As organizations strategize about the tools and technologies they need to improve the employee experience, it’s important to remember that one of the best resources for helping employees reduce frustration, increase productivity and spend more time on their high-value work is actually the intranet. I know that may sound shocking but hear me out.

When done right, a modern intranet is the ideal platform for delivering the experiences, content, applications and services your employees need to be effective. It’s the perfect “front door” for your digital workplace – and it can fulfill that function without replacing any of your existing technology.

There’s just one catch (you knew that was coming, right?). Your intranet has got to be modern for this to work. If the site is just a collection of outdated information like “Tips to Avoid Y2K Issues,” then the project is done before it’s even started.

Because it will take forward-thinking technology to meet the needs of today’s workers.

Employees crave simplicity and have very high expectations when it comes to digital experiences. They’re used to the intuitive, intelligent and frictionless interactions they have as consumers. That’s what makes the complicated, siloed experiences they deal with at work, such as routine tasks that take endless steps across a myriad of systems, and require workers to log in and out for every transaction, so frustrating and disappointing. It’s a huge distraction from the high-value work they were hired to do.

Improving that experience means simplifying those interactions – and only a modern intranet that delivers consumer-grade functionality has the power to make that happen.
Unfortunately, most intranets today don’t live up to that standard. They fail in the basic mission of helping employees simplify the workday.

While they should provide a single source of truth that workers rely on to be effective, they typically serve as little more than a static collection of stale, generic information, with outdated designs that can’t compete with the more compelling app experiences employees are used to. Lacking any kind of value for workers, they quickly become ignored, cast aside as a laughable relic of a bygone era and essentially viewed as the mullet of employee experience.

It’s too bad because with a little work, outdated intranets could easily become the perfect foundation for the flexible, intelligent technology employees need to be effective, delivering the personalized, contextual tasks and information that earns them spot as the cornerstone of the employee experience.

Want to make sure your Intranet isn’t a missed opportunity?

To find out what features and functionality your intranet needs to improve the employee experience, check out the new guide “The Ultimate 5-Step Checklist for Creating a Modern Intranet Experience.”