What’s the key to a top 10 intranet?

Of the thousands upon thousands of companies with intranets around the globe, the Nielsen Norman Group selects 10 each year for its list of the best-designed intranets. There must be something pretty special about those intranets.

According to intranet managers at three of this year’s top 10 companies—LivePerson, Genentech, and NCR Corp.—the culture surrounding their intranets is more important than the technology under the hood.

LivePerson

“We’ve transformed as a company over the past few years,” says Paul McCarthy, LivePerson’s head of community. The company’s main goal, he says, is to give employees a venue to express themselves so “they can feel connected to the big picture.”

The content on the company’s intranet, which uses the Jive platform, is entirely user-generated, says Mike Mansberger, LivePerson’s community manager. “It’s not a bunch of information coming from the top down,” he says. Each company division has a blog so team members can communicate news and successes.