What is a social intranet?
With a classic intranet, information is brought to employees via top-down communication. For example, the management level of a company circulates the content and the employees consume it. There is no possibility for employees to interact, provide feedback or create their own content.
With a social intranet, on the other hand, content is no longer made available by an editorial team alone. This allows employees to create their own content. Likewise, this also enables interactions, such as liking and commenting on content. With a social intranet, all employees of a company are networked. This is done across all departments, hierarchy levels and locations. As a result, communication in the company no longer takes place only top-down, but also promotes bottom-up communication.
Goals of a social intranet
The possible uses of a social intranet are very diverse, which is why one should define the goals precisely for an efficient use of such a system. The following goals can be pursued:
- Simple and fast dissemination of information
- Reduction of e-mail traffic
- Creation of a bundled knowledge transfer
- Enabling cross-site communication and exchange
- Increasing the satisfaction and motivation of employees through active contribution to the company's culture and activities
Advantages of a social intranet
Strengthening corporate culture through increasing networking
Promoting an open exchange with articles and comments
Quickly and easily find expertise and experience through user profiles
Creation of a more efficient knowledge transfer
Reaching all employees through mobile apps
4 important functions of the social intranet
An essential component are the user profiles. Employees can use these to get in touch with all their colleagues in an uncomplicated way and exchange information. In addition to general information such as contact details and birthday, employees can also note their expertise in specific topics in the profile. This has the advantage that experts on a specific topic can be found quickly and easily within the company.
For the exchange with several colleagues on a specific topic or project, it is helpful if the social intranet enables the creation of channels or communities. It should also be possible to assign different access rights, open or closed groups to the communities.
Another important feature that a social intranet should offer is the chat function. Employees can use it to quickly and easily communicate with their colleagues and share content.
Like any other portal, a social intranet lives from the information it provides. The content here is created from communication between individual employees, but also by editors. In addition to the creation of news, information pages or posts, documents can also be uploaded, which are needed, for example, for a team collaboration.
