5 Ways to Keep Your Employees Engaged with Your Intranet Portal
Fresh Content
One of the quickest ways to lose interest in your portal, or any website for that matter, is to have irrelevant, outdated, information published. In an age where instant access to up-to-the-minute information is the standard, your staff expects this in all areas of life including their workplace. If you don’t have the resources to staff a full-time Intranet content manager, there are other options that you could leverage to provide you with new content. One example is an RSS feed that can pull reliable content from industry resources to provide up-to-date news. Additionally, another idea might be to split up content updates or content creation amongst different departments (or even multiple staff within different departments) to help deviate some of the workload of regularly publishing content. Pending on your Intranet’s content publishing features, you might have an option to pre-schedule the publishing of certain events and announcements so your staff can work ahead on a content calendar keeping the communication more efficient and timely to.
Stay current with the latest design trends
Website design, architecture and usability are constantly changing; designs go in and out of style very often. Progressive organizations will keep up with these ever-changing design trends in order to keep their sites looking aesthetically pleasing and to improve user experience. Since an Intranet Portal is essentially an internal workplace website, a lot of the same design concepts carry over from the world of external-facing websites. Things like the layout of information on a homepage, the ease of accessibility to necessary resources, a good balance of text to graphics, the graphical look of buttons, and the fonts being used, etc. are all items that should be heavily considered when designing your Intranet. There’s also a sense of pride that comes with working for a company that stays current with the latest design trends. You have a better chance engaging with your millennial staff by having a cutting-edge Intranet Portal.
Remember, your Intranet Portal should serve as your centralized communication hub. It should be the first place your staff should go for any work-related questions. If you already have an Intranet Portal, your vendor should be able to help you optimize the site and navigation of your site. They see hundreds, if not thousands, of sites and usually have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t work. Use them. They’re there for you.
Stay up to date with the technology
The more reliant we become on technology, the more imperative it is to stay up-to-date with that technology. Making sure your system is running the latest software from your vendor will ensure you have the latest features and enhancements for your staff to take advantage of. Running past versions of the software can lead to functionality glitches, which can create frustration with your staff that relies on the Intranet for their daily routines. Once you lose user trust, it is very difficult to gain a confident and consistent user again.
Cater to your employees’ personalities and have some fun!
Sometimes work can be a grind and people just need a break. Why not recognize this burn-out and cater to it on your Portal? Try implementing a special page where your staff can share recipes, pictures from a work event or even create an internal “swap-and-shop” type of garage sale page to help your staff connect with each other and break out of their shells for a much-needed work distraction. Additionally, quite simply, you could require your staff to complete their employee profile and upload a photo of themselves so other people can get to know them as well.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help!
Any good Intranet Portal provider knows that their success lies in the usability and success of your Intranet. They should be more than willing to help you out with tips and tricks for securing more engagement through your Portal. Lean on their years of experience to find out best practices for what works and what doesn’t. Also, since your vendor knows all of the ins and outs of the system, they’ll likely have suggestions on unique ways to use it that you might not have thought of. In addition to utilizing your vendor, reach out to other hospitals to see what they’re doing with their communication tools. Great ideas come out of great collaboration.
For more information about the HospitalPORTAL Healthcare Intranet, please schedule a demo with us. We’re here to help and be a resource whenever you needed it.