16 Nov
HR Intranet: Ideas, Best Practices and Examples
As organizations gear up for a post-COVID-19 world, leaders must rethink priorities and adapt to newer ways of working.
The workforce is dispersed across several locations; the lines between personal responsibilities and professional lives are rapidly blurring. Therefore, implementing technologies that improve employee engagement and shape employee experience is the need of the hour. A survey by PwC reveals 74% of organizations plan to increase spending on technology to address pressing HR needs.
HR Intranets are gaining immense popularity. By acting as a centralized digital hub for company-wide data, applications, and tools, they support knowledge-sharing, facilitate collaboration, drive employee experience and build an inclusive organizational culture.
Understanding the value of an HR Intranet and why it is essential for a smooth transition to a post-COVID era is necessary to secure stakeholder buy-in. To provide better insight, we present to you the key benefits along with HR Intranet examples, ideas, and best practices.
Why HR Intranet Is Important More Than Ever
1. Keep employees connected in a remote working setup
A survey by Gartner says, “48% of employees will likely work remotely at least part of the time after COVID-19.”
As companies shift to remote working models, leaders must take cognizance of their impact on the overall employee experience.
Since face-to-face collaboration will no longer be possible, employees can rely on the variety of communication tools and social capabilities that are a part of the HR Intranet to facilitate knowledge sharing, build culture, receive performance appraisal, and share feedback.
2. Enhance efficiency by centralizing resources
Organizations have heaps of HR documents, files, forms, data, and other resources, which may be spread across individual devices, siloed apps, emails, internal servers, or even paper-based systems.
This creates confusion, makes document search too time-consuming a task, and increases the risk of not accessing up-to-date knowledge, leading to errors in work and the possibility of non-compliance with legal procedures.
An HR Intranet hosts compliance policies, 401K, recruitment, employee benefits, and other procedural information on a comprehensive, centralized interface. This saves valuable employee time in searching for information.
Moreover, with digital tools, e-forms, custom templates, and workflows, companies can automate routine administrative procedures, such as onboarding, payroll or salary FAQs, insurance, performance reviews, etc., leaving HR personnel to focus on other critical tasks.
3. Focus on employee well-being
It is crucial to focus on initiatives that support employee well-being to combat feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and stress amidst the pandemic.
By publishing blogs and stories on stress management, physical and mental health, and encouraging the workforce to participate in discussions through designated forums on the Intranet, organizations can improve employee engagement and productivity.
Providing training modules and e-learning resources on the platform helps employees develop and hone essential skills.
Additionally, recognizing and publishing employee achievements on the Intranet increases motivation and employee satisfaction.
4. Promote the employer’s brand and make work meaningful
When the staff is geographically dispersed or siloed within their departments, it becomes even more essential to communicate the company’s vision, mission, and values to create a shared, virtual culture.
Employees search for meaning and purpose in daily work. And what better way to achieve this than communicating your organization’s brand, goals, projects, challenges, social initiatives, and upcoming events through a communications-centered HR Intranet.
Ideas and Best Practices for your HR Intranet
To ensure you gain maximum value out of your organization’s HR Intranet, here are a few ideas and best practices to bear in mind –
- Personalize your Intranet with templates customized to reflect your company’s brand and values
- Make your Intranet the central hub for all HR forms and documents, including leave application, expense tracking, insurance claim forms, HR policies, salary and benefits, etc.
- Enable recommendations on your intranet, to deliver contextual content to your employees based on their location, job role, interests and activities.
- Ensure your Intranet integrates with third-party applications and existing HR software, including HRMS, time and expense system, travel booking app, etc.
- Enrich your Intranet’s interface with multimedia files, including audio, video, images, and graphics.
- Enable a responsive mobile interface for your Intranet so that employees can access information from anytime and from anywhere
- Take advantage of an idea management system in an intranet to capture employee ideas and drive decentralized innovation
- Ensure your intranet is equipped with a smart search engine that understands natural language and delivers highly relevant and personalized results
- Use a smart content management system to make it easy for your HR staff to publish relevant news and updates
- Create an FAQ section or deploy an intranet chatbot that answers the most common HR questions
- Conduct surveys and capture Employee feedback to keep a tab the pulse of the employees.
- Use social networking and collaboration tools like discussion forums, polls, blogs and workspaces to allows employees to share their opinions and views
- Recognize top performing employees with badges and featuring them on the home page
HR Intranet Examples
Mesh, an Employee Experience Platform
Mesh, an Employee Experience Platform Office 365 intranet, provides a dedicated HR site and acts as a hub for employee-focused resources, including newsletters, blogs, events, contacts, HR apps, and many more. The SharePoint Intranet provides a reliable and secure platform for hosting employee data and documents related to salary, benefits, 401K, leaves, open positions, HR policies, performance appraisal, and feedback.
Site features include company name, a customized navigation menu (a Mega Menu), site logo, employee contacts, and custom tools (built on Microsoft PowerApps) for booking travel, requesting time-off, payroll, and other services.
Mesh is built with the best of Microsoft AI and Azure Services, including LUIS, Graph, Azure Search services, and MS Natural Language Stack and boasts of advanced features including:
- Cognitive enterprise search
- Content personalizations and recommendations powered by AI
- Intelligent idea management
- Content management system
- Integrations with LoB and legacy systems
- Knowledge mining with Azure
- Intranet chatbot
We have more than 13 years of experience in deploying SharePoint Intranets. Our solutions are recognized by leading industry analysts, like Gartner, Forrester, and Clearbox, and implemented by large and medium-sized enterprises worldwide.
To know more about Mesh, feel free to contact one of our digital workplace experts.
Poonam Chug is AVP - SaaS Strategy & Business. She has worked in various areas, right from designing and executing sales & account management strategies to reengineering digital workplace solutions. With her determined focus on our mission and progressive approach, she has achieved customer delight in the space of AI, Knowledge Mining, Content & Collaboration, Virtual Assistants, RPA and more. Backed with a deep understanding of customer needs and technology, she leads the SaaS business unit with an upshot of maximizing revenue while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Poonam Chug