By 2025, approximately 36.2 million U.S. employees are projected to be engaged in working remotely.
With the availability of video conferencing tools, messaging applications, and cloud-based document management systems, physical office spaces are becoming less essential for various collaborative tasks. However, remote work does bring certain challenges that business executives need to address.
According to a CNN report from 2020, remote workers often experience feelings of loneliness and isolation, which can have a detrimental effect on both their well-being and productivity. As a result, business leaders are increasingly exploring ways to leverage technology to foster a greater sense of connection among employees, and one potential solution lies in the use of social intranet platforms.
Employee communication has been revolutionized by the rise of social intranets. With the prevalence of flexible work setups, hybrid teams, and mobile devices, intranet software has become a central component of the digital workplace. What’s particularly significant is the inclusion of social features in modern intranets, such as instant messaging, activity feeds, forums, likes, emojis, comments, and more. These features have been proven to improve company culture, elevate morale, and enhance overall engagement levels.
This article examines the significance of social intranet platforms, provides guidance on selecting an appropriate one, and showcases the implementation of such a platform by a company that successfully engaged its global workforce around the world.
What is Social Intranet?
With the word “Social”, you might have already thought about Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We all use these social platforms to connect with friends and family. Likewise, Social Intranet is a social media platform for a workplace where employees can collaborate and share information. It also enables employees to access content conveniently in a centralized location. With the help of social functionalities such as commenting and messaging, it facilitates interactions and collaboration among employees.
Unlike traditional intranet solutions, social intranet software employs interactive elements to enhance employee engagement and collaboration within the digital workspace.
facilitates interactions and collaboration among employees.
Unlike traditional intranet solutions, social intranet software employs interactive elements to enhance employee engagement and collaboration within the digital workspace.
The key features of social intranet platforms include:
- Contribution: This refers to the ability of employees to engage with intranet content in various ways, such as reacting to posts using emojis or participating in comment threads within the platform.
- Connection: Employees not only access information but also have visibility into who shared the particular information. Ideally, these platforms allow users to add a profile picture, fostering a sense of connection among employees, even if they are not personally acquainted.
Benefits of Social Intranet
- Knowledge Sharing – Both Employees and management can share important information like documents, company policies, and announcements. By integrating with Google Workspace and Microsoft Office, social intranet enables businesses to seamlessly incorporate external documents and files also into their platform.
- Collaboration – It promotes collaboration by providing employees with interactive tools and features to communicate, share ideas, and work together on projects. This enables a sense of teamwork and enables smooth coordination across teams and departments.
- Positive Culture – Incorporates a positive company culture by facilitating seamless connectivity and promoting transparency across various functions, even in remote work. It enables leaders and employees to stay connected, share information, and maintain a sense of transparency despite working remotely.
- Higher Engagement – According to a Gallup study in Germany, 51% of workers who were actively disengaged reported that job-related stress led to negative behavior in their personal relationships. Engaged employees are less likely to leave their jobs, making social intranet platforms a potential solution for reducing employee turnover. By leveraging analytics, leaders can analyze various engagement activities and gain insights that facilitate the creation of strategies to keep employees engaged.
- Increased Efficiency – Especially when one person is attempting to plan a meeting with multiple people across different time zones, many businesses lose crucial hours in back-and-forth communication. Users of social intranet platforms can simply set up meetings based on shared calendars. These systems’ strong search capabilities increase efficiency by making it simple for users to find files, persons, and discussions.
- Secured Sharing & Collaboration –
When it comes to sharing sensitive information, ensuring its protection from unauthorized access is crucial. Social intranet platforms offer advanced security features, including SSL encryption and single sign-on, providing a safeguard against hacking attempts. Unlike sharing through email or other communication channels, social intranet platforms minimize the risk of file interception, offering a more secure environment for information exchange.
Social Intranet: Creating a Productive Workspace
Based on Forbes data, social networking sites are utilized by 59 percent of the global population. However, certain organizations remain skeptical about the potential productivity gains from a social intranet. Leaders believe that it may lead employees to engage in unproductive conversations and non-work-related activities. According to a report, more than half of US employers are blocking social media access at the workplace.
However, many leaders now understand that it is much more advantageous to provide a space where individuals can readily share thoughts and opinions on a variety of initiatives and topics. What difference does it make if there are a few tiny emoji distractions along the way? The assumption that social intranet software boosts productivity is supported by research. Gallup data showed that social interaction enhanced productivity at the lowest possible cost.
Searching for meeting notes, emailed progress reports or written feedback are time-wasting tasks of the past. Social Intranet creates an environment that powers up “collaboration”.
How to choose the right Social Intranet Platforms?
While choosing the right social intranet platform, it is crucial for organisation to focus on the following key features:
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- Integration with other collaboration tools to make it accessible to all with a single login.
- Secure, Cloud-based storage for sensitive information within the organisation needs to be securely stored and 24/7 accessible.
- Open publishing rights to all team members that allow them to add articles, and information without any restrictions which helps in enhancing collaboration.
- Commenting & Messaging Abilities enable two-way communication that drives productivity in the long run.
- Mobile Friendliness is a crucial feature when deciding on social intranet platforms. Every employee is as tech-savvy as others. So, accessing the social intranet to stay connected with other team members is essential.
Conclusion
Bravo! you’ve made it till here. Now, you have a strong understanding of social intranet, use cases, and how to choose the right platform.
But if you’re still confused and want to enjoy your very own internal social network and celebrate every milestone with your peers, Vega HR is the right platform for you. It enables to build of a culture of appreciation where employees recognize and celebrate great work, feel connected, motivated, engaged, and love to work.
