It’s summertime. Humid air mixed with sweltering sunshine can make any employee want to hit the pool with their family and friends. While most of the office is off enjoying summer vacation, what are intranet managers keeping the intranet from going stale? I took to the Intranet Professionals and Worldwide Intranet Challenge LinkedIn groups to ask this question and received some great feedback on the topic. See how you can combat the heat wave with these intranet tips:
Kate Raulings, Evolve Information Services
During summer and while many are on holidays (December-January for us as we’re in the southern hemisphere) I tidy up content, remove anything that is older/out of date, check the information architecture to ensure it doesn’t need any tweaking. As people start to trickle back in after the holidays, that’s when I start to release more content and more business related news. Often the balance switches from user generated content or internal news to industry or relevant national external news stories during this time as well.
Kevin Cody, SmallWorlders
This year we are exploiting the Olympics providing travel information from tfl (Transport for London) on any UK communities within the intranets (most of which are global).
Gunther Payne, Belgacom Group
The summer period is the ideal opportunity to make a cleaning of our intranet. All out of date content is to be removed, and in the meantime we publish teasing information for what’s to come. Our Back to School and Back to Office campaigns are ready to be launched, so we are already warming our colleagues up for when they come back from their hot holiday destinations.
Mike Sockol, Holmdel Township School District
Our intranet doesn’t go stale in the summertime. During my nine year tenure at Global Crossing, we featured new content every single day, including the summer and Christmas holiday season. Frankly, for a global company like ours, there was always something new (our second quarter numbers, for instance, came out in the summer). The secret (I think) is continuous contact with the different business units and support teams to identify story ideas as well as a judicious “evergreen” policy for stories that can run during these slow periods.
David Paolicelli, Definitive Logic
You can promote engagement by embedding select “killer apps” that your people need and/or want to use in your intranet site. Wrap other engaging content around those interaction points.
Try these ideas on your site to get employees excited about visiting your intranet this summer. Thanks to everyone that took part in this LinkedIn survey! Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Here are some more posts you will enjoy:
LinkedIn Groups Help to Inspire
Intranet, Information at Your Fingertips… Inspiration Unlimited
Whether you are just starting out with an intranet, thinking about an intranet, or wanting to leverage what you already have, our free eBook 101 INTRANET IDEAS has practical ideas to help you get creative. Check it out today!
Read more: The Not-so-Secret Life of Intranet Managers