- Companies with successful intranets include American Medical Association (US), Archer Malmo (US), Capital Power (Canada), Delta Air Lines (US), eBay, Inc. (US), GSK (UK), Maple Leaf Foods Inc. (Canada), PKP Energetyka S.A. (Poland), Travelers Insurance (US), and States UN World Food Programme (Italy), who were all winners of the 17th Intranet Design Annual Award for 2018.
- Other successful trends that companies are following in 2018 include digital, mobile integration, social collaboration, personalized experience, integrating systems, intranet engagement, internal and external, measuring success, design and learning integration.
- According to a recent survey by Prescient Digital Media, 69% of employees report to use company intranets, 31% report that they never use them, and only 13% of employees report to use company intranets on a daily basis.
OVERVIEW
We researched corporate websites, market reports, white papers, and trusted media sites to find various intranet trends to include what companies have successful intranets, what they are doing right, general usage statistics, the percentage of employees that use intranets and user perceptions. Below you will find a deep dive of our research findings.
TOP COMPANIES/ WHAT THEY ARE DOING WELL
Companies with successful intranets include American Medical Association (US), Archer Malmo (US), Capital Power (Canada), Delta Air Lines (US), eBay, Inc. (US), GSK (UK), Maple Leaf Foods Inc. (Canada), PKP Energetyka S.A. (Poland), Travelers Insurance (US), and States UN World Food Programme (Italy), who were all winners of the 17th Intranet Design Annual Award for 2018.
Common success factors for the companies listed above include speedy development, having a team size relative to the number of employees the intranet supports and bringing in outside help.
Development time was the shortest yet since the first Annual Intranet Design contest. Many projects involve iterative development which can make it difficult to calculate the actual project time, due to constant improvements. Agile development strategies have contributed to shorter development times along with improved website development tools. "Two of this year’s winners used intranet-in-a-box solutions that were quickly deployed in 7 and 10 months, respectively.
Team size is also another factor in the success of a companies' intranet. There was an "increase in the average team size compared to past years’ data. However, these teams are still relatively small. Given the intranet’s importance — both for communicating internally and completing daily work — intranet teams should be generously staffed." Stronger tools and faster implementation can result in smaller teams, however, it is essential that teams receive adequate management support, funding and staff to be successful. This year the average teams were comprised at 0.029% of the company's size.
This year eight of the winning organizations relied on "outside agencies and consultants to help with the intranet redesign, bringing in an average of two agencies each." Key areas in which teams sought assistance included discovery, development, content creation and editor training, information architecture, persona creation, prototyping, user research, project management, visual design, wire frame and user research.
Other successful trends that companies are following, in 2018, include digital, mobile integration, social collaboration, personalized experience, integrating systems, intranet engagement, internal and external, measuring success, design and learning integration.
USAGE STATS/ PERCENTAGE OF EMPLOYEES WHO USE INTRANETS
According to a recent survey by Prescient Digital Media, 69% of employees report to use company intranets, 31% report that they never use them, and only 13% of employees report to use company intranets on a daily basis. The study also reported that although "80% of organizations have had intranets for five or more years, most employees visit their intranet only about once a month."
USER PRECEPTIONS
Although an intranet "provides effective collaboration tools that are adaptable to a range of personal styles and communication methods. Every company has a diverse range of employees — each with different working styles and communication methods — and each individual has his or her own work style. Thus, collaboration between workers can be difficult."
Unfortunately, the cons list we found outweighed the pros. Employee perception is that their company's intranet does well at providing a social networking platform, simplifies decision-making and streamlines data management.
Employees felt that there were increased security issues, increased costs, increased time consumption, too much site map, too many choices, lack of updates, poor usability, and lack of irrelevance.