8 ways to launch an employee-centric intranet

Editor’s note: This story is taken from Ragan Communications’ distance-learning portal Ragan Training. The site contains hundreds of hours of case studies, video presentations and interactive courses.

Is your intranet so bad that your employees’ critiques of it read like mean tweets?

That’s how it was at the American Medical Association, where staffers offered comments such as: “It is not visually appealing, search is worthless, navigation is practically impossible, and the information is stale,” says Catherine Williams, employee communications manager.

Time for a revamp. In “Redesign an award-winning intranet with employee-centric strategies,” Williams describes the AMA’s redesign of its SharePoint internal channel in a session full of useful pointers for communicators.

Founded in 1847 and headquartered in Chicago, the 1,000-employee organization launched a new intranet that has become a dynamic hub of communications and interaction. It replaced an intranet that didn’t live up to the organization’s lofty reputation.