Intranet Connections is a simple, out-of-the-box intranet solution with content and document management that focuses on ease of use, collaboration and employee ownership. Over 1600 organizations world-wide have chosen Intranet Connections to improve their employee communications, centralize their corporate information, save costs and increase productivity.
Intranet Connections has its roots in business applications. We have added a lot of social and collaboration elements to our social intranet software over the recent years, but we have never forgotten about our roots in providing tools for employees to help improve your business. We also see a great deal of employee engagement stemming from your company culture and our new v11 is all about leveraging your intranet to communicate that culture, and to expand on the tools you need to better inform and collaborate with your employees.
With the boom of tech-savvy employees in the workforce, companies are in search of unique engagement tools to keep the Gen X and Gen Y employees interested. In Dana LaSalvia’s article called “Building an Employee-Enriched Culture with Social Media” she wrote that “organizations should think about integrating companywide marketing messages and upgrading their employee’s recognition programs to be more virtual.” To do this, implement an intranet!
Peter Barron is an Intranet Connections Fan; he provides significant feedback on our blog, Linkedin and Facebook pages and speaks candidly about our software as it applies to his organization. Over the past ten years, Peter has managed the Rio Rancho Public Schools intranet, which is internally called “Rionet”. With over 20 school district departments that use the rionet, Peter targets applications and widgets that make the intranet process fast and easy for thousands of users.
Sharlyn Lauby, a writer for Open Forum, recently wrote an article called "5 Challenges for Human Resources in a Digital World" which shares the automation challenges that HR departments face today. Sharlyn explains that an array of automation tools is available to HR professionals; however, the adoption of this technology is slow. A great way to overcome computerization issues is to implement an intranet to share and store human resources information digitally.
Once an intranet is up and running, there are exceptional applications that can make HR documents and polices accessible to all business sectors securely.
Justin Olson from the Utah Credit Union, who has been on our intranet software since 2004, created two unique time-saving Human Resources tools on his intranet:
Non-salaried employees clock-in using Hyperlinked logos that are connected to their external time tracking system. Hours worked are tracked through one site so that HR does not have to login to another system.
Full time employees have a Human Resources widget for health benefits, medical, dental and 401K plan information. Justin said that providing all of the proper documentation in a central area has freed up Human Resources because less people have questions when all of the forms are easily available on the site.
Practical Intranet HR Tools that can be utilized
These are a few of the great ways that an intranet can automate HR in a protected and organized manner. How has your company enhanced Human Resources capabilities via your intranet?
Building your intranet is like using a recipe. You want to make the final product enjoyable, and to do so, you need to ensure that all of the ingredients are well balanced.
I recently made a delicious dinner for some friends and was later asked how I did it. I slyly said “a little this and that”, but really, it is a tried and true recipe from my step mom, a chef. Over the years I have perfected the dish to make it “my own”, but I still have to peak back at my food stained recipe book to ensure that I am on the right track. With an intranet, similar to cooking a nice meal, users do not see the creative process until it’s perfected and delivered. Like a good meal, and as the site develops, the users will crave more.
Intranet design is similar to cooking in that it allows for revisions along the way. An intranet site starts with design applications that provide functionality to the site. You need to build up these applications with text, borders, pictures, in order to make the site operational and appealing to the user’s eyes. Along the way, you can add or remove icons, text boxes and documents to enhance the page. It’s a never ending process of exciting changes that increasingly make the intranet more accessible for the users.
People are increasingly interested in making healthy and environmentally friendly choices at work and at home, and your intranet can support this way of life. Use your intranet to engage and educate employees on greener lifestyles with our top ten tips.
Top Ten Tips for a Greener Intranet
Tip #1: Create a Green Community sub-site
Spearhead your campaign with a Green Community area of the intranet, and then add in collaborative apps like the ones below.
Tip #2: Suggestion box
Vancouver, BC -- Intranet Connections has released the newest version of its Intranet 2.0 CMS platform with the aims of reducing administration overhead for intranet managers and simplifying the design of site navigation. Intranet Connections version 10.5 targets small to medium size businesses wishing to have SharePoint-like functionality, but without the price tag or management overhead.
Carolyn Douglas, CEO of Intranet Connections, “Our focus is on ease-of-use and providing SMB’s with an out-of-the-box intranet that they can implement themselves. Version 10.5 provides intranet administrators with a simple solution that is easy to install, implement and manage on an ongoing basis, without the need for custom development.”
A key enhancement in the new release is the addition of a revised menu builder that features a drag and drop interface to manage site navigation. The redesigned interface allows administrators to add a horizontal menu to their site, create drop down menus, add menu headers and relocate menu items from the left main to the site header directly through the site interface. The new menu builder provides more flexibility to intranet managers wishing to customize their information architecture in a simple manner.
This latest release also builds on the popular tagging feature with the addition of a new content tag management interface. The robust tag administration area simplifies routine tag management tasks such as creating tag groups, moving tags between groups and finding tags with dynamically filtered search results. Admins can pre-populate and organize commonly used tags so that end users can easily tag and find relevant content.
Also included among the other features of v10.5 are an upgrade of the HTML editor to improve accuracy when composing complex document layouts or pasting from Word, an extranet friendly security model to simplify user-rights administration on intranet/extranet implementations and a new Multiple File Upload tool for improved ease-of-use, stability and performance.