How to create a Netflix-like experience on your intranet

Workers are raising the bar for digital employee experience

The new world of work comes with new standards—and this extends to how organizations communicate with their people and the digital tools that are used. Now that employees have grown accustomed to personalized messaging and targeted advertisements as consumers, they expect their workplace technology to follow suit. Since the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds down to just 8, internal communicators must recognize that the tiny window of opportunity they have to get key messages across is getting even smaller.

Rising expectations around user experience and intuitive design add another layer of complexity to leaders’ quest to cultivate compelling digital experiences for their people. Poor UX/UI design in employee tools and processes has been shown to hurt talent retention, revenue, and workplace productivity. In contrast, firms that rank in the top 25% of the McKinsey Design Index grew their revenues as much as double the rate of their industry benchmarks.

Introducing a new generation of intranets designed to meet people where they’re at

The evolution of the intranet exemplifies the way workplace technology is evolving to meet heightened employee expectations. A decade ago, most platforms were repositories that were difficult to search or navigate. There was no such thing as a personalized digital experience. Instead, every employee saw virtually the same thing when they navigated to their intranet homepage, which may have been part of the reason why most platforms suffered from low adoption rates.

Fortunately, a lot has changed in recent years. Unlike their predecessors, modern intranets are designed to ensure content hits home through audience segmenting, content targeting, and real-time analytics. Rather than relying on just one messaging channel, internal communicators can now tap into push notifications, social networking, and video content to maximize resonance and relevancy.

The newest generation of intranets, also known as employee experience platforms, takes this evolution one step further, allowing leaders to treat their employees like their customers. An employee experience platform engages employees and enables them to be more effective in their job with advanced communications, networking, and knowledge-sharing experiences.

5 intranet best practices that internal communicators can learn from Netflix

Netflix cracked the code for what it takes to keep people engaged and entertained. And with the help of modern intranets, internal communicators can now take a page from their playbook by delivering personalized content that workers can access anytime and anywhere. Here are a few ways that internal communications teams can recreate the Netflix experience by harnessing their intranet:

#1. Prioritize personalized recommendations

Netflix doesn’t just churn out one-size-fits-all content recommendations. Instead, it generates suggestions based on your viewing preferences and the behaviors of similar users. Personalization is at the core of the Netflix experience – it keeps users coming back to discover new content relevant to their interests. This kind of targeted experience is setting the bar for what people expect from technology both inside and outside the workplace. To meet this expectation, your intranet should be able to intelligently target employees with the information that matters to them. Content targeting, personalization, and robust analytics are important features for enabling more curated intranet experiences.

#2. Don’t forget about on-demand content

Convenience is part of what makes Netflix so irresistible. Unlike traditional TV, users don’t have to tune in at a specific time to catch their favorite show; instead, they can watch it whenever they have a chance. This requirement for on-demand content is filtering into the workplace. By centralizing on-demand content like town hall meetings, training webinars and leadership addresses on your intranet, internal communicators can afford a similar level of convenience to employees. Recording and uploading events and workshops onto your platform remove barriers like timing and availability, allowing everyone who’s interested in the content to engage with it.

#3. Make content easy to search

Netflix makes it easy to find exactly the content you’ve been looking for. In an ideal world, your intranet should do the same. Part of what sets employee experience platforms apart is their Google-like search experiences that unify content and data into one place, no matter where it lives. A platform that integrates different knowledge repositories into one searchable hub helps to reduce time-wasted searching for information in different systems. A good intranet search will include refiners that help employees sieve through content to find what they need easily.

#4. Mobile accessibility is a must

People don’t have to wait until they’re sitting on their couch to enjoy Netflix. Instead, they can download the app to view their favorite videos at any time. Similarly, employees should be able to access their intranet whenever they’re looking for updates, even if they happen to be miles away from their desk. The best employee apps provide consumer-grade mobile experiences, which give people the freedom to stay connected and engaged, regardless of where the world takes them.

#5. Add offline content

In addition to mobile accessibility, Netflix makes it easy for viewers to download their favorite content, so they can watch videos even when they don’t have a stable internet connection. Modern intranets will provide employees with similar options through offline reading capabilities, which allows users to save content so they can enjoy it whenever they like. Offline reading is particularly important for engaging frontline employees, since many of these workers may go hours without a stable internet connection. Rather than leaving this crucial element of your workforce out of the loop, offline reading allows deskless employees to choose the content they’re most interested in and catch up on these updates whenever they have a moment of downtime.

Upgrade your intranet by taking a page from the Netflix playbook

Netflix makes a compelling case for the engagement gains that follow content when it’s personalized and easily accessible. To learn more about how you can upgrade your intranet to provide your employees with the kind of targeted experiences they’re looking for, get started with a free demo today.