Intranet Connections has its roots in business applications. We have added a lot of social and collaboration elements to our social intranet software over the recent years, but we have never forgotten about our roots in providing tools for employees to help improve your business.  We also see a great deal of employee engagement stemming from your company culture and our new v11 is all about leveraging your intranet to communicate that culture, and to expand on the tools you need to better inform and collaborate with your employees.

I was going to blog about the specific features of our new release, but instead I owe an entry to Julie Hunt, of Julie Hunt Consulting who took the time to respond to my last blog post on v11 and culture.

For those of you interested in our latest v11 features and what our team has been up to in developing App Builder (and other cool enhancements) check out the link to our v11 landing page at the bottom of this post.

Julie Hunt, well known in the Twitter Intranet Community as @juliebhunt, sent me an email asking more about our team collaboration day that I blogged about – where I closed the office and invited all employees to attend and participate in a company strategy session. Julie was asking about how our employees are empowered to be stronger and more productive, to relate better to our intranet customers.

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. It was a fabulous conference with enlightening speeches from influential marketing professionals. One of the speakers that hit home for me was Elyse Tager from Constant Contact. Elyse gave an insightful presentation about Engagement Marketing and spoke about customer engagement and the act of giving a great customer experience.

I believe that Elyse said it best, “there is no marketing cure for sucking, the last thing you want to do is ignore the customer experience.” This motto echo’s our customer service goals at Intranet Connections because we strive to continuously deliver positive customer experiences over the phone, with email and through social media.

With the boom of tech-savvy employees in the workforce, companies are in search of unique engagement tools to keep the Gen X and Gen Y employees interested.  In Dana LaSalvia’s article called “Building an Employee-Enriched Culture with Social Media” she wrote that “organizations should think about integrating companywide marketing messages and upgrading their employee’s recognition programs to be more virtual.” To do this, implement an intranet! An intranet will improve employee culture and collaboration and act as a central portal for important company information.  When you position your company online, you are catering to a large group of Gen X and Gen Y employees.

An intranet is a virtual solution to inform and connect with your tech savvy employees. To do so, utilize Dana’s Electronic Tool suggestions on your intranet:

Blogs provide a platform for a constant flow of communication. It is a low-cost, easy-to-use method to implement. Keep content rich and employee-centered.

RSS Feeds (a.k.a. Real Simple Syndication) provide a stream of information for employees and can act as an update alert for recognition program news.

Widgets are small applications that can be installed and executed by an end user. Create a recognition wizard or a tip-of-the-day widget to supplement any program type.

Podcasts (or non-streamed webcast) are a series of digital media files that can be downloaded through Web syndication for training modules,   off-site seminars and integrated communications.

Peter Barron is an Intranet Connections Fan; he provides significant feedback on our blog, Linkedin and Facebook pages and speaks candidly about our software as it applies to his organization.  Over the past ten years, Peter has managed the Rio Rancho Public Schools intranet, which is internally called “Rionet”. With over 20 school district departments that use the rionet, Peter targets applications and widgets that make the intranet process fast and easy for thousands of users.  We recently interviewed Peter to find out what makes his intranet so successful, and today we are delighted to share his responses with our intranet community.

Here are Peter’s six tips for an efficient intranet::

1. Time: Seeing as Rio Rancho is a school district, the majority of intranet users are teachers. Teachers are incredibly busy with students during the day and they lack freedom of time to peruse their intranets. In order to overcome this timing issue, Peter leverages the notification capabilities of the “rionet” with subscriptions to departments that the teachers have invested interest in. This subscription service has been a big push for Peter and the Rio Rancho Schools because it decreases searching time on the intranet by targeting topics of interest for the user.

2. E-forms: Teachers must attend conferences, so Peter created PDF e-forms for them to request conference admittance and funding in rionet. Directly from their classroom, teachers fill out the request form, and it is processed right away.

Sharlyn Lauby, a writer for Open Forum, recently wrote an article called 5 Challenges for Human Resources in a Digital World which shares the automation challenges that HR departments face today. Sharlyn explains that an array of automation tools is available to HR professionals; however, the adoption of this technology is slow. A great way to overcome computerization issues is to implement an intranet to share and store human resources information digitally.

Once an intranet is up and running, there are exceptional applications that can make HR documents and polices accessible to all business sectors securely.

Justin Olson from the Utah Credit Union, who has been on our intranet software since 2004, created two unique time-saving Human Resources tools on his intranet:

Non-salaried employees clock-in using Hyperlinked logos that are connected to their external time tracking system. Hours worked are tracked through one site so that HR does not have to login to another system. 

Full time employees have a Human Resources widget for health benefits, medical, dental and 401K plan information. Justin said that providing all of the proper documentation in a central area has freed up Human Resources because less people have questions when all of the forms are easily available on the site. 

Practical Intranet HR Tools that can be utilized

• Encourage employees to use the intranet by solely providing HR forms and policies on the intranet
• Use the vacation application to track and manage absence requests from employees.
• Create HR e-forms; all files can be stored and managed in this secured area
• Manage employee course registration with the training application
• Obtain user feedback by adding comments and ratings to the bottom of each widget or application that you create. This way, employees can respond on how things are working.
• Utilize the anniversary and birthday widgets so employees can respond to their coworker’s special occasions

These are a few of the great ways that an intranet can automate HR in a protected and organized manner.  How has your company enhanced Human Resources capabilities via your intranet?

People are increasingly interested in making healthy and environmentally friendly choices at work and at home, and your intranet can support this way of life. Use your intranet to engage and educate employees on greener lifestyles with our top ten tips.

Top Ten Tips for a Greener Intranet

Tip #1: Create a Green Community sub-site

Spearhead your campaign with a Green Community area of the intranet, and then add in collaborative apps like the ones below.

Tip #2: Suggestion box

• Give employees a voice to share ideas and feedback
• Encourage comments and “like” of ideas
• Start contests and give prizes
• Promote interest & others to join the conversations

Tip #3: Green Tip of the Day

Create a Green Tip of The Day widget… like “did you know that using a French press is the greenest way to make your daily cup of coffee?” or encourage staff to bring their lunches in reusable containers to reduce packaged waste

Tip #4: Community Initiatives

Register employees for community initiatives using the training application; management is done automatically by the app!

Tip #5: Documents and Policies

Post electronic brochures with attractive and friendly visuals. For example, create posters that show how to sort waste in kitchen recycling, compost and garbage bins.

Tip #6: Discussion Board

Encourage employees to post green topics for conversation … “Should the office add compost bins in the kitchen?”

Tip #7: Contest widget

Run environmentally friendly contests that have staying power: