Boost Your Business Connectivity With An Intranet

The digital workplace is evolving quickly, with powerful communication and collaboration software allowing people to work how and where they want. Teams are always connected, but it’s no longer critical that they are together. In today's interconnected world, organisations are increasingly growing across multiple countries and time zones. This brings up a myriad of communication and connectivity challenges when attempting to work seamlessly as a global structure. However, modern, global intranet software bring companies closer together by increasing business connectivity and enabling workforces to work better as one. 

According to Information Age, true collaboration enabled through unified communication and collaboration optimises productivity by eliminating up to 75% of the time wasted by the average employee looking for the right information. In turn it can reduce project times by 40% and minimise lost business opportunities by keeping employees connected across multiple devices.

Having employees that are connected to your organisation will skyrocket both employee productivity and collaboration levels. But, you may find the most difficult part is making sure your employees feel connected to your company and aligned to its goals. How do you make sure your employees are connected to your organisation's vision, culture, work and people? This is where a company intranet plays a crucial part in boosting your business connectivity.

A common challenge of the global workforce: Disconnected teams

With the way that companies and employees are starting to work differently, it’s becoming more of a challenge for businesses to improve their connectivity. Whether employees are working in different offices across the globe, or they’re on the road all day without access to a computer, one thing is clear; connection is the fuel to better engagement and productivity.

To keep employees connected, having a central company intranet is the most successful solution. At Oak, our intranet software gives you all the tools you need to connect your workforce, wherever they are.

So, let’s tackle this common workplace challenge and get straight into the top 10 tips for improving your business connectivity with an intranet.

Connect the Disconnected:

10 top tips for improving business connectivity with an intranet

1. Communicate Core Company Values

In order for your employees to feel connected to your company, they must resonate with the company’s core values. Ensure your employees know, understand and remember the core values by making them easily accessible. A great place to start is by posting them on your company intranet homepage.

2. Celebrate and Recognise Employees

Employees need to feel appreciated. Employee recognition in the workplace has to be a vital part of a company's culture, and in today’s work environment, the companies with the most satisfied and productive employees are the ones that have the best training programmes and well-skilled staff. Whether it be celebrating an employee’s work anniversary, or recognising an employee for a job well-done, being appreciated will make them feel more connected to your company, improving the connectivity of your business as a whole.

3. Provide Opportunities for Feedback

Allowing employees to provide regular feedback helps your team contribute and stay connected. Give your employees a voice by offering various ways for them to submit their feedback. You can do this through online forms, employee satisfaction surveys or quick polls to name a few.

4. Make Company Resources Easily Accessible

Business connectivity is not all about messaging or calls. In today’s modern workplace, not every employee will have a stationary workspace, many are desk-less and are on the go traveling for work. For these employees, it’s important to be able to access company resources and communication channels with ease to stay connected to their organisation. Having remote intranet access provides employees with the tools they need to get their job done effectively, as well as staying connected to their colleagues.

5. Create a Sense of Community

With employees now spending more time at home than in the office with their colleagues, it is critical to create a comfortable work environment and sense of belonging. Help your employees feel connected by creating a close-knit culture. How can your intranet help? Recognise and celebrate employee milestones or organise regular casual zoom meetings to have a catch up. 

6. Drive Collaboration

Collaboration is essential in every modern digital workplace, especially one that includes remote workers. Your company intranet should have the best tools and methods to optimise team collaboration and business connectivity, wherever they are. While your intranet is your main collaboration portal, social intranet tools also provide the ability for employees to feel more connected to their company and peers by giving them a little bit more of personalisation.

7. Secure mobile capability

Having access to your company intranet through a mobile device is essential when it comes to business connectivity. By allowing employees to access information on the go, organisations can enhance engagement, productivity and collaboration in these challenging times. It is critical that employees can access the information they need, wherever they are.

8. Market to Each Other

In large companies, various departments have little idea about what’s going on with other departments. This is especially true for remote workers who are generally only engaging with the handful of people they need to do their job. To improve your business connectivity, your intranet is the perfect place to feature articles and videos describing exciting events happening in each department.

9. Encourage a Social Intranet

A powerful feature of the intranet is that it gives everyone in the company a voice, from blogs, commenting, posting on the company homepage timeline, instant messaging and more. This is especially important for connecting the disconnected employees who may feel they are struggling with working from home. It’s also useful to discuss what's going on in the company with other employees, whether that be on group chats, or directly messaging another colleague from a different department.

10. Create a Personalised Experience

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, ultimately improving enterprise connectivity. 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.

The Future of Work

There's no question that the remote workforce is growing, so there's certainly more of a need to boost business connectivity. A Gartner survey of company leaders found that 80% plan to allow employees to work remotely at least part of the time after the pandemic, and 47% will allow employees to work from home full-time.

Companies who fail to provide flexible work options will lack a competitive edge for several reasons. Organisations are also discovering that by providing all the flexibility they want makes for happier and more productive workers, leading to a measurable positive impact on profitability. Despite its benefits, the remote workforce is a relatively new concept for many companies and many are struggling to determine the best path towards improving their business connectivity. A flexible or remote workforce only succeeds when it is done right, with a modern intranet being the centre for a company’s success. 

Your company intranet is the key to developing flexible working and remote workforce. Furthermore those who take the time to effectively leverage their intranet will ensure your workforce is strong, collaborative and productive. At Oak, we provide digital workplace solutions that skyrocket business connectivity. Designed to power productivity, collaboration and connectivity, we help some of the world’s largest and most successful brands bring their business together and work better as one. Being the future of work, our goal is to tailor our intranet in line with your core company values, giving you a next-generation digital solution with your people in mind.

Want to find out more?

Get in touch with one of our experts today and see how Oak could help you improve your business connectivity.