I find myself in a unique and fortunate situation: to be able to reflect on the hundreds of intranets I have seen over the past 24 years — large and small, helpful and wasteful, homegrown or based on an intranet tool. I started Nielsen Norman Group’s Intranet Design Annual in the year 2000 and published the first report in 2001. Between reviewing these contest entries, working with clients, conducting independent UX research, and talking with our UX Conference attendees, I came to understand the features and themes that make intranets successful. I share them with you in this article.

The elements found on the most successful intranets are:

1. Corporate and leadership communications
2. Information about and support of core functions
3. Repository of necessary resources
4. Tools and application in a central place
5. Information about other teams and individuals
6. Consistent design
7. Credible content

Corporate and Leadership Communications

Several types of corporate-related communications are usually easily found on successful intranets:

1. Corporate announcements and messages from the leadership

These can live either in a dedicated section on the intranet or only on the homepage, if the organization does not have enough news to call for a separate area.  Organizations with a lot of news may showcase a few, important or recent news items on the homepage, linking to the main news section.

Each news article or video:

• has a publication date
• has a descriptive title
• has a short summary
• is assigned tags, keywords, and categories to make it easy to find with the site search or with filters

Leaders’ messages (e.g., blog posts or videos) are current and speak about areas that the poster really cares about. They usually have the following characteristics:

• discuss an initiative  
• include some personal experience or reflective thoughts (such as a book the leader is reading and how it relates to a current corporate goal)
• are written by the leader or by the corporate-communications department in the leader’s voice
• are released regularly (such as monthly)
• are published as a named column (e.g., “Nikki speaks” if the CEO’s name is Nichola Jones) 

2. Public-facing information about the organization

The information that the organization puts out to the public is accessible through the intranet. For example, press releases, quotes in external news stories, analysis of a stock-price change, information about an acquisition or merger, and top social posts are linked to from the intranet. 

3. News about the industry and competition

Such information makes employees confident about what they are doing, and what leadership wants, and updates them on current important events.

Information About and Support of Core Functions

If you’re working at a hospital network, you don’t have to be a nurse to care about what the nurses are doing. And the office manager at a telecommunications company may still need to know what coworkers who are installing the fiber optic cables have going on.

Every organization has line roles, that work on the organization’s core capabilities, and staff roles, that support the line roles. Many intranets include forms for policies and expenses that help the staff functions, but have no information related to line functions. Omitting this content is a huge missed opportunity. 

Whether it’s creating a new product, updating an outdated service, meeting sales goals, decreasing costs, increasing safety, streamlining operations, winning a big client’s business, or finishing a long-awaited project, employees want to know about it. Also, information related to core competencies creates common ground and makes it easy to collaborate and share knowledge among teams. Additionally, when people leave the organization, some of their knowledge can remain on the intranet. Great intranets include information such as:

• corporate goals 
• how well goals are met
• tools for supporting line functions
• information related to the work of the line functions

Repository of Necessary Resources

There’s a reason why many intranets are simply repositories for HR policies and IT forms: without these, employees’ most basic needs would not be met. Employees should easily access trusted information and forms related to benefits, help with keeping their work tools running, and yes, body nourishment. After all, you can’t be an awesome engineer if you can’t even park your car in the morning. You’re not going to sell commercial property as a real-estate agent of you’re worried about whether your child’s new braces will be covered under the corporate dental plan. And even a brilliant financial advisor won’t shine if she is anxious about where her next meal is coming from.

To satisfy these needs, successful intranets offer:

• HR information and forms
• IT service requests and related tools
• administrative information, such as forms, expense reports, hours tracking, scheduling
• policies and procedures 
• location information related to buildings, such as:
  • security information
  • badges
  • transportation and parking
  • guest access
  • fitness center
  • (highly important) the cafeteria menu

Tools and Applications in a Central Place

Some organizations have rigorous rules and locked-down computers and internet browsers that prevent downloading or installing any digital tool. On the flipside, some organizations have a totally laissez-faire philosophy, allowing anyone to download or buy any tool.

No matter the situation, many organizations offer a glut of digital-workplace tools. The abundance can either enable or paralyze employees.

Great intranets take the guesswork out of the digital workplace tools available by: auditing and taking inventory of digital tools

• linking to tools that are currently available and helpful to employees
• providing clear names and descriptions for each tool (for example, Online meetings is a better link label than the brand name of the meeting tool)
• consolidating tool information (links and descriptions) in one area on the intranet
• crosslinking to the tools from those areas of the intranet that are related to the tool’s function
• making the set of tools searchable
• allowing users to bookmark the tools they use
• including a (customizable) default tool set with links to commonly used tools on every page of the intranet

These tactics make it easy for employees to discover, find, and access the tools they need. 

Connecting Teams and Individuals

Employees can benefit from knowing about teams at the organization, their colleagues, their organization’s history, mission, and operating principles. The following types of information are essential:

1. The employee directory and organization chart

The employee directory helps connect people by offering contact information, plus the employee’s photo, job, projects, and affinities. (Preferably with good employee search.)

2. Information about leadership, groups, projects, people

Employees want to know what’s going on in the organization and what others are working on. The intranet should also display:

• information about new employees
• showcased employees (e.g., employee of the week)
• employee and team awards

3. Employee-generated content and recommendations

Employees want a voice and need to hear what their colleagues have to say. The intranet can provide a platform, beyond collaboration spaces, in which people can share and learn about their colleagues. Some ways intranets provide this platform include:

• recommendations for articles
• suggestion for process improvements
• tools to create articles or blog posts
• ways to share content such as search queries or favorite pages
• ability to comment on, like, or share pages
• ability to edit their own employee profile
• engaging, but not necessarily work-related content such as:
  • picture or quote of the week
  • classified advertisements

Consistent Design

• Consistency means that employees will be able to access the main intranet functionality in the same way everywhere.  A consistent design includes the same visual design, the same location for logo, search, navigation, and the same content for the global navigation on every single page of the intranet.

The following intranet features can make the experience seem consistent across pages include the following:

• a logo and/or name for the intranet, always positioned in the upper left page corner and always leading to the main intranet homepage
• an identical global navigation that appears at the top of all intranet pages (can be a navigation bar on desktop and a hamburger  menu on mobile)
• a secondary navigation that always appears in the same place
• a consistent font, used for normal text, links, page titles, and subheadings across the site
• a consistent color palette and imagery
• a consistent-looking footer (though links may change) at the bottom of all pages on the intranet
• a site search and people search a in the page header
• content that opens as a web page (not a PDF — unless it’s meant to be printed)

(When a document will open in another format, like PDF or excel sheet, the logo for that application should appear by the link to the document, warning users that the document will act differently than the rest of the links on the site.)

GSK, 2018 winner, offered a brand-template tool. After surveying thousands of pages on the site, GSK intranet team members found commonalities and patterns in page elements. They then designed an easy-to-use, centrally controlled tool called the brand template. This streamlined how pages were designed and let users with no design or technical experience create a brand-compliant, consistent page. For flexibility, content publishers used a catalogue of commonly used page components, which let them focus their efforts on great content rather than on UI.

Credible Content

One of the greatest benefits of a corporate intranet is that it acts as the main, trusted source for information. Any employee, new or veteran, can look to its pages for answers. Without bothering a colleague or manager, employees can trust and act upon the information they find on the intranet.

Employees need to believe the intranet; there are several elements that increase intranet credibility:

• a date on each news item
• a last updated date on every page on the intranet
• the name of the page owner, as well as a link to contact information, so the source of every piece of content is known and findable
• moving news content to dedicated static pages: even if information in a news article remains true, employees will doubt it and look for the static page that housed it in the section of the intranet about that content
• no content duplication — write it once, link to it many times from various areas of the site
• prioritizing content on pages
• archiving old, unused content and removing incorrect content
• the same tone of voice throughout the design

Inspiring content owners and making their jobs easier with an easy content-management system (CMS), also goes a long way.

Conclusion 

Any intranet can offer news, HR resources, or a warehouse of forms and policies. But few intranets offer the array of features, good information, and helpful design that truly meet the organization and individuals’ needs. A lot of features don’t make an intranet great. But focusing on the key traits can transform a blah or unhelpful portal into an engaging, motivating, informative productivity tool.