The social intranet is, in a sense, the logical conclusion of digital communication to date. Social networks are now an integral part of our lives. Just as normal as the newspaper on the breakfast table used to be, today it is normal to visit Instagram and other social media sites once or even several times a day. It is no coincidence that Meta is seeing a steady increase in user numbers.
Digitalization is changing everything—not just in our private lives. Internal company communication can also benefit from this development. Ask yourself the following question: How many emails do you receive from your colleagues and superiors every day? Are there too many? Do you ever lose track of them? Then a social intranet offers the solution.
Employees want interaction
Study results show that internal social networks are becoming increasingly important in a corporate context. The focus on the internal area is particularly noteworthy. Otherwise, people would simply resort to Facebook and similar platforms.
While traditional intranets merely digitize existing hierarchical structures, social intranets focus on other goals. Dynamic knowledge transfer and digital collaboration: not simply providing information, but rather creating an active community that generates its own content and thus digitally represents its company and corporate culture.
The following goals can be achieved more easily through the social intranet:
- Faster and more productive work thanks to improved communication processes
- Increased employee satisfaction thanks to a greater sense of unity
- Improved transparency thanks to disclosed processes
How do we make the leap?
However, interactive features alone do not make a social intranet a recipe for success. Rigid hierarchies and entrenched communication structures can be factors that slow down the development of internal digital communication. The social intranet should be a place where employees feel comfortable. It must therefore be more than just a collection of information about the cafeteria menu and vacation planning.
Personal profiles, comment functions, and like buttons are familiar features that can be transferred from popular platforms to internal social networks and can also contribute significantly to users finding their place and actually wanting to interact. In addition, the success of the social intranet is governed by similar principles to those that are generally important for internal communication: trust, transparency, and credibility. An appealing corporate design and other incentives also contribute to user-friendliness.
Social intranet as a change project
Implementing a social intranet is a change project that involves many challenges. You are facing profound changes to your internal corporate communications. This means that if you decide to implement it, you need to be consistent. See it through to the end. Half measures are not enough. So prepare well, accompany the process every step of the way, and exemplify the change yourself.
Yours, Christoph Moss
Sources:
http://www.prmagazin.de/meinung-analyse/hintergrund/theorie-praxis-062019.html
https://www.presseportal.de/pm/53039/4293723
https://berufebilder.de/mitarbeiterbindung-motivation-interne-kommunikation/
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37545/umfrage/anzahl-der-aktiven-nutzer-von-facebook/
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