It is important for every company to communicate regularly with its employees about all the news and events happening at the business. In addition, employees need to be notified quickly if there are any policy changes at the company. Creating a company intranet is a great way to give employees better access to information about company policies, news about the company, and to share company resources. This can even reduce the operating costs of a business.
What is an Intranet?
While you are all familiar with the Internet, an intranet is a term that is largely unknown to many businesses. Quite simply, an intranet is a private website that can only be accessed by employees within your company and is often only available inside the company network. Intranets come in all shapes and sizes and can be anything from a simple collection of web pages containing important information to a very advanced site offering tools for sharing documents, booking time off and even providing training.
Benefits of an Intranet
There are many benefits to be achieved from creating an intranet at your place of business. With an intranet, you can create a central location for all company policies and you can easily notify your employees when changes are made to these policies. With an intranet, you can work to improve the administration side of your business by offering a central location for tasks like support requests for IT, time off booking and much more.
Every employer strives to increase efficiency across their business and boost the productivity of their employees. By using an intranet, you can provide quality collaboration tools designed to speed up and improve the flow of work through your business so you can get more done in the time allotted. This efficiency will help you reduce costs across your business as you work to increase profitability throughout the company. Even small companies can benefit from an intranet, as talk at the water cooler can override the official word from management fast. Using an intranet will help you to control the flow of information and allow you to quickly inform your employees about the latest news of the business.
Determining what Software to Use and What to Put on the Intranet
An intranet is simply a website that is only accessible by members of your company. Because of that fact, much of the software used for intranets is the same software which is used to create traditional websites. This software generally consists of a web server designed to serve web pages to visitors via a browser and then a platform to create these pages. There are many free options available to create quality sites that are easy enough even for beginners to use.
When you first begin creating an Intranet, it can be difficult to determine what you should put on your new company site. In the beginning, start small and only add the tools you know you need right away, while ensuring that the platform you choose to build upon is flexible enough to grow as you determine what functions will work best on the intranet in your business.
While it may not seem like an important tool in the beginning, there are many benefits to be gained from an intranet site that can help you reduce costs and improve efficiency, and also create a more congenial and productive workplace environment. Creating a central location for your employees is a great way to create a community of employees and to cultivate a positive culture for your business.