TL;DR
- An intranet does four jobs: publish things people must know, hold the documents they need, help them find a person or an answer, and carry two-way conversation. Most products are strong on publishing and weak on finding, which is the one people judge it by.
- Intranets go quiet for an unglamorous reason: nobody owns the content. Within a year the policies are out of date, the search returns three versions of the same form, and people go back to asking a colleague.
- Before buying, check the two groups that decide whether it works: people without a desk or a work email, and colleagues who need adjustments to use it at all. This article describes the United Kingdom position and is general information, not legal advice.
Every intranet project starts with a homepage mock-up and ends with a question nobody prepared for: who is going to keep four hundred pages accurate?
This article covers what intranet software is actually for, the four jobs it has to do, why so many go quiet in the first year, what deskless and disabled colleagues need from it, what to measure, and the questions to ask before you sign. It names no products.
An intranet is where announcements live; the conversation about the work belongs closer to the work. See how New Dynamics continuous feedback keeps that going between people rather than on a noticeboard.
If what you really need is a rhythm of communication rather than a platform, our post on meeting rhythm covers the cadence first, and our post on internal communication tools covers the channels.
The four jobs
- Publish. Announcements, policies, benefits, the things people must be able to find once and trust.
- Hold documents. The current version of the form, with the old ones gone rather than hidden.
- Find. A person, a policy, an answer. This is the job people silently judge it by, and the one most products do worst.
- Converse. Comments, questions, acknowledgements and the occasional disagreement in public.
Most organisations buy for the first job, are sold on the fourth, and fail on the third.
Why intranets go quiet
Three causes, in order of frequency.
No owner for the content. Pages age, nobody is accountable, and the first time someone finds an out-of-date policy they stop trusting the whole site. Ownership has to be per section, with a named person and a review date that the system enforces.
Search that does not work. If the top result for "expenses" is a 2019 announcement about expenses, people stop searching and start asking. Test search with your own ten most common questions before buying.
Publishing as broadcast. A stream of announcements with no response, no audience targeting and no acknowledgement teaches people to scroll past. If everything is for everyone, nothing is for anyone.
A fourth, quieter cause: the intranet duplicates three systems people already use, so it becomes the fourth place to check and the first to be abandoned.
The two groups that decide whether it works
People without a desk or a work email. If reaching the intranet requires a company laptop and a work account, a large part of the workforce is excluded by design. Check: personal phone access, no-email onboarding, shared device use, offline reading of key documents, and whether the critical content survives a weak connection.
Colleagues who need adjustments. Acas describes reasonable adjustments as "changes an employer makes to remove or reduce a disadvantage related to someone's disability", and notes that employers must make them by law under the Equality Act 2010. Government guidance puts the duty plainly: "Employers must make reasonable adjustments to make sure workers with disabilities, or physical or mental health conditions, are not substantially disadvantaged when doing their jobs." An internal system that cannot be used with a screen reader, or that hides a policy inside an image, is a barrier the employer has created. Ask a provider for an accessibility conformance statement, then test it with the assistive technology your colleagues actually use.
Both groups are easy to leave until after launch, and both are the reason adoption numbers disappoint.
What to measure
Page views are the vanity metric of internal communication. Four better ones:
- Search success: the share of searches that end in a click, and the top searches that end in nothing.
- Findability of the top ten: can a new starter find the ten most-needed documents in under a minute each?
- Content freshness: the proportion of pages past their review date. This should be small and visible to owners.
- Reach to deskless colleagues, measured separately rather than hidden in an overall figure.
Questions for the demo
- Search for our ten most common questions against our own content, not a sample site.
- Show me the content ownership model, including what happens when a review date passes.
- Show me a personal phone, no work account, weak connection.
- Show me targeting: an announcement for one site, one shift, one department.
- What is your accessibility conformance statement, and can we test with a screen reader?
- How does this avoid duplicating our document store and our messaging tool?
- What is the migration plan for the content we already have, and who does that work?
Before you buy anything
A cheap sequence that tells you whether software is the problem:
- Write down the ten questions people actually ask, then time how long it takes to answer each with what you have now.
- Delete or archive anything out of date in the current system. Most intranets are a content problem wearing a software costume.
- Name an owner for each section and agree a review cycle.
- Fix the top ten documents so each has one current version.
If adoption improves after that, you have saved a purchase. If it does not, you now know exactly what the new system has to fix.
What usually goes wrong
- A launch with no editorial plan, so the site is complete on day one and stale by month three.
- Permissions that block the wrong people, usually contractors and frontline managers.
- Everything announced to everyone, which trains people to ignore announcements.
- Documents without versions, so two forms circulate and neither is right.
- Social features bolted onto a noticeboard, which produces an empty comment section and a sense that nobody is listening.
Frequently asked questions
What is intranet software?
It is an internal website for an organisation: announcements and policies, documents, people directories and search, usually with some two-way features such as comments or acknowledgements. Modern products often combine it with messaging and document storage, which is where overlap with existing tools begins.
Why do intranets fail?
Mostly because nobody owns the content. Pages age, trust goes, and people return to asking colleagues. The other two common causes are search that does not surface the right answer and publishing everything to everyone, which teaches people to ignore it.
How do you reach employees without a work email?
Choose a product that supports personal phone access without a work account, shared devices on site, and offline reading for critical documents, then measure reach to those colleagues separately. If deskless access is added after launch, it usually never catches up.
Does an intranet need to be accessible?
Yes. Reasonable adjustments are a legal duty where an employer knows someone is disabled or is asked, and an internal system that cannot be used with assistive technology creates a disadvantage. Ask for an accessibility conformance statement and test with the technology colleagues actually use.
What should you measure for an intranet?
Search success rate, how quickly a new starter can find the ten most-needed documents, the proportion of content past its review date, and reach to deskless colleagues as a separate number. Page views tell you almost nothing useful.
Should an intranet replace messaging and document storage?
Rarely. Most organisations already have both, and a product that duplicates them becomes a fourth place to look. Decide which system is the source of truth for documents, which is for conversation, and buy an intranet for what is genuinely left over.
Your next step: test the ten questions
- Write down the ten questions people ask most often, and time how long each takes to answer today.
- Name an owner and a review date for every section of what you already have.
- Delete or archive anything out of date before you migrate it anywhere.
- Put the ten questions into any product demo, against your own content.
For the wider habits that make internal communication land, read and download our employee engagement guide. The guide is free to read, and the PDF uses our short download form.
Want the conversation about work to live beside the work rather than on a noticeboard? Book a New Dynamics demo and bring your ten questions. You can also email contact@new-dynamics.com.
