Social intranets are simple websites serving internal webpages for its employees within the company.
The information could be on sharing work specific knowledge or other project activities that employees share among each other.
Traditionally social intranets have been hosting the company’s policies and procedures for the benefit of everybody. Intranets have come a long way from that benefit to creating a meaningful environment for employees to share and connect.
In recent years, social intranets have taken the form of ‘enterprise social networks’. Such enterprise social network fosters an environment of collaboration and meaningful sharing among employees. Social intranet’s capabilities have only increased since then from content management to other search capabilities.
With the popularity of many consumer social networks like Facebook, employees have begun to incorporate and ask for those features on the social network.
Many companies are cognizant of the fact of incorporating the best of both worlds, which marry the traditional approach of the social intranets with the modern social networking methods of popular consumer social networks. This has an enormous benefit for the employees.
Social intranets still need to encounter the privacy and security issues associated with the policies and procedures. They also need to dabble with the permission and authorship levels based on certain levels in the company.
Modern social intranets incorporating the best of both worlds seek to change all that. It enables people at all levels to engage, share, and interact meaningfully within the company in a secure way.
Some features of social intranets
Now, it would be interesting to say that some modern social intranets are passing on the ownership of the intranets to the employees. Employees need to take it up with responsibility with the addition of new roles like intranet knowledge brokers and facilitators to further the cause and to ensure that employees use it in a responsible way.
Some of the companies have also used social intranets to integrate business processes into it. Social intranets help in closing the distances among employees who sit is remote offices. We all know that the face-to-face interaction among employees is the best. Social intranets are intelligent substitutes.
Some useful features built on social intranets include microblogging, collaborative shareware for sharing project related activities among employees. Social intranets also have search capabilities for searching employee profiles from the company staff directory.
These internal profiles serve as an internal resume tying their social activities and shared knowledge with their profiles.
Lastly, social intranets have a given the freedom of expression and a voice to the employees. It creates a sense of community for them to share and boost their morale.