- The 2020 Nielson Norman Group Intranet Design Annual
is our 20th report.
Yay.
Like the other 19, this years set of winners
researched their employees and designed to meet their needs.
They did this in a variety of ways, like search.
Which has become a far reaching function
for finding information, well beyond the intranet's pages.
Making it an incredibly valuable tool,
in today's digital workplace.
For example, one of our winners, Dynacare,
integrated with the organization
SharePoint online environment.
Allowing employees to search for content on the internet
and SharePoint, from a single search box.
And some other winning designs
enable searching within a document,
without even having to open it.
Another theme is enabling people connections.
Building a network of colleagues
can result in happier employees.
Winning designs have various features
to promote these connections.
For example, Barclays offers three types
of collaboration tools on its intranet.
While Loblaw displays a Yammer feed.
Angelini Holding promoted success stories
of the hundred year old company in a page called,
Angelini 100.
Where employees from around the world
shared their celebration stories.
Husky Energy's intranet features
a people and community section,
that showcases work anniversaries and awards.
Another theme is outward thinking inside the organization.
As employees, we can be so focused on our own work,
that we're woefully unaware of what other groups do.
Without knowledge about the rest of the organization,
groups miss out on opportunities to collaborate.
They may even pay to hire external consultants.
When expertise exists in house.
Or, they may miss out on new career paths.
Winning intranets provide information
about the various business units and teams.
For example, the Husky Energy's section about teams
helps employees learn about each team's strategy,
leadership, news and performance.
Dynacare's 'Who Does What' page,
helps employees understand the business structure
and the roles of each cross functional department.
The last theme I'll mention
is content management advancements.
A great intranet doesn't begin with technology or features.
It all comes back to content.
Understanding that content
is the most critical part of any intranet,
this year's winning designers went beyond the typical
and tried different strategies to audit, create, maintain
and govern their intranet's content.
Con Edison had a robust strategy,
plus weekly planning and training meetings
for department content managers and authors.
Wellcome Trust encourages and expects
many employees to share news.
Which resulted in 40% of employees posting articles in 2018.
Dynacare offered a special edit menu.
Available only to content administrators,
so they could quickly do simple in-page edits
without having to go through the CMS.
Giving authors credit for content
and making their content information available,
helps keep content fresh.
Husky Energy's intranet displays the name and photo
of the person who posted the page.
Which not only gives authors credit
and a sense of page ownership,
but also helps colleagues determine who to contact
if they have a question or comment.
Read more about these and other themes
and all ten of our winning intranets
in our Intranet Design Annual 2020 Report.