A successful intranet launch can completely transform an organization's operations. When done right, it streamlines communication, enhances collaboration, and, according to McKinsey, can boost productivity by up to 25%. But too often, intranets fail to deliver on their potential - not because they lack features but because employees don’t see the value or don’t know how to use them.
An intranet is only effective if people engage with it. Without a clear launch strategy, even the most advanced platform can become an underused tool buried in the digital workplace. A strong launch creates awareness, builds excitement, and equips employees with the knowledge they need to integrate the intranet into their daily routines.
This guide outlines the key steps for how to launch an intranet, shares tactics for gaining employees' buy-in, and provides proven strategies for driving long-term intranet adoption. Use these insights to ensure your intranet becomes a vital, everyday tool rather than just another forgotten system.
Unily ranks first in all Use Cases in the 2024 Gartner® Critical Capabilities™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions.
Intranet planning: the key to success
A well-designed intranet can transform how employees work together, increasing productivity, efficiency, and collaboration. Many organizations are modernizing their intranets to support a hybrid workforce and improve the employee experience.
Gartner states, “Digital workplace applications play a crucial role in enabling digital dexterity and shaping employee experience.” However, a successful intranet doesn’t occur magically overnight. Careful planning, research, and collaboration ensure the platform meets business needs and drives adoption.
To maximize the value of an intranet, organizations must focus on three key areas: understanding employee needs, selecting the right platform, and preparing for a structured launch.
Identify employee needs
An intranet should be built around how employees work, not just what looks impressive on paper. If employees can’t find the information they need or don’t see the value, adoption will be low. Understanding their needs is the first step toward a rewarding launch.
How to gather insights:
- Survey employees to identify common challenges and inefficiencies
- Analyze existing intranet usage to see which areas are underutilized
- Observe workflows, particularly for frontline and remote employees, to determine what tools they need quick access to
TDECU, a Texas-based credit union, was ready to improve this area when they came to Unily to transform their old intranet. During their intranet refresh journey, they discovered their employees struggled to find key documents quickly. Their outdated intranet created inefficiencies, slowing down service and impacting employee and customer experience. By gathering feedback, they identified the need for a centralized, user-friendly platform that provided quick access to essential resources. .
Whitley explains that the previous platform wasn’t providing employees the access they needed:
“It was impacting not only the employee experience but also creating a poor member experience.” Being a credit union with various retail locations, many of the company’s employees deal directly with members and need to be able to bring up specific documents at the drop of a hat. They don’t have time to waste searching around for what they need. Their intranet required a facelift to help frontline employees provide the best customer support and service."
Encouraging employee involvement:
Including employees in the process from the beginning increases engagement and means the intranet is designed with real user needs in mind. Here are some ways you can achieve this:
- Host a naming contest to make employees feel connected to the project
- Seek input on design and navigation to improve usability
- Share regular updates through internal newsletters or pre-launch sneak peeks
TDECU implemented this approach by involving employees in naming their intranet, ultimately choosing The Vault. The name reinforced its role as a trusted, central hub for company information.
"We engaged early on with employees in terms of selection of the actual logo and name for the new intranet. We wanted to make it a fun, collaborative process where everyone could get involved."
Laura Whitley - VP of Communications at TDECU
Choosing the right platform
The platform chosen must be flexible, scalable, and easy to use. Otherwise, it will feel outdated and complicated, and struggle to gain traction. The best solutions evolve with the company and integrate seamlessly into employees’ daily workflows.
Here are some key factors to consider when choosing an intranet platform
User experience: Is the intranet intuitive and designed for ease of use? Can your employees easily find what they need?
Customization: Can the intranet be tailored to different teams or departments? By personalizing the features to suit your employees’ needs, you can make your intranet work for you. When designed strategically, a single platform has the potential to unite everyone around shared organizational goals and values – while still enabling employees to have diverse experience based on their roles and location-based needs.
TDECU initially suffered from stagnant technology that didn’t keep up with the times. They needed a platform that demonstrated consistent, cutting-edge innovation and had the tools to allow customization.
Integration: Does it connect with essential workplace tools and apps? This was a chief consideration for TDECU.
"Our employee teams have to rely on different apps and tools depending on their roles to perform their job functions within the credit union. So, we built a one-stop hub that connects our users to everything they need. With Unily, we were able to integrate the applications and provide a feature where people can preselect the ones that they use most frequently. The way it’s presented clearly with an explanation of each app makes such a difference to the user experience."
Laura Whitely - VP of Communications at TDECU
Analytics: Can it track employee engagement and provide insights for improvement? As TDECU found out, tracking analytics is a huge game changer.
"We were investing quite a bit of resource into our intranet and employee communications, but we weren't able to track the reach or usage with any great accuracy. Any feedback was anecdotal, we didn’t have any metrics or data to know what was working. The fact that Unily provides the option to track analytics and discover this information was pretty exciting.”
Laura Whitley - VP of Communications at TDECU
Preparing for launch
Even the best intranet won’t perform well without a strong launch strategy. Employees need time to familiarize themselves with the new system, and organizations should offer clear communication, training, and engagement from day one to help them with this.
Pre-launch strategies include:
- Pilot testing: Conduct a soft launch with a small test group to gather feedback before a full rollout. This is especially relevant if you’re implementing a collaborative tool. Pilots allow you to iron out any issues and populate the tool before the rest of the organization joins.
- Change ambassadors: Appoint employees from different teams to champion the intranet and assist colleagues.
- Internal awareness campaigns: Use newsletters, countdowns, and teaser content to build excitement and share about the intranet’s capabilities.
Ahead of launching The Vault, TDECU introduced a countdown ticker and sent employees branded promotional items to create anticipation. The result? On launch day, engagement was high, and within the first week every employee accessed the intranet.
Maintaining momentum
The next challenge is maintaining momentum after the launch and encouraging long-term adoption. Key to achieving this is continuously monitoring usage, providing support, and evolving the intranet based on employee feedback.
Some post-launch best practices include tracking engagement and adjusting content based on usage data, offering ongoing training, and providing a comprehensive self-help section.
For example, TDECU introduced a launch dashboard, which allowed employees to report issues, access training materials, and receive platform updates. This reduced IT inquiries and ensured employees could confidently navigate the intranet.
How to launch an intranet: the ultimate strategy
Planning an effective launch gets new sites buzzing, resulting in faster adoption and increased engagement. It’s important to have a solid plan backed by reams of enthusiasm.
A strong launch strategy should achieve three key objectives:
- Create awareness: Employees must know the intranet exists.
- Communicate value: Users should understand why the intranet benefits them.
- Promote usability: Employees must know how to navigate and use the platform effectively.
The following intranet launch ideas can help organizations maximize engagement and drive adoption.
Create excitement with a robust intranet launch communication plan
To be truly effective, the plan should outline key messages, communication channels, and a timeline for announcements, training, and feedback collection.
Your communication plan aims to tell a story that paints a picture of the future once the intranet is in place. It’ll help people visualize the benefits it will bring and the difference it will make to them as individuals. You’ll find that when you answer the ‘what’s in it for me’ question early on, people get excited and engaged from the start.
Your planning should involve strategically deploying communications across multiple touchpoints, such as newsletters, internal social channels, and town halls. We delve deeper into some of these intranet launch ideas below:
Launch video
A video introduction from the CEO gives the launch credibility and proves change is supported at the highest level. Inject some fun into the video where possible so it resonates with users, and include references to your unique company culture throughout.
Videos should be engaging, culturally relevant, and easy to digest—animations, CEO vlogs, or employee testimonials work well.
Promotional materials
Create a sense of anticipation with a promotional campaign before launch.
- Use posters, digital screens, email teasers, and desk drops to build awareness ahead of launch day
- High-traffic areas like break rooms, coffee machines, and restrooms are effective spots for reminders
- Consider creative low-budget options like removable stickers on office equipment to promote the launch
Social challenges and gamification
Engaging social as part of your launch strategy is a clever way of familiarizing users with social capabilities. Set up a dedicated social channel to field questions and monitor employee feedback in real time.
If you anticipate some resistance to change, a reactive social channel is an effective method for managing reactions. If you can spare the manpower, having someone dedicated to running your help channel will facilitate faster responses and negate frustration. You may find that employees make suggestions that can help you tailor the platform to better meet their needs.
Try these social intranet launch ideas for enhanced engagement:
- Introduce an intranet-based social challenge to familiarize users with social features
- Use gamification badges to identify super-users and encourage peer engagement
- Scavenger hunts can serve as self-led tutorials, guiding users to discover key intranet functions while earning prizes
Empower employees with training and support
Adoption requires employees to know how to use the intranet effectively. Offering a mix of self-service and hands-on support gives users the help they need from the beginning.
Intranet ambassadors
- Select "super-users" or champions from different business units to serve as go-to contacts for intranet-related questions
- Provide in-depth training sessions for ambassadors before the full rollout so they can assist colleagues and field common questions
- Use gamification badges to highlight their role within the People Directory so people know who to ask for help
Not only will this relieve pressure on your key intranet stakeholders - who will be consumed with overseeing the launch from a macro standpoint - but it will also provide on-the-ground intelligence that will help you understand how the new system is being received.
Webinars and training videos
Webinars are the ultimate training tool. They are eternally available and highly cost-effective.
- Start with basic features and gradually introduce advanced functionalities
- Over time, create a library of training materials to support onboarding and ongoing use
When new starters join, these training videos will become invaluable, preventing a lot of basic questions and becoming a vital component of the onboarding process.
Onboarding checklists
- Ensure your users get off to a healthy start with an onboarding checklist that covers essential set-up guidance.
- Provide a step-by-step guide for employees on setting up their profiles and customizing their dashboard
- A physical or digital checklist makes sure no key features are overlooked
- Add prompts to like and follow people, departments, and projects of interest to get users to personalize their experience.
Genius bars and floor walkers
A genius bar is a great way to deliver face-to-face support whilst raising awareness of your new platform.
- Set up an intranet help desk in a central location (such as a cafeteria or lobby) where employees can drop in for assistance
- Alternatively, assign floor walkers in high-traffic areas for on-the-spot troubleshooting
Leverage the intranet for its own launch
During launch week, the newly launched intranet should be the primary source of information and engagement. Capitalize on its functionality and customization options to generate interest and engagement.
Homepage takeover
A homepage takeover is a surefire way to grab people’s attention. Leveraging as much of the functionality as you can for training and awareness purposes will demonstrate the benefits of the new platform, encouraging the exploration of new features that may seem daunting.
- Use a temporary homepage design with a striking hero image to highlight key features, provide quick links to training materials, and direct employees to launch events
- Set the intranet as the default homepage on all company devices to motivate regular use.
Photo day for profiles
Practical and entertaining, a photoshoot day is a great way to populate users’ profiles while creating a buzz.
- Turn a conference room into a branded studio with posters and balloons and host a profile picture day to build some intranet hype
- Encourage participation by offering a copy of the photos for social media use
- Take a mix of corporate headshots, a few fun ones, and group shots to use in launch materials and on team homepages
A well-planned and hype-inducing intranet launch ensures employees see the value, learn how to use the platform, and integrate it into their daily workflows, which paves the way for long-term adoption.
Driving long-term adoption
When launching an intranet, the last thing you want is a big bang launch and then nothing else happening for months. Intranets often struggle with low engagement post-launch, perplexing business leaders about how to increase usage.
Often, digital workplace adoption follows a similar up-and-down trajectory to the Gartner Hype Cycle, with an initial Peak of Inflated Expectations, followed soon after by the reality of a Trough of Disillusionment. Getting to the Plateau of Productivity can be challenging – this is when there is no common agreement over what value the digital workplace will create, making communicating its value to staff more difficult.
Organizations face three major adoption challenges:
- Unclear value: Employees don’t fully understand how the intranet benefits them.
- Limited immediate usefulness: Not all staff find it relevant to their daily work right away.
- Superficial metrics: Measuring success purely by logins and page views doesn’t reflect true business impact.
Organizations must plan for steady, long-term growth to avoid the peaks and troughs of the adoption curve and ensure that the intranet remains valuable and relevant over time.
Align the intranet with business strategy
For employees to engage, they need to understand why the intranet matters and how it contributes to the company’s success. There are several ways to show them this.
Firstly, connect the intranet to business goals. If collaboration, knowledge-sharing, or efficiency are key priorities, clarify how your intranet supports them.
Next, tailor messaging to different teams. Marketing teams may prioritize collaboration tools, while finance teams may need structured document management. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, highlight team-specific benefits.
Lastly, use real-world success stories to show how different departments are using the intranet effectively and inspire wider adoption.
Organizations that fail to communicate the value of their intranet risk employees seeing it as just another corporate tool rather than an essential part of their work.
Build a sustainable adoption strategy
Instead of relying on a one-time launch event, organizations should consider adoption an ongoing process that evolves over time.
Target the right employees first
Suppose there is an open attitude toward using new tools, technologies, and processes. In that case, it’s more likely that your intranet adoption strategy should target everyone, or at the very least, large sections of your workforce, from launch.
If not, your targeting should start with early adopters - employees who are enthusiastic about new technology and can influence others. This aligns with Everett M. Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations, suggesting that one of the best strategies is to figure out who among your staff are going to find the most value from these new tools and technologies and, at the same time, can show other colleagues around them those benefits too.
Rogers' theory outlines this trend:
- Innovators and early adopters try the intranet first, shaping best practices
- Early majority users follow once they see value demonstrated
- Late adopters need additional encouragement and training
Organizations can create internal champions who influence others by focusing adoption efforts on employees most likely to engage first.
Secure leadership support
Leadership support is just as crucial in long-term adoption as in the launch stage. If executives and managers don’t use the intranet, employees won’t either.
How leaders use and communicate its benefits can positively or negatively affect how staff understand your intranet and why it benefits their work.
New ideas can quickly become ignored without a clear mandate from the leadership team. The key is for leaders, including those at the team level, to set a precedent for how to use the digital workplace. This should encompass tools, content, and processes that coincide with the company goals, ethos, and profitability, ultimately helping staff understand how their work could be improved.
Encourage your leaders to actively participate – whether through blogs, video updates, or discussions. It may seem like a no-brainer for your senior leaders to share their insights, but for them, it can be a vulnerable position. Start gradually, encourage them to be themselves, train them on the technology, suggest content ideas, and, most importantly, ask them how you can best support them.
For immediate line managers, publicly recognizing good practice—be it case studies of practical usage, cost savings, imaginative ways of working smarter, or even failures—will undoubtedly help encourage wider adoption among their teams and peers, encouraging others to follow suit.
Appoint a community manager
Once your new intranet is up and running, success will depend on having a dedicated community manager. Having comms and IT try to do this on top of their day jobs is unlikely. Rolling out new technology and a new way of working requires changing culture and behavior.
A community manager will support, facilitate, join the dots, train, and curate. It’s a full-time job - underestimate that at your peril. Their responsibilities include monitoring intranet adoption trends, identifying intranet usage pain points, and encouraging employee contributions to keep content fresh. In addition, they can provide ongoing training and support to ensure continued engagement.
Rethink how intranet adoption is measured
Many organizations mistakenly measure success purely by log-ins, interactions, and page views. While these metrics are helpful, they don’t tell the whole story.
Usage doesn’t always mean quality when it comes to how these tools improve operations or, indeed, overall staff engagement. To help with that, you must show how technology contributes to your broader business outcomes, goals, and strategy.
For example, how will these tools help staff produce better quality knowledge, guidelines, or customer understanding? Trying to quantify that by only counting logins, number of searches, and so on will not give managers any precise answers as to whether their investment positively affects operational performance.
Instead, by measuring outcomes alongside activity, we can communicate that impact. It will also help your staff better understand why these tools are valuable and will improve how they work more productively.
Valuable adoption outcomes
Business impact: How is the intranet improving knowledge-sharing, collaboration, or operational efficiency?
Employee engagement: Are employees using forums, contributing content, and interacting with leadership?
Task efficiency: Are employees finding information faster and reducing duplicated work?
By focusing on outcomes rather than just activity, organizations can better demonstrate the true value of their intranet.
How to put your intranet adoption plan into action
Our work with clients has shown four key areas that your adoption planning must consider and look to develop further in line with your company’s business goals.
We recommend dividing your overall digital workplace vision into manageable phases, each focusing on communications, channels, and knowledge development. This will give your adoption communication and intranet planning a clear focus.
Within each phase, you should focus on who, what, how, and the value you are trying to achieve at any given time. This will help you focus and communicate your intranet adoption efforts to your staff.
What about enterprise social technologies?
A typical adoption problem is that staff don’t use platforms like Yammer or Jive. The problem is twofold: These tools were oversold regarding their potential value, and they have struggled to make sense to staff due to a lack of proper integration into their day-to-day work.
With such varied needs and expectations, the best way to judge their value is to pilot them with a smaller subset of staff to assess their impact and value. Once understood, roll them out to a wider audience while keeping a close eye on usage and impact.
The four pillars of your adoption strategy
People
Identify leadership, business stakeholders, and staff advocates who will drive change forward and motivate others to follow suit.
Content
Pinpoint valuable content, insights, knowledge, and people to encourage others to produce, share, or use it for their work.
Technology
Clarify which technology, tools, apps, and processes will help foster better digital workplace adoption, increasing productivity and wider business engagement.
Value
Set out what benefits and associated metrics must be met in order to know that the digital workplace is meeting your business needs.
What should my adoption plan look like?
The following activities are recommended to set up your capacity to plan, measure, and manage your ongoing adoption approach.
Personas
Personas help you determine what will motivate your employees to use, communicate with, and share knowledge in your digital workplace.
Use them to determine what value drives them and, consequently, how its effectiveness can be measured. Remember that this needs to be a mixture of activity and outcomes, the latter being quantified over a more extended period, even as indirect benefits.
Governance
Achieving the right balance between your business leads and digital workplace advocates (see below) is vital for directing your digital workplace.
Here, governance is about strategy rather than merely stipulating how your staff should use these technologies. Instead, set direction and bring together examples of how to use these technologies. Share ideas that all business functions can benefit from – helping them remove unnecessary duplication of effort or use innovations in processes and ways to share better and communicate knowledge.
Roadshows
Online promotion alone will not encourage wider adoption. Instead, you should plan regular sessions demonstrating new features, techniques, and working practices, and train authors and contributors to maximize these technologies.
This means planning regular town halls and lunchtime demonstrations where experts can answer staff questions. You can back the roadshows up with online training, feature videos, demonstrations, and a public forum.
Advocates
In addition to having leaders and team managers actively promote your workspace, it’s also essential to set up a staff user forum.
By meeting regularly, they can discuss how using the digital workplace benefits their work, pointing out what needs improvement or where areas of collaboration and communication would benefit other employees too.
Communication
As mentioned previously, your planning must include a well-thought-out intranet communication plan. By utilizing articles, interviews, case studies, and messages via appropriate channels, you’ll be well-positioned to sustain a positive engagement level across your digital workplace.
Your plan should also include content that illustrates successes (and failures) and shows how the intranet can help your staff achieve their goals. Encourage your leaders to write or record their achievements and update staff when projects have positive outcomes.
Measurement
Surveys, analytics, and offline feedback from authors are also core to ensuring that your employees use your technology as intended. Measurement should include a mixture of activity-based and outcome-led metrics.
The metrics set out in your personas are a good starting point for building a picture of overall usage and specific use cases of improved outcomes, benefits, and value. Reports and analyses must be regularly produced and should feed into the Governance forum, where they can be assessed against your broader business goals, including each business unit or department actively using your digital workplace.
Innovation
Where appropriate, your intranet planning, communication, governance, and measurement should generate new ideas. Set up a regular forum - either as part of your governance process or by inviting staff to submit their ideas - to gather suggestions on improving your operations, services, and business functionality.
Preparing to create new requirements (and further investment possibilities) should be a key outcome of your digital workplace investment. This will help you demonstrate its value and ongoing benefit to your business.
The key takeaway
The secret to long-term intranet success is careful planning, strong leadership support, and continuous employee engagement. A well-executed launch sets the foundation, but sustaining adoption requires ongoing effort.
Most importantly, you need to listen to your employees. No matter how advanced or well-designed an intranet is, the platform will fall flat if it doesn’t meet their needs. Encourage innovation, involve employees in decision-making, and ensure the intranet evolves alongside your organization.
Looking for expert guidance? Explore real-world case studies, attend industry events or connect with our team to discover best practices and tailored solutions for your organization.
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