Elevating the end-to-end employee lifecycle with an intranet: 3 key takeaways
As enterprises strive to devise a world-class employee experience, the untapped potential of the modern intranet comes into sharp focus. But, many people leaders still overlook the power of the reinvigorated intranet to underpin a cutting-edge EX strategy. What are the big opportunities HR leaders are missing, and how are other leading enterprises already using intranet technology to attract, retain, and nurture top talent?
The overlooked secret to great employee experience
We have entered an era of work characterized by a focus on delivering the best employee experience. More than ever, enterprises understand that success is underpinned by an engaged and empowered workforce and top leaders are turning their attentions to creating the best digital environment for employees to thrive.
Intranets are often thought of as a communications tool, but over the last decade, the technology has evolved significantly. Today, the best intranets don’t just support enterprises to align employees behind critical company messaging - they’re a critical part of enabling a productive, seamless, and simplified workday.
The modern intranet is the front door to the digital workplace; the place where employees go to find knowledge, connect with experts, access company systems, and immerse themselves in the culture of the organization. Yet many organizations are yet to leverage its full power to elevate the end-to-end employee experience.
To help shed light on the many ways an intranet can play a critical role in different stages of the employee lifecycle, we hosted a webinar on the topic. Community & Industry Insights lead, Kaz Hassan, was joined by Unily’s Chief People Officer, Jenny Shiers, to discuss intranet opportunities HR leaders are overlooking:
Takeaway #1: HR leaders are divided on who owns the intranet
Ahead of the webinar, we ran a poll asking HR leaders to tell us whether they view the intranet as part of the HR tech stack or not. Opinions were divided on the topic, with 50% stating that it was and another 50% stating that it wasn’t.
Despite the fact that the modern intranet is a critical enabler of employee experience, our quick temperature check revealed that many HR leaders do not see it as part of their tooling.
What’s really interesting is how this plays out at organizations. While semantics don’t matter, what does matter is how invested HR stakeholders are in the success of their intranet. Without the backing of people leaders, under-resourced internal communications teams struggle to wield the full power of the intranet to tackle the employee experience at large. When HR embraces the intranet, employees reap the rewards.
"Viewing the intranet solely as a comms tool puts enterprises at a disadvantage. There are so many opportunities to tackle broader challenges like enabling smooth hybrid work, improving onboarding, and connecting employees around the world, but when the right stakeholders aren’t involved, those opportunities are missed."
The webinar points to luxury hospitality brand Kerzner as a great example of an enterprise that has embedded their intranet into the employee experience to enhance key moments of the lifecycle. From onboarding, to upskilling, right the way through to career progression – Kerzner’s intranet is interwoven throughout the employee experience.
As a result, Kerzner can demonstrate a link between employees using their intranet app and how engaged they are at work, and resorts with the highest app adoption also have the highest employee engagement scores:
Takeaway #2: Digitize career development opportunities to improve employee retention
One of the biggest reasons employees leave an organization is not being able to see a clear future or career path ahead of them. It comes in above compensation and benefits as a reason to leave the company.
The right intranet can help to confront this attrition and guide employees through career development. Automation capabilities, like the ability to construct repeatable Employee Journeys, transform fragmented learning paths into seamless upskilling experiences, while also taking manual work away from busy people teams.
"Career development is the most overlooked opportunity for HR. We need to think about the intranet in a much more dynamic way, as a tool to allow employees to self-serve when it comes to considering their own career, development gaps and opportunities, accessing content, a network, and mentorship. There's a really big opportunity there."
Kerzner is using its intranet to give employees opportunities to develop their skills, use micro-learning features to dip in and out of training and fill skill gaps, and to discover job opportunities elsewhere in the business. As a result, employees stay at the company for longer, reducing turnover and keeping valuable expertise in the business. Employee retention at Kerzner is 10% higher than the industry average.
"The most effective type of teaching is where the student wants to learn. The one size fits all/everybody has to do it model doesn’t lead to meaningful training most of the time. It’s individualization, a consistent experience, and access that are really going to make people feel that there's an investment in them as individuals."
Takeaway #3: Onboarding doesn’t have to suck
Poor onboarding is an HR bugbear. How do you create a consistent employee onboarding experience that engages new employees from day one and gets them up to speed rapidly? The intranet holds the answers.
Today, only 12% of employees feel their organization excels at onboarding. That means there’s a huge opportunity for improvement. For many enterprises, creating a consistent onboarding experience is the biggest challenge. This is where the modern intranet is primed to help.
The ability to craft and automate onboarding journeys that weave together scattered content and surface nifty features at just the right time is giving HR leaders new firepower. Leading organizations are leaning into the opportunity to design elevated onboarding experiences that truly guide employees through their first months with a new company. Tune into the webinar to hear how Johnson & Johnson is approaching this challenge with their Unily intranet.
Discover the intranet opportunity
From recruitment and onboarding all the way to exit, there are opportunities for people teams to use their intranet to step up the employee experience, increase retention, and ultimately boost the bottom line.
Tune into the webinar for a deeper dive, or book a complimentary consultation with one of our intranet experts today to find out how Unily could transform employee experience at your enterprise.
