A few years ago I wrote about the HR Intranet. When you look at departments within an organization and how they relate to content on the intranet, HR and IT are two dominant teams that should have a strong presence. HR on the intranet is typically a heavily content-based and functional site, a place to view policies, handbooks, guidelines, benefits and payroll information. It is the go-to point for people-related processes.

Can HR Intranets move more into engagement and mentorship, training and leadership?

You bet they can, and the intranet is the best place to accomplish this. Putting a personality to the functional and process-based HR Intranet is your key to added engagement. Here are a few simple ideas…

Job Postings & Career Advancement

Most intranets have an area for job postings, as it is beneficial and cost-effective to hire and promote within. Take this a step further and add in stories. Have you heard about story writing? It is a hot topic right now, because it is proven to be highly effective. Add stories to your HR intranet about the staff who have been promoted. These are success stories that employees want to hear about and it boosts morale. Be sure to include photos of employees. It is proven that we immediately connect when recognizing a photo on the intranet. It is very powerful in triggering emotions and that is what hooks people to your site.

Employee Training & eLearning

I am a huge fan of using your intranet for training and eLearning. This is directly in HR’s wheelhouse. We have many customers creating innovative ways of using our Online Training Calendar, Online Tests, embedded videos and Surveys to build eLearning and credentialing tools. Combined with advanced workflow and routing, credentialing via the HR intranet is a powerful and interactive way to not only engage, but teach, mentor, learn and offer growth. You can also use these tools for contests (who gets the highest test score on quizzes about company culture or new product lines) and for onboarding of new employees … bringing us to the next idea!

Onboarding of New Employees

A lot of organizations struggle with process and procedure surrounding the onboarding of new employees. There is very expensive software to manage this process and the timeline of onboarding, however your HR intranet is perfectly aligned to help. Most of the onboarding documentation, forms that need to be filled out, and resources to review are often all located on the intranet. Moving the management of onboarding and creating an “onboarding” site within the HR intranet makes a lot of sense. Create tests where new employees are to review information, video, company values, mission statement, employee handbook and then ask a series of short quiz questions after each “section” of eLearning. This not only makes it more interesting, it solidifies what the new hire is learning and it can be forwarded to their supervisor and managers. Engage a peer-buddy system, via the intranet, where an existing team member sends over a welcome message via the Message Board, and shares where the new employees can go to eat lunch, coffee shops in the neighborhood, invite to join carpooling or the running club. These all lend to culture and making a new employee feel welcomed, organized, engaged and ready to be a company rock star.

HR Intranet Ideas

Intranets are all about IDEAS and your HR intranet is no different.

What ideas do you have for your HR Intranet? We always like to share success stories, please comment below if you have a great HR Intranet idea!