7 Reasons Why and How to Measure Your Intranet Performance

Research shows that an intranet can boost your company’s productivity, improve staff retention, foster collaboration – and ultimately increase profits.

But that’s only if your staff actually use it.

Keep track of these seven simple metrics to make sure your employees adapt to your company intranet as seamlessly as possible so yours has the biggest possible impact on your business’s key metrics.

Employee usage

Research has shown that businesses with around 1,000 employees lose an incredible $2.7 million every year due to inefficient knowledge management. 

And knowledge silos are an even bigger problem for large corporations, with Fortune 500 companies losing an eye-watering $31.5 billion a year by failing to share knowledge. That means that collectively, Fortune 500 companies could save the GDP of some countries each year through organized and up-to-date employee intranets.

So, it’s fair to say it’s well worth tracking how your people use your intranet tools so you can encourage them to use them more.

Modern intranets like Assembly come with analytics dashboards that make it easy to measure:

• How often your employees log in to your company intranet
• How long your employees spend on your internal company website
• Where employees click most often (through a heat map)
• How many comments and shares an employee makes

Intranet performance metrics dashboards also reveal the employees that use your social intranet tools the most – and those who never log on to it. You can then use surveys and the right one-to-one questions to find out what separates the power users from the laggards when it comes to your intranet collaboration tools. 

Armed with this data, you’ll be able to adapt your intranet software to suit your people’s needs as best as possible and enjoy all the benefits of knowledge sharing.

Employee engagement

Cracking the employee engagement code could take your company to new heights. In fact:

• Engaged teams are 21% more productive.
• Engaged employees generate 43% more revenue than disengaged ones.
• Organizations with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by a massive 147% in earnings-per-share.
• Engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their job than their disengaged teammates.

And your intranet software can help here, too. Measuring which kind of content you post on your workplace news feed your employees engage in and which they don’t will give you real-time feedback into what they do and don’t care about.

Boosting engagement and retention is then as easy as doubling down on the things your people resonate with and ditching the things they don’t. 

Efficiency

Empowering your people with an intranet they’ll actually use is one of the best things you can ever do for their productivity.

Don’t believe us?

Did you know the average worker spends an incredible 20% of every working week searching for information they need to complete their daily tasks? That means the right tools for knowledge management can save your employees an entire working day each week.

To make sure your intranet is giving your employees as big of an efficiency boost as possible, be sure to track how long each task takes your people to complete. Then you can hop into your intranet analytics to see whether the people on a team who use your intranet the most get those tasks done faster than their colleagues who rarely log into your internal website. If not, that’s a sign you need to go back to the drawing board about how you structure your knowledge base. 

Communication channels

If collaboration isn’t a cornerstone of your company culture then your organization will quickly run into trouble.

In fact:

• 60% of people find it difficult, very difficult, or nearly impossible to get vital information they need to do their job from their colleagues.
• 86% of people think a lack of effective collaboration and communication is the main cause of workplace failures.
• 36% of people find it so hard to exchange information with different teams within their company that it causes silos.

One thing is clear: if you can find a way to make your people more comfortable sharing their insights and expertise with their colleagues, you can transform your business’s fortunes.

And communication tools like CEO and Executive updates, weekly employee status updates, and an “Ask Me Anything” employee question template can all help here. Together, they can eliminate the avalanche of emails, phone calls, and meetings that have come to define knowledge work in the information age. Freeing your people up from spending most of their time sitting in meetings and responding to emails can do wonders for both your productivity and your employee engagement. 

So, be sure to keep track of how much these features get used in your intranet analytics to make sure your employees are making the most of them – and adjust your strategy if not. It’s also well worth tracking how many emails your people send to their colleagues and meetings they have with each other. If that remains around the level it was before you adopted your intranet it’s a sign you need to train your people on how to make the most of your intranet.

Departments vs the organization

Each of your organization’s departments has its own unique needs when it comes to knowledge management. Take a one-size-fits-all approach to your intranet and it’s likely to suit some teams and leave others without key features they need to do their job effectively. 

For example, if your dev team works agile, they’ll need specialist features like a standup meeting, daily/weekly agenda, and team retrospective template. 

Opting for an intranet with a library of customizable workflow templates will go a long way here, as it will allow you to adapt your intranet to suit each of your teams’ exact needs.

On top of that, you’ll want to track how each department uses your intranet carefully in your analytics to see which teams it might not be working as well for. And be sure to regularly run staff surveys to give your people a platform to openly and honestly discuss how they feel about your intranet. Segmenting those responses by department will help you take the pulse of how each of your teams’ feels.

Employee reach

Employee intranets have come into their own in the age of remote and hybrid working. It’s essential that your employees can always quickly and easily find the information they need to do their jobs when there are no teammates sitting across their desk to answer any questions they have.

If some of your staff work from the office, some work hybrid, and some work fully remote, it’s crucial to make sure they all engage with your intranet. You’ll quickly find knowledge silos appearing if your in-office employees stop adding their insights to your company wiki for their remote colleagues to access as well.

A company knowledge base only functions if all your employees are fully invested in keeping it up-to-date. If your intranet analytics, staff surveys, and one-to-ones to reveal your employees who work from the office aren’t engaging with yours as much as their remote colleagues then you should be sure to take action fast to prevent knowledge silos from forming.

Costs

A modern intranet is your new digital workplace. Set up the right workflows and it can replace a lot of other software – which can shave a big chunk of your outgoings.

So, once your intranet is established, keep a close eye on how much the other software you’re paying for gets used in your company. Use those tools’ internal analytics and take your employees’ pulse to get a clear picture of which tools your people are regularly using – and which you can comfortably get rid of.

Just be sure you’re not only seeing dollar signs when you’re making these decisions though. Get rid of a platform your people know, love, and use regularly because it can technically be replaced by one of your intranet’s features could affect productivity – not to mention irk your staff.

The final word

Measuring these seven simple metrics is all it takes to make sure your staff are getting the most from your intranet. Keep a close eye on them to spot where your intranet might need rethinking before it becomes an issue.

‍