate productivity and increase employee engagement. Intranets such as SharePoint Intranet, Microsoft Teams or Sprocket are great platforms to create engagement.

During the planning, building and launch phases of your new intelligent intranet, there are many ways to have your team involved. But HOW can you do this successfully and have greater user adoption in the end?

Design Phase

You've decided it's the right time for your Organisation to have a new Intranet created and have signed on to Sope's services…now what? 

"A great place to start is asking your team what their current pain points are, and what they need to work more effectively," suggests Sope's Senior Implementation Consultant, Emily Sclater. "A survey sent out to your team is a great way to receive feedback or make time in your next meeting to have a group brainstorming session."

Questions to ask your team:

• What do you need to be able to work more effectively?
• If you could have anything included in an intranet, what would that be?
• What type of content would you like? Eg: Staff directory
• How will these ideas benefit the organisation?
• How will these ideas benefit the employees?

Having a greater insight into your team want/needs helps the Sope Implementation Team guide the design sessions, allowing them to address and highlight solutions to the points raised.

Build Phase

During the build phase, it is the perfect time to build excitement and anticipation for your new intranet.

“Teasers are key to getting your team excited,” says Emily. "By including them in the process, it will bring up questions, feedback and ideas which will help our implementation team design your Intranet to be suitable for your whole organisation.”

Activity ideas to run in your organisation, prior to launch:

• Name suggestions on what to call the new Intranet. This can be run as an Organisation-wide competition.
• Utilising Microsoft Viva Connections to create a "Coming Soon" page with various web parts, such as a countdown timer to launch.
• List of features and benefits of the new intranet sent to your team via Microsoft Teams or communicated with during staff meetings.
• Sharing a walk-through video teaser prior to launch, to give the team a sneak peek of their new digital workplace. 
• Create a news post in your Intranet and send this to your team (without them having full access yet to the Intranet), getting your team used to the platform.

Launching your Intranet

Congratulations! Your new modern intelligent Intranet has been designed, refined, and is now ready to launch to your wider organisation.

This is something that deserves to be celebrated, and there are many things you can do within your team and wider organisation to encourage engagement and make sure everyone feels confident navigating the new Intranet.

• Morning tea/Staff party
• "Drop-in" session with Sope's Intranet Implementation Consultant, giving your team 1-on-1 time with our Technical Wizards to encourage any ideas and feedback from your wider team.
• Scavenger Hunt/Bingo - hiding images/logos around different pages of the Intranet
• Holding a "no meeting morning" to give your team time to explore the new intranet

Remember: The most important thing for a successful launch is great communication between your project team and your employees.

To download your own copy of Building Engagement for your Intranet, click here.

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