Do you work on your strategic branding from the inside?

By Lorraine S. Green and Louise Heurlin

Your everyday work is permeated not only by the physical and digital workspace, but also by your corporate culture and values. As customers and employees are becoming more driven by their values, there is an increased importance being placed on nurturing your brand.

Your intranet is an important part of the digital workspace, an efficient channel for employer branding, and an invaluable opportunity to work on your strategic branding from the inside. For a savvy communicator, the intranet is easily one of their most important assets – provided that they invest the right resources into it, of course.

Putting in the effort needed to incorporate your corporate culture and values across all areas of your company’s workspaces is not easy, but the rewards are worth it.

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We were joined by 20 industry professionals for a roundtable discussion on internal communications. Our focus was intranets: how can industry professionals make them work for them? What do they bring to the table, both on a strategic and operational level?

Are you ready to dig deeper into how to successfully manage your intranet and internal communications? This is what we can conclude from the round table discussion:

A clear vision and a well-defined purpose

Unsurprisingly, everyone agreed that the starting point of a successful intranet should be setting the baseline: a clear vision and a well-defined purpose. The second most important thing is to create the conditions you need to fulfil that purpose, across all levels of the company.

Shifting focus: from monologue to dialogue

It’s not all about what you’re saying. Even the best messaging can be muddled by poor communication skills.

Top-down information streams have overstayed their welcome - new takes on internal comms favour open approaches that facilitate two-way interaction with key audiences. One of the companies taking part in our roundtable has stopped sending out traditional newsletters in favour of having news distributed through internal channels by the organisation itself. Instead of having a dedicated moderator administrating these internal channels, all company information is now created and shared by employees.

People want to interact with each other. Shifting the focus from a monologue to a dialogue is a smooth way to tap into the great potential of collective intelligence. For that reason, you should encourage your employees to join the discussions on your internal channels.

Ensure smooth access, to all your employees

Providing access to everyone seems like common sense, but think about it - have you really made sure that all employees, at all levels of your company, have access to your digital workspace? From a technical point of view, does everyone have access to the devices needed to log in to your intranet? Is the platform properly adapted to these devices? And how easy is it to participate in conversations and, for example, publish content?

In order to increase engagement and encourage more committed participation, your intranet should be as technically easy to use as possible. As a starting point for improvement, look into its UX and design. You should also ensure access from an accessibility point of view, making sure that the intranet is open to employees with disabilities.

Read more about accessibility

Open the door to transparency

Carve a path for transparency. All employees should be invited to participate in your internal communications. Don’t stifle their creativity by placing constraints on how they are allowed to join in. Instead, trust in their capacity to be responsible and know that their their contribution is valuable.

Do you need help with your intranet? Get in touch, we'd be happy to help!