Intranets in 2023: Ignite the spark of motivation, reduce costs and increase your productivity

Purpose, purpose, purpose 🎯.

Generation Z and millennials have one major characteristic in common, they seek community and a greater purpose in their work. If you don't give them a motivating factor beyond their salary, you might as well wave goodbye to them 👋, and accept the incoming cost💸 of consistently replacing them.

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So, what can you do to keep your employees longer and thus reduce your overall costs?

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Inner motivation is key. Ask yourself: What is the purpose behind your business? What are you trying to achieve beyond serving a burger? Why did you open your restaurant? How do you engage your employees?

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Not convinced? Gallup, a leading research company, showed a strong correlation between employee engagement and performance. The top 25% of most engaged workplaces have on average 18% higher productivity.

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Engagement = Productivity = Revenue 🚀.

If you didn't already know the above, we hope it gave you insights into why you should digitize your purpose and spread the message throughout your company. The next natural step is of course; how can you spread your message and engage your employees?

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There are, of course, several ways, and one of them is to make sure you have a good information and communication platform, or as we call it, a social intranet. In short, here's a quick summary of some of the key benefits:

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1. Better access to information: An intranet solution can become a centralized virtual environment ("a hub") where all employees can easily access important information and resources, such as procedures, workflows, staff manuals and policies. In addition, shortcuts through integrations can take you from and to other systems with ease!
2. Improved communication: Access to information is one thing, but with the right communication channels, chats, posts or other types of forums, employees can also experience easier collaboration as they find what they need faster and who to reach out to.
3. Increased efficiency: The collaboration mentioned above already increases efficiency and thus productivity as an intranet can also streamline processes and automate specific tasks, reducing the time and resources required to complete typical daily tasks.
4. Improved knowledge management: As mentioned, better access to information allows employees to act faster. With that, and with the right mindset in the organization, employees can also become a better knowledge network for each other by sharing expertise and best practices in different channels.
5. Increase employee engagement: A good intranet builds on the above and can foster a sense of belonging, community and engage employees with each other, providing a foundation for innovation and collaboration and 18% better productivity 😉.
6. Improved security: Private social media tends to be used by companies for internal communication. It's simply a security nightmare due to GDPR, and the fact that you don't own the data.

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What should I consider when choosing an engagement program? 🤔

Every business is unique, with its own challenges, limitations and ideas about what is required. Therefore, we have listed a general list that we think you should keep in mind, in no particular order:

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• Usability: The program is for the employee, therefore it should work for all technical levels. Easy to use, easy to navigate and with a user-friendly interface is a requirement you need to keep in mind.
• Scalability: As you grow, the platform should be able to easily grow with you. So choose a platform where settings can quickly adapt to new employees and locations, such as automatic group membership.
• Integration: Best-of-breed or suite solution? Always the difficult question. Whatever you go for, integration is key as it enables easy navigation between your services. If it's not easy, your digital systems won't be used.
• Accessibility: Website only? Forget it! The platform must be accessible from any device, from anywhere and push notifications are a must.
• Cost-effective: Spending money on an intranet should be in line with your objectives and the proposed benefits so that you see a net positive relationship between the intranet and employee usage. It should also not cost anything to get started.
• Adaptability: Every organization is unique, so you need to be able to adapt your intranet to your specific organizational needs.

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In this article, we just wanted to give you the basics of "why" you need to engage your workforce and "what" criteria you should have in mind. It may be the starting point for your journey to find an intranet, or it may be enough to get you started. Either way, we hope it gives you insights into the importance of staying on the cutting edge of technology to ensure long-term growth for your organization!

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Find more insights on intranets at Ziik📣