You’ve sat through demos, conducted months of research and gained final approval from the management team and now it’s official; your business is getting a new intranet.
Job done, right?
The reality is that there’s much work to be done to reduce resistance to change and to encourage adoption. The impact of failing to create a rollout strategy can result in an unsuccessful intranet launch.
But how do you successfully introduce a new intranet to your team?
Here are 6 methods you can deploy to help build momentum and incorporate a new intranet into your team’s everyday work activities.
Align your New Intranet’s Capabilities with Business Strategy
What’s your business’s goals and objectives? If it’s to maximise efficiency, improve customer service, develop employee learning or increase engagement and revenue – align these objectives with your new intranet’s functionality and capabilities. Make the alignment clear from the beginning and provide ongoing progress updates and reports to your team.
You can see examples of how your intranet can help you achieve business objectives and goals below:
- Maximise Efficiency – replace paper-based processes with automated workflow management tools
- Improve Customer Service – create an issue ticketing system, online customer service courses, FAQs, knowledge base articles, customer policies and procedures
- Personal Development and Learning – create custom learning paths, courses and assessments using a Learning Management System
- Increase Engagement – set up team and departmental news channels, activity streams, forums and idea spaces. Encourage employees to post questions, feedback and comments in these channels.
Enlist the Help of Early Adopters and Influencers
Early adopters and influencers can be identified due to their own passions or handpicked because they are capable of leading others. Additionally, you may want to consult with departmental managers if your organisation has a large number of employees as they’ll have a pretty clear idea of suitable people. These employees can help raise awareness and lead colleagues to the new intranet by acting as vocal supporters and endorsers.
Enterprise Social Tools for User Generated Collaboration
Fully integrated social collaboration tools are a vital component of any new business intranet. Empower employees to interact, collaborate, share information and gain answers through enterprise social networking tools. Equally important is social functionality such as the ability to ‘like’ posts, share files and attach photos. Consider employees who spend significant time away from their desks due to customer meetings etc. by ensuring they have an intranet app to directly post updates and view intranet activity streams.
Relevant and Up-to-Date Content
Create a fundamental reason for employees to visit the new intranet by regularly adding quality content and migrating important information. Adopting a decentralised approach, involving content champions from across the business will ensure that your intranet has a steady supply of content that will be of interest to employees. Your new intranet should act as the primary tool for finding business information – having numerous systems will cause confusion amongst employees.
The “What’s in it for me?” Promotion
Communicating to employees the value and benefits of using the new business intranet is key to increasing adoption and reducing resistance to change. For instance, how can it make their jobs easier? Conduct some research to show employees that you understand their individual needs.
Reward Employees for their Contribution
Recognising participation will motivate employees to start contributing on their new intranet. Customers who use the Claromentis Intranet Platform can attribute points to the fulfilment of intranet tasks, such as creating news articles.
