Work from Home. Remote Work. Telework. Virtual Work. All different words that reflect the new reality where many companies have implemented telework policies for the first time.
With a sudden shift overnight, many organizations scrambled to set up employees and ease them into working remotely while maintaining productivity and engagement.
Now as organizations settle into working virtually for the foreseeable future, teams are re-evaluating their management styles and preferred methods of communication, not only to their immediate team but communications with the broader organization. Managing remote teams can be a challenge if not equipped with the right tools and software. A modern intranet or an internal communication platform fills in the gap that the most-often talked about enterprise technologies miss.
What is a Modern Intranet?
Traditional intranets are preconfigured sites, designed for internal company use with access restricted to a subset of users, such as employees and key company stakeholders. Whereas, modern intranets are purposefully designed to streamline critical top-down internal communication especially for a remote workforce. It’s important to make the distinction between traditional intranets and modern intranets. Modern intranets are different from the intranets of the past.
Among many other differentiators, modern intranets can alert and deliver instant updates to employees from anywhere, without relying on the help of IT. And in times like this, it’s absolutely critical to be able to reach remote employees instantly.
8 Ways a Modern Intranet Helps Manage Remote Employees
An employee intranet software needs to connect distributed teams and transform how they communicate. It’s up to managers to create a connected, supportive remote work culture, so your team is prepared to work productively and effectively.
1. Employees can Communicate across teams
As the workforce is becoming more distributed, a corporate intranet’s primary goal should be to connect coworkers. A modern intranet is purpose built to develop networks across departments and locations.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Interactive Employee Directory
Quickly and easily connect with the right people through an employee directory that makes collaborating with coworkers easy.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Employee Profiles
Help people get to know each other, drive engagement, and improve morale. Profiles include biographies, areas of expertise, activities, and social connections.
2. Make cross collaboration and engagement easy
Collaboration is essential to every modern digital workplace, especially with remote employees. Offerings like integrated document management provide the ability for employees to share knowledge and align a distributed workforce.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Social Collaboration
Engage employees with contemporary social intranet features: share, like and respond to content; follow favorite users; socially tag content; engage users with polls and surveys.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Knowledge Management
Access and share files of all types securely and easily. Integration with SharePoint, Office 365, Box, Google Drive, and other file-sharing services is built in. Versioning and permissions are a snap. Search is, too.
3. Align and communicate
Employees are buried in information, and it’s hard to keep everyone on the same page. Simpplr’s corporate intranet software will help clarify important news, focus employees on what matters, and reinforce company values.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Activity Feed
Keep everyone current on critical projects, files, topics, and activities. Social intranet activity feeds allow teams to work together easily and finish tasks faster.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Mandatory Reads
Ensure that important company updates within the corporate intranet are read by your employees. Each employee is alerted and must acknowledge reading the article.
4. Equip with knowledge
Employees waste a lot of time simply looking for information. A modern intranet will help employees get to the information they need so they stop getting stuck.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Sites
Easily create content-rich social workspaces for teams, departments, and communities within the intranet. Choose the features and customize the look of each site—no tech skills required.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Intelligent Search
Put everything at people’s fingertips. The intelligent search built into the intranet’s desktop and mobile apps provides quick access to people, files, sites, and more—from anywhere, at any time.
5. Encourage Open Forums
Working from Home can be an adjustment for employees especially if it’s their first time. If remote employees feel cut off from their fellow coworkers and the organization, it can have a negative impact on productivity. Social features of your intranet can help minimize feelings of isolation.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Employee Blogs
Allow employees to share ideas and experiences. Executives, influencers, and rising stars now have an easy way to communicate across the company within Simpplr’s intranet.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Photo & Video Albums
Bring your company culture to life by adding photo or video content. Just drag-and-drop to add and organize all of the important moments.
6. Advertise Events
As events and conferences have gone virtual, you need a central place to list upcoming events, webinars for employees that may be interested in participating or virtually attending.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Events Calendar
Socialize your upcoming events to encourage participation and feedback. Publish event details, including timing, location maps, organizers, RSVPs, and attendees.
7. Utilize Mobile Offerings
Empower your team with instant access to vital company communication and collaboration tools that they need to get work done from wherever they are, on any device.
Simpplr Intranet Feature: Mobile (iOS/Android) Apps
Keep your on-the-go employees connected with fully featured Android and iOS apps and mobile-optimized web access.
See the modern intranet in action
To better understand what a modern intranet can do for your organization and make sense of how they tie everything together, see our Simpplr intranet product demo.
