When running any kind of business where you need to manage multiple employees, communication is one of the most important thing to prioritize. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for a communication breakdown to occur and cause serious damage to your business’ productivity and success. But how do you fix it?
There are a lot of things that can be done to help improve the situation, but one of the best in more recent years is the use of employee Intranet solutions. But what is it, exactly? And how can it improve things for employee communication?
What are Intranet solutions?
Basically, Intranet is a network that is local or otherwise restricted, where you and your employees communicate through and collaborate on different projects. Typically, even going with a paid Intranet system is going to provide greater value compared to what financial damage poor communication may end up doing to your business.
What do Employee Intranet Solutions do for my business?
Whenever you’re considering implementing new software or ideas into your business, this should be one of the first things you ask. However, any business with a decent number of employees, especially if the business owner has ever had any issues with communication or collaboration, should look into employee Intranet solutions.
Most Intranet solutions, such as Igloo, Jive, and Microsoft SharePoints, have similar benefits, including improved collaboration, quality user interface, and ease of navigation. One of the best features of Intranet services is data protection. In this day and age, data protection is more important than ever, and these services have built-in data protection. Microsoft tends to be the best at protecting one’s data, so if that is your chief concern, Microsoft SharePoints may be the best option for you.
When deciding whether to adopt this kind of thing, you also have to take into account time budgeting. Depending on the Intranet service, you may have to spend more time training your employees to use the service, and it likely won’t be something they figure out day one. So be sure to set aside time to get some training in, especially if you are using a more complex service, like Microsoft SharePoint.
Are Employee Intranet Solutions worth the cost of admission?
Whether it’s worth even getting a system like this will ultimately depend on a number of factors. For example, how big is your company? How much of your business’ budget can you afford to spend on something like this? How many employees do you need this for?
If you don’t have much in the way of money you can put towards this, and if you don’t have many employees, there are free solutions that you can consider. For example, Igloo is a relatively accessible option if you have 10 or fewer people who will be using it, as it is a free service up to that number. When you add an 11th user to Igloo, you have to pay an extra $12 per month for that user.
On the other hand, some services that are more well-regarded are, inevitably, going to be that much more expensive. For example, Microsoft SharePoints is considerably more expensive than Igloo, but is much more useful if you have a bigger company.
Are employee Intranet solutions guaranteed to work?
While the idea of an easy win for your business may be nice, there really isn’t anything like that, short of winning the lottery. You still need to set things up and design them, and if you do a poor job, it could make things even worse. As Simpplr notes in this blog about why Intranets fail, poor user experience, low adoption rates, and confusing design are common issues that kill an Intranet solution.As such, it is important that, if you don’t have someone who can do it well, you should instead hire someone who can do it for you.
