+70 intranet content ideas to make your intranet less boring

Is your intranet suffering the Google Plus effect?

A very expensive system that promised it would change forever your company as a whole but ended up being just a hyped dream, a nice webpage that nobody visits?

Ok, this is more commonplace than you think. In fact, some even have claimed that corporate intranets are dead, not due to the lack of use of collaboration software (which is booming) but the lack of context and relevance for the user. Most intranets just throw content at the user, without trying to engage them at the human level.

Today, we’re sharing with you dozens of intranet content ideas and resources that gives your intranet a little more pizzazz.

We’re grouping these ideas in the following topics:

  1. Incentives
  2. Workplace culture
  3. Rewards and recognition
  4. Training and development
  5. Productivity Hacks
  6. Industry statistics and trends
  7. Daily work cartoons
  8. Open debates

1. Incentives

“Incentives” is a word which makes every employee’s ears perk up. An intranet is a great place to allow your employees access to intranets. With the intranet their sole means to access a little extra moolah, they will always see the intranet with green tinted glasses. Some common incentives that can be offered on an intranet are:

  • Flexible work/Telecommunication Request
  • Apply for Health insurance
  • Browse Career development and internal job opportunities

2. Workplace culture

As humans, we all like to feel like we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Fostering a workplace culture gives employees this sense of belonging, and encourages desires behaviors. Since in modern organizations, many employees will never meet in person, the intranet is the perfect online hub to promote and build your company culture. Some examples of promoting company culture through the intranet:

  • Share pictures of company events
  • Allow employees to interact outside of their work tasks through informal group chat
  • Let employees see each others profiles, skills and backgrounds through enterprise social networking
  • Have company wide live streaming events broadcast on the intranet

3. Training and development

Effective organizations continuously help their employees upgrade their skills. Intranets allow companies to publish in house training content, or allow access to training through the following world renowned resources:

4. Recognize your employees’ efforts

Encouragement and recognition go a great way in keeping us motivated to do our jobs. Who doesn’t like a pat on their back? In the virtual workforce of today, Intranets are a great common company platform where you can recognize employees. Some examples.

  • Publish monthly photos of “employee of the month” explaining why a particular person has been chosen.
  • Create a virtual “Thank you” board where employees can thank and appreciate each other.
  • Add gamification to your organization by issuing badges or titles for micro achievement. “Mr Helpful”, “Ms Diligent” etc.

5. Productivity Hacks

Today, when we have so much to get done, and so many tools to get it done, we are constantly looking to refine our efforts to be more efficient. Everyone learns their own unique lessons, which may bring great value for others. An intranet can be a place where productivity hacks can be shared to help everyone.

Apart from employees sharing their own hacks, the following are some great resources freely available on the internet that help employees boost productivity:

Presentations templates

Design tools

Free stock photos

Free applications for daily use

As with graphic resorces, there is a bunch of free applications your employees could use on a daily basis, without any coding knowledge, such as:

  • Database applications examples, for finding opportunities to automate repetitive tasks and replace plain spreadsheets.
  • SaaS vendor scoring tool, to help them choose a software provider.
  • Internal communications tools, to help them find ways to communicate beyond email.
  • Outlook or Google Calendar, to schedule and plan meetings.
  • Google DataStudio, for building data, reports for free.
  • LastPass, to save all their passwords.

6. Industry statistics and trends

It makes sense for employees to be conversant with the broad trends in their industry. It helps employees become better professionals no matter what their role is – sales, production etc. The following are some great resources for industry statistics that can be shared via the internet.

7. Daily cartoons

Humor at work is greatly underrated. A daily cartoon published on your intranet would attract employees and help them get started on their day with a smile of their faces.

However, we must be aware that this isn’t exactly the same situation as being amongst a group of buddies at school. Some great resources to find refined comedy, which balance incisiveness and sensitivity are:

8. Open debates

Many organizations today believe in allowing employees to express themselves at a broader human level, rather than a neurotic focus on immediate work tasks. Giving your employees space to freely share their opinions on affairs that do not necessarily have a direct relationship with working can help build psychological safety.

To discuss different topics you may open a specific workplace on your intranet where employees can debate. Great sources for thoughtful discussions are: