So, you’ve spent weeks building the perfect Intranet that will help your teams work more efficiently. Now all you need to do is communicate the new system to your employees and persuade them of all its benefits. Easy?
No. Many people find change hard, and introducing a new system may not always be received as well as you hope.
We’ve listed three great ways to ensure the whole organisation is excited for the launch and ready to adopt the new way of working!
Video
An ideal way to launch an intranet is by using video. This can be used effectively in a number of ways. You could start with a “something exciting is coming” teaser video, something mysterious. This will generate a sense of anticipation much like a film. You could add this into your communication strategy with email messaging to push the announcement.
You can try a “corporate” video, where a VIP, director or executive manager could record a message informing all employees about the new intranet, why it’s important to the organisation, and why you as an employee should adopt it. This will be really useful in letting people know from the top the importance of the investments they have made.
Finally (and our favourite), is an intranet launch video. This is a great way to show everyone what is coming. It can be a mix of tutorials, sales, interviews with music and a sprinkle of animation. All these elements are important in their own rights.
Tutorials: show the users what will be on offer and how it will be used to enable them to work smarter.
Sales: selling you the benefits of the new intranet and how it will improve work life.
Interviews: a mix of executives and users that may have been early adopters that now see how great this new intranet is going to be.
Music: picking the right type of music will be set the tone for the video so something upbeat, happy and bouncing will have a better impact, pique interest, create anticipation, and induce excitement among your intranet users.
Animation: they say a “picture paints a thousand words” and this is exactly why animation was born, as they are fun and engaging.
Launch Event
Rewind a few years or “back in the day” organisations would host great events for everyone in company HQ whether that be a yearly conference, product launch or maybe a company acquisition.
Fast forward to modern times and things have changed. Company offices are located all over the world, people working remotely and technology has advanced. With that do new communication methods.
Recently we launched a new intranet with a launch event all presented through Microsoft Teams. It was a strange, new experience but nonetheless, a powerful one. A new way of doing events, exactly what the software intended to do, connect people via events of various sizes.
With a lead and supporting presenter, the company expertly presented the intranet launch video, their views, introduced the executive managers and took questions. They also showed the intranet in its entirety with a small tutorial of the key features and how it will be integrated into the Digital Workplace Strategy.
The session was produced via Teams where you can select camera views based on the speakers or media being shown. This shows that events are still great ways to launch anything, not just an intranet. With Microsoft Teams you have the perfect platform to host your intranet launch event.
Treasure Hunt
Launching your intranet tomorrow? One of the many measurements of its success will be people using the intranet on day one and beyond. You could run this as a competition with a prize to be won. Or as a little bit of fun with the “winner” made into a pirate avatar to add to the Attollo People search. Either way, you want to promote discoverability, familiarity and intrigue.
One of our many clients did just this and utilising the Microsoft 365 offerings, it was received as a great success. We worked closely with them to ensure they had a great prize, then we helped create a series of clues that weren’t too cryptic, all geared around the organisation such as “as a human I would go to this department to find resources” with the (hopefully) obviously answer being – human resource!
Users would navigate to the HR department site and on there was a treasure box marked #1 – once users had found all 5 boxes they would populate a dedicated Microsoft Form answer box with the correct URLs – easy! The first person to complete and send back was the winner. The key thing to remember is to not make it too hard. Make it fun and it always helps to have a good prize!
There are MANY other ways for you to successfully introduce your new intranet to your team. For more tips and advice on how to get your project rolling, head to our insights page!