SharePoint Intranet Best Practices 2023 and beyond

With the advent of the Digital Workplace age, SharePoint Intranet has become an integral part of the modernization of most organizations. SharePoint Intranet Best Practices 2023 should therefore be focussed upon.

Recommended SharePoint Intranet Best Practices 2023

Would you be happy if your favorite forum is inconsistently active? Would you anyways stick to it or try to find something better to replace? The same goes true for Intranet. To keep people’s interest alive, we need to make sure that our SharePoint Intranet remains an exciting place. But, how to achieve it? Here are some of the SharePoint Intranet best practices that will surely help you out!!!

Form Two Governance Committees

The successful running of an intranet requires nonstop governance. For satisfying this aspect of our SharePoint Intranet best practices 2023, it should include the idea to maintain two distinct governing bodies. A Steering Committee should be formulated, involving a cross-section of roles within the organization such as IT, HR, Marketing, etc. These people should be responsible for the higher-level permissions of the intranet such as policies, prioritization, and budget. They will define the motto of the intranet that the working group will adhere to and propagate.

And the working group, which is the backbone of the intranet. They defend the content, outline the requirements, guide and train the content authors, and determine the review workflows.

Create a Content Authoring Plan

Outline all the locations in the intranet that has dynamic content space (i.e: News and Events) and determine how often they should be updated and reviewed, what’s needed, when, and who is responsible for those actions? A proper content strategy assigns the rights to the specific users to create the information, review it, and determine other publishing rights. It also identifies the goals various kinds of content have for the intranet.

Determine the Ownership & Review Process

It’s important to review content for accuracy and quality both when ready for publishing. Defining the content ownership and responsibilities as early as you deploy the intranet on your SharePoint will make sure that the content authors are responsible and accountable for ensuring that the delivered content is appropriate. Effective digital workplace management will ensure higher productivity.

Create Style Guides

It’s good to have style guidelines. Consider the needs of each department – determine the size of images, format and sources. How long should each piece be? What should the page layout be? And apart from that, how can all those content pieces maintain a uniformity, in spite of being from different domains, should be a challenge handled perfectly. Your intranet should have a wide range of templates to choose from. You should also have the color customization option so that your SharePoint Intranet can reflect your own branding colors. Collaborative designing can add a new charm to your digital workplace.

Immerse the Intranet into Your Culture

Not everyone is accustomed to creating content. And more importantly, choosing the topic is trickier. We can put a suggestion box on the intranet to gather content ideas and feedback.

Remember that making the intranet a part of the company culture can be challenging and time-taking but initially, we can at least create and promote habits that require intranet visits.

Invest in searchability

A digital workplace should have everything readily available at your fingertip. As soon as you start building an experience with a wider scope beyond the traditional intranet users expect that they will be able to search for everything at a place similar to google search. Intranet myths must be re-thought about.  If we can achieve just a decent digital workplace search with good findability, it’ll be helping to drive productivity and already making a massive impact.

Work on a task-based information architecture

It is important to build an information architecture around the way employees think and work. It should be as understandable to the new employees as it is to the old ones. Task-based information architecture will make the intranet much easier to use.

Carry out usability testing

The elements in your intranet play a vital role. Does the intranet really have strong information architecture, useful content and intuitive interfaces? This can be found out through usability testing. Make sure that the users are able to complete particular tasks by finding and using the content they need.

Don’t get scared off by multi-language challenges

Global organizations have diverse workforces. Working with colleagues from around the world can be so exciting. However, multiple languages can prove to be challenging too. Having a multi-lingual intranet that actually works on a day-to-day basis to meet employee needs can have a significant impact on productivity as well as employee engagement. Making the intranet more and more interesting lies in your hand.

Make your intranet favorite mode of communication

The intranet should be the place where both official internal as well as informal conversations are preferred. People want to hear about information that’s relevant to them, so our Intranet should target teams and people according to their interests. Make intranet the most appealing mode of communication.

Digitally connect remote workers

Remote work is more popular than ever, and companies need to adapt to it. The intranet should be upgraded in the best ways to bridge the distances between the remote workers. Make it the easiest way for remote workers and far-off satellite offices to stay in touch with each other and conduct business.

Make Your Intranet a friendly and safe environment

A successful and effective intranet should resemble a thriving, interactive community, not a repository for stale news updates. It is important to open up communication across the platform by inviting feedback and criticism and encouraging to comment, like, share, etc….thus, offering ways in which the people can contribute to the overall experience of the intranet. Treat it as the public forum for your organization where everyone is given the appropriate credit for their contributions.

Recognizing Influencers within your intranet

Communication is the key! The best way to drive people to the intranet is to find the influencers within the intranet. These are typically the people most active on your intranet. The best practices are to find these people and if possible, amplify their voices on the intranet. Recognize them on the dashboard to motivate them.

Store all important information in one searchable place

One cause of intranet stagnation is the page cluster, million-folder approach. An employee looking for an important document shouldn’t need to swim through an ocean of unsorted file directories and decades-old pages to find what they’re looking for. All the files should be sorted and stored in one searchable location. Document retrieval and uploading should be easy and straightforward. So do the documents permissions, approvals, and security clearance processes. An intranet that takes all three of these into account and incorporates a feature that automates them is a must.

Don’t be too corporate

Adding a tinch of Fun is the best way to keep employees motivated and passionate about what they do. And the same psychology applies for intranet too. Transform it into the delightful digital experiences that we are used to in our personal lives (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube). Start a mini-game or contest, or let employees engage in friendly banter, post-party pictures, work memes etc. This will naturally pull people to the intranet.

Choose a mobile responsive SharePoint Intranet Provider option

In this mobile age, it has become a vital requirement to access information on the go. Therefore, choose an intranet provider that gives you either a mobile responsive intranet portal or an intranet app with the intranet. Digital Workplace thus becomes even more efficient when mobile.

Here we rest our case with the SharePoint Intranet Best Practices 2023. These were our resolves to make the SharePoint Intranet Interesting and super-fun. What are your ways? Let us know in the comments below.