We’ve had the unique opportunity to partner with, grow with, and learn from outstanding, innovative organizations across a wide range of industries. Our Customer Story series grew from a desire to share some of those learnings, and dive into the details of what makes the digital employee experience and the culture at some of our favorite organizations so extraordinary.
For this resource, we gathered a collection of over 70 quick tips, insights, and pieces of advice from our conversations with intranet admins at the forefront of their profession.
Unifying Themes
While each organization brings its own culture, needs, goals, and objectives to the digital employee experience, several unifying themes emerged throughout these conversations. Whether their official role was Internal Communications, Information Technology, Senior Leadership, Human Resources and People Ops, or any other, these themes often served as aligning principles.
User-Centric Design and Experience:
We’re surrounded by excellent user experience and user interfaces in our personal lives, yet the digital tools and experiences in the workplace often feel lackluster in comparison.
To build an outstanding digital employee experience, it’s essential to have tools that are just as engaging, delightful, and easy to use as the digital tools people are accustomed to using in their personal lives.
A user-centric experience also takes input from a wide range of stakeholders into consideration. For example, organizations with a large deskless workforce need a stellar mobile app experience. Establishing ongoing feedback loops like polls and surveys, and amplifying employee voices is another key component of building a user-centric experience.
A digital employee experience truly shines when employees aren’t just compelled to use the tools and resources at their disposal—they’re inspired to.
Collaboration and Communication:
Strong communication is critical from the earliest stages of building a digital employee experience. Understanding and communicating the value among the broader employee community, separate departments, senior leaders, and other key stakeholders is a two-way street. Building those partnerships and the
Communicating effectively with vendors can also be a major factor in developing a truly excellent digital experience for employees. The best vendors often have experts ready to guide customers through implementation, and ensure their success. Some have experts in content planning, to ensure employees have a place they can rely on for actionable information, but also a place that draws them in.
Planning and Implementation
Measure twice, cut once—but save a little extra growing room.
Implementing a tool based on today’s use case might leave tomorrow’s use cases without an effective solution. It’s important to choose a tool that aligns with goals and objectives, but both can and do shift. As organizations grow and scale, so do their needs and processes. Building into a robust platform can help avoid the need to migrate later, as the organization matures.
The same goes for content and resources. Know who will produce the content that drives engagement, where that content will live, and how it will be distributed. Collaborative implementation provides an opportunity to identify and empower champions and creators early on.
Culture and Content
Organizational culture can be a difficult thing to define, because it isn’t static. It changes with every new hire, every departure, and every core decision. But culture defines the digital employee experience as much as any piece of technology.
Digital tools provide numerous ways to communicate and reinforce organizational culture—but equally importantly—to help it evolve by channeling the employee community’s influence. Supporting these routes of communication can provide a better reflection of an organization’s diverse voices.
Leadership and Advocacy
Intranets and other digital tools are an excellent way to establish communication channels between organizational leaders and the employee community.
While it’s crucial for members of senior leadership to show top-down support, personal enthusiasm from champions can further strengthen adoption and help foster an authentic sense of community.
Every story deserves a champion, and it turns out, so does every intranet.
79 Expert Tips for Delivering an Exceptional Digital Employee Experience
Below, we’re excited to present tips, tricks, insights, and pieces of advice uncovered during our Customer Story series. To learn more about the experts sharing these tips, and the organizations they work with, check out the full story below each list.
Maritza Bocks shared these tips for designing, implementing, and maintaining an extraordinary digital workplace that feels like a true home base:
- I always appreciate and would prioritize a user-friendly interface.
- Branding is important. It should feel like it’s really yours.
- Keep things light and fun overall—people will be drawn to use the platform more frequently, and more likely to use it when they need it most.
- Seek input from a diverse group of important stakeholders.
- Execute on a clear communication plan.
- Keep the well-being of the employee at heart, and continue to make improvements that foster a more collaborative site.
Learn More about How BuzzFeed Supports an Inclusive, Collaborative, and Creative Culture
Mickey DeJong had these pieces of advice for delivering an authentic digital experience users will absolutely flock to, time and time again:
- Stay purposeful and mindful of the user experience. We’re always asking, “what makes the most sense for users? How can we go with the flow of current processes, instead of trying to change them?”
- Make sure that culture is the heart of what you’re doing. People want to go onto a platform that’s interesting and creative, and one that celebrates the work they’re doing. If that’s not reflected in the platform, you might struggle to earn buy-in.
- Humility and a service mentality are crucial.
- Build feedback loops. It can be really easy to get into the mentality of “I think this is the best way to do this,” but it might not be the way users will ultimately adopt.
- Having open lines of communication with Haystack’s team, especially for something so central to our organization, and having that backing is super important.
Learn How Ally Logistics Brings People and Cutting-Edge Technology Together
Aaron Callahan shared these tips for finding a solution that fits your organization just as well today as it will in the future:
- If you’re still in the ‘looking’ stage, try some tools out to get a sense for their capabilities, and also a feel for how well they fit your culture.
- It took us too long to address the limitations of the handful of communication tools we’d cobbled together in the past.
- Don’t try hammering a nail with a paintbrush. You need the right tools to create a single source of truth and an interactive virtual office.
- DIY and open-source tools can only get you so far. Investing in a robust platform like Haystack is the way to go.
See How Boyce Thompson Institute Builds Community while Exploring Scientific Frontiers
Katie Schoon had some keen insights on reducing friction and earning engagement from a busy, distracted audience.
- Make it as easy as possible for your colleagues to get into.
- Give lots of examples, make sure it’s preloaded with lots of awesome content.
- In the workforce today, we’re all being pulled in a million different directions. Take some time to host trainings, showcase features, and share ways people can customize their experience.
- Any legwork you can cut out for yourself and your team will benefit everyone.
Find out Why Fluid Truck Is Revolutionizing Commercial Mobility And The Employee Experience At Scale
Rex Mann provided some excellent tips on earning sustained buy-in from leadership, departmental peers, and the employee community:
- Make it a team effort. Get people excited and involved from the beginning to the end of the process, rather than just dropping a new tool on them. Get feedback from everyone, and follow it. Otherwise you can end up with resistance.
- Make it fun. Making it more than just a repository for information really helps. Running a tutoring center for years, I learned the power of dressing information up. Engaging content makes a big difference. Going through a bunch of documents, you might get fatigued before you find what you’re looking for. Things like image banners, and animated GIFs really do make a difference.
- Find good partners. As a team passionate about customers, it’s important to see that in the vendors you choose to work with as well. Be conscious of the vibes you’re getting during those initial demos and conversations.
Learn How TextExpander Connects a Creative, Geographically Diverse Team
Tony Kihl shared some practical, actionable advice on implementation, user empathy, and cultural alignment.
- Having a solid project plan in place is essential.
- It’s all about the voice of your employees. Don’t create something you think they need or will like. Create something they tell you they need and will elevate their experience.
- When creating the digital environment, put yourself in your employees shoes and create something that is easy to navigate and understand.
- It should bring them closer to your culture, allow for opportunities for connection, and it should be something they look forward to going to each and every day.
Read How Evolve Elevates the Employee Experience
Kayla Bonnin knows how to engage her audience, whether it’s the executive team, or the broader employee community. She shared these priceless tips:
- Get leadership excited and onboard. They’ll be your biggest ally.
- You need to be excited because your excitement will be contagious. We did a roadshow for MyBridge during the rollout. Our excitement transferred to other people, so even before we launched, everyone was excited about the possibilities. When it did launch, people were looking forward to logging in and using it because we’d built that moment.
Learn More about How Everbridge Supports a Collaborative, Mission-Driven Team
Paul LoPresto zeroed in on the importance of bringing cultural values like authenticity, appreciation and gratitude to the forefront:
- Practice gratitude. Some companies say it, but we live it. It might be just a quick five-minute thank you about something small, but that has a reverberating impact.
- A lot of companies have their core values, but nobody knows what they are. I think the team at Lead does a really good job of practicing and communicating those values—making sure everyone understands what our ethos is, and really lives it. Not only from when you’re hired, but daily—reinforcing gratitude. Create a forum for it.
- Don’t overthink it. When we first started the process, I was still new. It was a great opportunity to take stock and see what we did and didn’t have in place.
Find out How Lead Health Fosters Flexibility and an Award-Winning Remote Culture
Vlad Radulescu, Jason Harlander, and Jeff Tompkins teamed up to bring us these great pieces of advice on internal champions, implementation, and post-launch engagement:
- You need to have champions, and sometimes these are different people.
- You need someone to drive the implementation like Vlad did, bringing everything together and making sure you hit your target launch date.
- After launch, you also need an internal champion to evangelize the platform and help make sure all the information is organized and easily digestible. Haystack does a lot of that for you, but it’s really helpful to have templates to standardize the look and feel of your messaging.
See How SWARE Supports a Dream Team with Haystack
Katie Burkhart provided some essential guidance for delivering a solution that not only meets, but exceeds the expectations of the user base:
- Set your objectives first. Know what you’re trying to solve, why you’re trying to solve it, and exactly how a specific tool could help you get there. The more specific you can be, the better.
- Earn Employee buy-in: base objectives on employee feedback and communicate how the initiative is a response to (and aligned with) the team’s feedback. Clearly illustrate the ways this will support them and meet the needs they’re expressing.
- Earn Leadership buy-in: from the earliest stages, it’s essential to have the enthusiastic support of senior leadership. They’re not only key decision makers; they’re also culture leaders whose visible support can be a powerful example for others to follow.
Learn How Life Link III Cultivates Culture while Saving Lives
Ben Hall shared some excellent advice for boosting engagement and empowering champions across different roles and functions.
- Don’t force it; make it fun. Anything people are forced into, they’ll typically bristle at. You don’t want your intranet to be one more job or task people have to do throughout the day—they have enough to do already.
- Little things like the name game can be surprisingly popular.
- Choose the right champions. If you ask someone to be champion and they’re apprehensive, find someone else. Offer to help them every step of the way, but if there’s someone else on their team they think might be a better champion, work with that person. The best champion for a department isn’t always just the most senior member—it could be someone who reports to them.
- Look for someone who’s maybe a little more extroverted to begin with, who can add engaging content that breaks the monotony of the workday instead of adding to it. You need your champion’s buy-in, or you’ll always find yourself checking in, asking them to participate, or doing it yourself.
Read How MyForest Foods Keeps Its Diversely Talented Team United
Melissa Toribio and Natalie Fernandez shared these priceless rollout and implementation tips that will support long-term engagement and success:
- Setting the intent ahead of time, as to what purpose the resources will serve, is key.
- Earn buy-in from stakeholders whose impact aligns with that intent is essential.
- Create a preliminary project plan or visual roadmap for how you want to layer the system.
- Learn from the success of other teams.
Learn More about How Novo Supports a Tight-Knit Global Employee Community
Jasminne Velandia and Sarah Colvin shared their insights on earning (and keeping) buy-in, setting expectations, and measuring success.
- You can’t do this in a vacuum. When you’re introducing something foundational like an intranet, there’s a lot of behavior that needs to change. Earning buy-in from stakeholders, and continuing to demonstrate shared value is critical.
- Think about ways to set benchmarks or create goals for yourself and your team. Leverage analytics to confirm you’re truly tracking toward the change you’re looking for.
- Use the support team at Haystack. We work with Alison, who is great. She’s always listening for new requests we might have, keeping us up to date with the roadmap and new features. It’s also really helpful to brainstorm together because we can share ideas we’re considering and she can pull from her experience on how they might have worked for other organizations.
- Keep realistic expectations. People often want to see an instant change in behavior, for people to start using a new system when they are accustomed to another one. It will take time, so be patient as people onboard and continue demonstrating value.
Learn more about how NerdWallet supports its collaborative, consumer-centric organizational culture
Brooke Beiermann and JD Norton shared some excellent tips on understanding your audience, and most importantly, delivering for them consistently over the long term.
- Take your time.
- Understand your audience, what they need, and what’s going to be beneficial to them. You’re not implementing an intranet for your executive team; you’re implementing it for employees. Those are the voices you need to listen to; those are the people you need to build for. It has to be employee-focused.
- Keep a constant pulse on employee sentiment. In our case, we launched TackHub, and accomplished everything we’d set out to do in the beginning—but that was just the beginning.
- Make sure you’re still delivering on the results you set out to achieve, and keep checking in and asking for feedback on ways you can make it better.
- Don’t just roll it out and assume everyone “gets it.”
- Build something that people actually want to visit. It shouldn’t be a tool where you’re just pushing information at people.
- Have a plan in place ahead of time so that once you launch, it’s always up to date. Make sure there’s always something new there, bringing people back.
Learn more about how Thumbtack delivers an award-winning virtual-first employee experience
Chris Michael also had some excellent tips for developing a strong network of support—reminding us how crucial it is to have a great user experience for internal content partners as well.
- Get very clear about who you’re serving with the platform. It’s not always the people who are just receiving information, it’s also the people working to deliver it.
- Gathering a diverse mix of stakeholders as part of a technology discovery and demo team can be really helpful. For example, a mobile-first user might tell you “I could never see myself using this at a farm.” Those types of insights go a long way to picking the right platform the first time.
- Get the right people on board with the vision of where you’re trying to go, especially with something that hasn’t existed at the company before. Share the understanding of what this could be, and enlist their help in molding the process through their perspective and advice. This includes the decision about which platform to go with but also how best to roll it out.
Chris Dobbins shared an unexpected but hugely insightful point about the value of vulnerability, and maintaining an open-minded perspective of continuous learning.
“Allow yourself to be vulnerable. We leaned on experts like [Haystack Director of Customer Success] Alison and her team to unlock the true potential of what a real intranet could do for us. I worked closely with Alison. She has a very strategic, consultative approach to how she thinks about landing and implementing a platform like Haystack. For me, it meant abandoning a lot of assumptions about things like curating content, or phasing it from launch to V2. It also meant considering the overall strategy as it relates to managing features and what makes the most sense for us here at OpenStore.”
Learn more about how OpenStore is innovating ecommerce and the employee experience
Lily Jackson shared an inspiring outlook on the intrinsic value that exists in every employee’s story and experience, and the powerful impact that sharing it can have.
“In everything you do, find a way to communicate to your employees, your coworkers—your audience—that they deserve the space you’re asking them to fill. I work in a blue-collar industry with a lot of talented, humble people that don’t ask for much recognition.
An early hurdle for my communications strategy was people thinking, ‘why do I need to fill this information out about myself? Nobody cares.’ ‘Why would I need to be in this TikTok video? Nobody wants to see me.’ ‘Why do you want to profile me? Nobody wants to know about my life.’
It differs for everyone, but the goal is the same: find a way to reassure them that they deserve the space you’re asking them to fill. They deserve a moment for themselves. They deserve that recognition. What they do, who they are, and how they feel, matters.
People really do care what their hobbies are, where they came from, what high school they went to. People care what they bring to the company outside of their normal jobs.
If you can encourage people to fill that space, the overall health of your community, your company, and your brand will improve. Because once everyone understands that they’re wanted and respected, and they warrant that esteem, we all open up a little bit more to other people coming into our own lives.”
Learn more about how Riviera Utilities builds and supports employee and customer communities
Joan Phan and David Krawitz zeroed in on the irreplaceable value of soliciting regular feedback, and importantly, acting on it to deliver an experience that exceeds expectations.
- Timely feedback is critical. As much as I can direct my thoughts and effort toward delivering something I believe will be valuable to the team, their experience and perspective are irreplaceable.
- Getting people excited about a formal repository of policies and benefits isn’t easy. Those things are crucial, but they’re not necessarily fun. Earning genuine buy-in requires some knowledge and understanding around what types of content people want to interact with and share, what groups they’d like to participate in. This is a living system, and we’re always working to add more of these things over time.”
Learn more about how Curative connects and supports its mission-driven team
Christine Hynson and Jennifer Gibson reminded us that sending a message and delivering that message are two different things, and the thought and effort that goes into accomplishing that can have an outsized impact.
- “You can never over-communicate critical information,” Gibson said. “Whether it’s about a new platform, a new product, or open enrollment, you can never share it too many times or in too many places.”
- “It’s important to build muscle memory for self-service,” Hynson shared. “Don’t be afraid to drive people to the system. The more work you put in during the beginning, the easier it will be. If you have everything organized and you’re confident you can send people there and they’ll find what they need, you can help people get accustomed to self-serving, thinking, ‘this is probably in Haystack’.”
Learn more about how InfluxData delivers a faster "time to awesome" for customers and employees
Alen Kopcic shared some characteristically simple advice on the power and value of simplicity at every level.
- Start simple. With any communication platform, device—whatever it is—start with the essentials, and get those right. The last thing you want to do is roll out 15 things, and watch 13 roll off. Start with the core features, and keep expanding as you unlock the benefits.”
Learn more about how League One Volley Ball (LOVB) keeps its game-changing team connected
Perin Marcus and Charlotte van der Maat provided a gameplan for a failproof launch and ongoing success.
- Start with a plan
“For implementation, we compiled everything offline, and created a table of where things should go,” Marcus shared. “We had a lot of discussions about what is needed—going through emails and slack messages—digging through at least a year of information exchange, to create a system we could follow.
It’s important to structure information in a way that aligns with common sense, so even if someone doesn’t know exactly where to find something, it’s still in a logical place. We had a lot of conversations about what that logic looked like”
- Consider a soft-launch
Marcus also suggested putting the platform in a smaller group’s hands first, before rolling it out to the greater population. “We did a soft-launch, giving select groups from different departments a few weeks to explore and they were able to share helpful feedback, or let us know if something important was missing.”
- Manage change
Even an easy-to-use system needs a good introduction and good habits need reinforcement, as Marcus explained. “We have a policy, where if someone asks a question, and we know it’s in Haystack, we share the link, rather than giving the answer, in order to help build that behavior and encourage them to go there.
If the answer really isn’t there, it’s a helpful signal for us that it probably should be. It helps us maintain our knowledge base on an ongoing basis.”
- Manage change
Even an easy-to-use system needs a good introduction and good habits need reinforcement, as Marcus explained. “We have a policy, where if someone asks a question, and we know it’s in Haystack, we share the link, rather than giving the answer, in order to help build that behavior and encourage them to go there.
If the answer really isn’t there, it’s a helpful signal for us that it probably should be. It helps us maintain our knowledge base on an ongoing basis.”
- Schedule audits
While that ongoing series of added updates helps to keep the system current, Marcus explained why it’s still vital to ensure that outdated information gets removed.
“I think outdated information is the enemy of a system like this. If someone comes looking for an important resource and finds something from 2020, you’ll lose them quickly. I know there’s a feature that adds a deadline where resources expire, but it’s still important to formally audit your content regularly.”
- Keep it clean
For van der Maat, there was one piece of advice that stood out above all others. “Keeping the main dashboard as clean and focused as possible is super important. Some people are reluctant to take an extra step, or click through a long path. Make sure the main navigation links go to the most important pages. If people are looking for something specific, they can always use the search bar.”
Learn more about how Lytho keeps its global team in sync
Inga Höskuldsdóttir shared a healthy perspective on the importance of shipping something good and iterating, rather than waiting for everything to be perfect.
- “Don’t strive for perfection. Decide what your MVP is and get it out the door.
- We broke our launch down into two phases: all company, and team hubs. That has worked well for us. It allowed us to get the company resources out that were relevant to all, get everyone using Haystack and understanding it before having teams build out their own knowledge hubs.
- An intranet is supposed to be a living hub that changes and evolves as you grow and mature as a company. What Haystack will look like at launch will be different than later and that’s okay. I had to switch my thinking a bit, and recognize that this is a living thing that will evolve over time.”
Learn more about how Wistia connects its vibrant, remote-first employee community
Cheyanne Thurston provided some great tips on driving sustained engagement by making your intranet the go-to place for knowledge and collaboration, but also a lively place where fun things happen.
- Utilize the extra fun features like shoutouts, birthday cards, reactions, and comments.
- We live in a digital world. You need to be able to share some of your personality that doesn’t come across in zoom calls. Be the trendsetter, and the cheerleader.
- Make sure you have key leaders bought in as early adopters, setting the stage for everyone. Then it becomes established culturally and normalized as something the team just does.
Learn how FACE FOUNDRIÉ keeps a national franchise engaged and connected
Alyssa Mazur Hulbert shared an important piece of advice on a step that is often overlooked, and can make a big difference.
“Start with a really solid organizational plan, and get stakeholders involved. Otherwise, you can end up putting a bunch of effort into up-front work that may need to be changed later.”
Key takeaways
These luminary leaders found a wide range of creative ways to deliver an outstanding digital experience for their employee communities. While their approaches are all unique, there are several key areas where their strategies aligned, and where yours could, too.
- Prioritize User Experience and Engagement:
- User-Friendly Interface: Deliver an experience that is intuitive, engaging, and enjoyable, in the same way personal digital tools are (Maritza Bocks).
- Purposeful Design: Ensure the platform makes sense for users and integrates with existing workflows, rather than forcing new processes (Mickey DeJong).
- Ease of Access: Make it effortless for colleagues to access and utilize the platform (Katie Schoon).
- Make it Fun: Incorporate elements that are interesting, creative, and celebratory of employee work to encourage buy-in and frequent use (Mickey DeJong, Rex Mann, Ben Hall, Cheyanne Thurston).
- Empower Employees: Build a platform that employees genuinely want to visit, not just one that pushes information at them. It should be employee-focused, listening to their needs and building for them (Brooke Beiermann and JD Norton).
- Strategic Planning and Implementation:
- Solid Project Plan: Essential for a smooth implementation, with a clear roadmap and understanding of how the system will be layered (Tony Kihl, Melissa Toribio and Natalie Fernandez, Perin Marcus and Charlotte van der Maat, Alyssa Mazur Hulbert).
- Define Objectives: Clearly articulate what problems the intranet will solve and how it will achieve those goals (Katie Burkhart).
- Start Simple: Begin with core essentials and gradually expand features as benefits are unlocked (Alen Kopcic).
- Trial and Fit: If still in the selection phase, try out tools to assess capabilities and cultural fit (Aaron Callahan).
- Soft Launch & Feedback: Consider a soft launch to a smaller group to gather feedback before a wider rollout (Perin Marcus and Charlotte van der Maat).
- Cultivating Culture and Communication:
- Culture at the Core: Ensure the intranet reflects and celebrates the company culture to earn buy-in (Mickey DeJong, Tony Kihl).
- Practice Values: Use the platform to reinforce cultural values like gratitude and authenticity (Paul LoPresto).
- Over-Communicate: Share critical information frequently and across multiple channels (Christine Hynson and Jennifer Gibson).
- Build Community: Create opportunities for connection and a forum for employees to share and be recognized, reinforcing that their contributions matter (Tony Kihl, Lily Jackson).
- Leadership, Advocacy, and Buy-in:
- Leadership Excitement: Get senior leadership excited and on board. Their enthusiasm is contagious and they are key allies and decision-makers (Kayla Bonnin, Katie Burkhart, Cheyanne Thurston).
- Internal Champions: Identify and empower internal champions who are enthusiastic and can advocate for the platform, drive implementation, and add engaging content (Rex Mann, Vlad Radulescu, Jason Harlander, and Jeff Tompkins, Ben Hall).
- Stakeholder Involvement: Involve a diverse mix of stakeholders from the beginning to ensure the platform meets various needs and gains broad support (Maritza Bocks, Melissa Toribio and Natalie Fernandez, Chris Michael, Jasminne Velandia and Sarah Colvin, Mazur Hulbert).
- Continuous Evolution and Maintenance:
- Living System: Recognize that an intranet is a dynamic, evolving platform that will change over time; don't strive for initial perfection (Inga Höskuldsdóttir, Brooke Beiermann and JD Norton).
- Ongoing Feedback: Establish continuous feedback loops to ensure the platform remains relevant and valuable (Mickey DeJong, Joan Phan and David Krawitz, Brooke Beiermann and JD Norton).
- Data-Driven Decisions: Leverage analytics to track progress and confirm the platform is achieving desired behavioral changes (Jasminne Velandia and Sarah Colvin).
- Regular Audits: Schedule formal audits to remove outdated information, as it can quickly diminish trust and engagement (Perin Marcus and Charlotte van der Maat).
- Partner with Experts: Don't be afraid to lean on experts and support teams for strategic guidance and to unlock the platform's full potential (Rex Mann, Vlad Radulescu, Jason Harlander, and Jeff Tompkins, Jasminne Velandia and Sarah Colvin, Chris Dobbins).
- Build Muscle Memory: Encourage self-service by consistently directing users to the intranet for information, helping them build the habit of using it as a primary resource (Christine Hynson and Jennifer Gibson, Perin Marcus and Charlotte van der Maat).
More Tips and Insights Incoming
This is a living document. As we meet with more luminary leaders, we’ll keep adding to this list of tips, advice, and insights. We get to work with some of the coolest companies in the world, and always have a new story coming, so check back in later for more tips!
