Create your own intranet in 5 minutes
Company intranet is the virtual hub of collaboration in organizations. Unlike public websites, which enable organizations to communicate and broadcast their value proposition to customers, users, and, in general, external stakeholders, Intranets are meant to enable internal communication and collaboration.
This article shows you some Intranet examples to inspire you and give you ideas for building your own. We will also look at some use cases across industries. These intranet pages have been built through
What is the objective of an company Intranet?
Intranets serve the following broad objectives:
- Delivering collaboration tools: Enabling centralized access to tools and information employees need to perform their jobs - shared documents and templates, work management, calendars, contacts, line-of-business applications etc.
- Corporate communications: Since an intranet is an organization’s digital hub, the upper management can broadcast important information throughout the organization - changes at the corporate level, important events, recognition of performers, and announcements related to new policies.
- Internal communications: Modern tools include all the communication tools employees need to keep in touch within and across teams to get their jobs done.
- Internal support: Intranets allow large organizations to easily manage their query calls from employees. Companies with widespread operations have technical and coordination difficulties on a daily basis, which lead to a constant flow of query calls. Intranets are, perhaps, the best tools to manage and gather these calls and requests in an organized, secure way.
- Information repository: Intranets are the place where sensitive documentation and know how are stored for access - like HR policies, templates, procedure manuals, documents related to proprietary intellectual property etc.
- Replacing cluttered, crowded emails: Companies that haven’t yet adopted modern tools like intranets literally use email as their go to tool to get most work done. The result is a constant flood of emails that are hard to keep up with, and important information that is continuously lost. As a common result, project deadlines are missed and communication is not delivered. Intranets are a vastly more efficient way to manage information and communications.
Examples of Intranets
At HyperOffice, our professional services team has helped customers to design thousands of intranets for companies across almost every industry. Here are some examples:
1. General Intranet homepage
Apart from representing the organization’s corporate branding, one great thing about this Intranet is that it shows all the tools needed by employees in a single view. The main button —the call to action— invites employees to access online chat. This example emphasizes what is most important in the company, real-time communication.
As secondary options, we see a document library broken down by department (i.e. marketing, sales, HR, Corporate, channel), upcoming events, where HR can schedule and communicate their training programs, and even a project management module.
2. Public Sector Intranet example
Most of the Intranets have, basically, the same components and structure. However, layouts and objectives change across sectors. While the first example emphasized chat, public sector workflows relate more to accessing important templates and forms that reflect bureaucratic processes.
One of the biggest challenges for large organizations is articulating the leadership voice across every single department. This intranet represents a key channel where leaders — a mayor, in this example — can make sure everyone is on the same page.
3. HR intranet
While you can create corporate Intranets for the whole organization, you can also build subsections in the Intranet for specific divisions and departments. The above examples related to an Intranet subsection built specifically for the HR department.
Rather than reaching out to the HR department every single time, employees can access common HR templates like Leave Forms, Appraisal Templates, Expense Forms etc, on a self-service basis, freeing up HR’s bandwidth for other priorities. Here, they also have the key documentation and procedures for new employees to help them through the onboarding process.
Finally, since some company Intranet platforms like HyperOffice allow the ability to build custom workflows, this HR department has built small automation for requesting leave. Employees simply fill out the form on the intranet, which notifies the HR managers, who can go through the request details, and mark the leave as approved or denied. Moreover, the tool also keeps a count of the total number of leaves available to specific employees.
4. IT department Intranet
IT companies are highly project-centric. Accordingly, this IT team intranet has an emphasis on project management. However, at the same time, it also allows centralized access to important third part tools that IT workers need constant access to.
5. Educational Intranet
This school intranet is built with a focus on the teaching staff. It emphasizes important upcoming events and policy documents that teachers need access to.
6. Non Profit Intranet
Nonprofits need to work within an extended network of employees, volunteers, regulators, donors and beneficiaries. This intranet is a great example of a non profit showcasing its branding to these different audiences, while at the same time communicating important information like schedules, upcoming classes and projects etc across these different stakeholders.
7. Real Estate company intranet
Real Estate firms work with large teams of loosely associated agents and brokers. This ensures that agents have access to all the important templates, brochures, and forms they need to effectively close property sales. Also, a calendar allows them to keep up to date with important events like meetings, training sessions, parties etc. Agent managers also use this as a hub to communicate important motivational messages to their team.
Conclusion
Someone who has a view across industries would find that there are recurring themes that run through all the company Intranet examples above. However, from the specific viewpoint of the organization that has implemented these intranets, it has allowed for a vast improvement and maturation of internal communication and collaboration processes.
