Top 15 Intranet KPIs & Metrics to Monitor for Enterprises

What is an Intranet?

An intranet is a private network that allows employees to access information limited to the workforce. It is also used to manage workflow in the organization. An example of an intranet is an internal website used by a bank specifically for employee updates and information.

Benefits of an Intranet in the Digital Workplace

An intranet can be integrated with an online platform, as well as social media. The result is a powerful internal communications tool capable of providing multiple benefits:

1. Useful for employee communication and collaboration

Employees can end up wasting a lot of time during the workday looking for information they need to complete tasks. The intranet usually has a section with user profiles that include employees’ credentials, interests, and areas of expertise, along with their job title, a photo, and their contact information. A worker who is looking for help with a project can find help with a project among their colleagues and message them directly.

2. A convenient way to manage information and files

The company intranet makes it easy to find information and files in one location. Employees can then focus on collaboration and productive tasks, rather than searching.

3. Easy way to set up a content management system (CMS)

Employees can now look to the intranet as a source for blogs, social features, and discussion forums. It is a key component being used to increase employee engagement and allows workers to have a voice, for instance, through employee satisfaction surveys.

Leading Intranet Metrics and KPIs to Track for Internal Communications

How can companies know whether an intranet is garnering the best results? Often, they measure an intranet’s effectiveness in specific ways. These key performance indicators (KPIs) can begin to give a clear indication of how well it is working for any given company.

— Employee Engagement KPIs

Employee engagement KPIs are tools used to measure whether employees feel emotionally committed to their employer and help the company reach its goals. Workers who feel an emotional connection to their work often perform better and stay longer.

1. Number of Active Intranet Users and Usage Time

This intranet metric reveals whether employees find the system relevant, if they are actually using it, and how frequently they are accessing it. Tracking the length of time employees are staying logged in provides valuable data, since workers often won’t spend a lot of time on something they don’t find interesting or helpful.

Using a tracking feature for mobile apps to determine where employees are logging into the company intranet can also be helpful. Not all workers will be accessing it from the office, and it is helpful to know whether intranet use varies among those who are based remotely or staff who work from offices.

The analysis can be tracked from the intranet software or an external performance analysis tool. Google Analytics is one tool that may be used for this purpose.

2. Number of Clicks, Comments and Shares

Tracking the number of intranet users only reveals that employees are getting into the system. A more accurate way to determine how effectively an intranet is performing is to count the number of clicks and comments staff are generating after they enter the platform. This can give a more accurate impression of the engagement level of employees. It also helps measure the intranet’s overall performance based on the increase in internal communication levels.

The following metrics can be instructive:

• Reaction clicks, such as “likes”, “loves”, and even “dislikes”
• Tagging of coworkers
• Employee comments on blogs, news stories, and other types of content
• Intranet users creating new content
• Article click-through rates

3. Employee Reach

With previous versions of intranet platforms, not all employees could participate on the platform. Remote workers or those who spend a good part of their time out of the office, such as outside sales or service representatives, likely spent less time on the intranet than inside employees. Mobile apps and a shift to secure remote authentication and the cloud allow users to log in easily from anywhere, which should lead to higher employee reachability.

To determine the reach percentage, track the number of registered users or, if unavailable, unique visitors using the intranet platform during a certain time. Then divide this figure by the total number of employees working for the company. The sum should roughly equal the total reach percentage. Next, it’s important to always compare against a baseline of previous numbers to find the increase in employee reach for the period.

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4. Number of Pages of User-Generated Content

What does user-generated content have to do with a successful intranet launch? As it turns out, it has plenty to do with how well employees are feeling about the intranet and whether they are engaged at work.

Are several employees responsible for the majority of the content being generated or are many people taking part? Are they producing quality content that will attract readers? Which topics are most popular on the intranet platform and social media? Begin to measure the internal influence of user-generated content by tracking these intranet KPIs:

• All employee-generated content on the intranet platform
• Where employees are contributing most
• The amount of time employees spend on content creation
• Which topics are trending
• Number of times employee-generated content is clicked on, read or shared with fellow employees

5. Identities of Top Intranet Users

Top intranet users are the employees who spend the most time on the platform. They include the employees who have been selected as intranet ambassadors (the company “super users” or influencers), as well as employees who naturally use the company intranet frequently.

It’s worthwhile to keep track of which employees are most engaged with the intranet. This group of workers can report exactly what they like about the platform, what works for them, and what features they find challenging to navigate. Asking them if there is anything they would like to see changed or improved, since these are the team members who know the platform best, can be informative.

These experienced intranet users can also play a role in training new hires on the company intranet. A new employee may feel more comfortable sharing concerns with a peer, as opposed to contacting IT or HR for assistance.

To find top users, look at who is participating most often in discussions on the intranet. They are frequently the people who are spending the most time on the platform. Run a user report to confirm who is visiting the most pages in your company’s departments. These are the people who are spending the most time on the intranet.

6. Most-Viewed Items

A communications manager wants to know whether the company news posted on the intranet is being read and digested by employees. It is an important part of the company’s overall communication strategy.

The intranet is used for much more than workgroups communicating with each other. It is a powerful tool for sharing all types of content with employees. When intranet users are confident they will find high-quality and informative content as well as access to key company platforms there, they will turn to the intranet for information and as a resource to help them with their work repeatedly.

To determine which pieces of content have been viewed most often, go to a section of the intranet to see which pieces of content have the most page views over a set time (a week or a month, for example). Make note of whether the most popular items are on similar topics, are in the same format (blog posts, PDF documents, PowerPoint presentations), and if they share a similar voice (formal vs. casual).

7. Least-Viewed Items

Along with the most popular items on the company intranet, keeping track of what did not resonate with employees can be instructive. This data is just as important as tracking the most-viewed items. The items that aren’t capturing page views may be ones that are out of date or that contain information that is no longer relevant to team members based on recent upgrades or changes.

It’s important to identify these items which are no longer relevant and understand why that is the case. Inactive items also take up space on the platform and are searchable, muddying results. It makes sense to either delete them (if certain they are no longer relevant) or archive them (in case someone may need to reference them at a later time).

To find the least-viewed items, identify the items with the fewest page views over a set time. It is best to use a longer period than when trying to identify the least popular items (three or six months).

— Employee Happiness KPIs

Overall employee happiness includes elements such as being compensated fairly along with recognition, engagement and strong leadership. If a business doesn’t address engagement and whether employees are happy in their work, it may end up with well-paid workers who only do the minimum to retain their jobs or a highly engaged team that is looking for better-paying work elsewhere.

8. Employee Satisfaction

How do you find out whether employees are happy with their jobs? The easiest way is to ask them. The company intranet is supposed to be a piece of technology that improves overall experience with the company and increases productivity.

Consider administering employee satisfaction surveys to take the pulse of what employees are thinking and feeling. A worker may be hesitant to share their feelings about work with even the most trusted manager. However, an anonymous online survey can yield honest responses on what the company is doing well and where improvements can be made.

To get honest feedback on the intranet itself, try asking employees questions like:

• Are they satisfied with the company intranet? What changes or improvements would they like to see?
• Do they feel that overall communication has improved?
• Is the intranet easy to use or do they find it difficult to navigate?
• Does the intranet make it easier and more convenient to collaborate with colleagues in the office? Those colleagues working remotely?

9. Employee Turnover Rates

Employee turnover rates and employee satisfaction go hand-in-hand. There will always be some employees who leave because their family is relocating, they have decided to return to school, or they want to retire. The goal is to create an atmosphere in the workplace where the majority of employees feel empowered, supported and productive. Employees want to have the training to do their work well and to have their voices heard by their employer. When these elements are not in place, job satisfaction suffers and employees consider moving on to other career opportunities.

Measure employee turnover rates by tracking them through your company HR records. Look at new hires and retention rates, comparing them before and after the intranet platform was introduced and to overall engagement to isolate proxy metrics.

10. Advocacy

Implementing a successful intranet can be an investment in employee satisfaction. Team members have the opportunity to become brand advocates externally and to fellow employees as well, reinforcing a marketing team’s efforts through better word-of-mouth and organic awareness

The formula is simple: allow a personalized set of content to be shared and uploaded to social media sites by employees. By turning employees into ambassadors, companies can see positive engagement both internally and externally. Companies can then measure advocacy via an intranet KPI dashboard across metrics like:

• Number of external shares to social media from the intranet
• Any resulting organic lift in traffic or brand awareness, message recall internally and externally
• Number of blog articles created by employees
• Results of employee survey to measure whether employees are likely to share news or promote the company on social media

— Business Advantage KPIs

The ultimate reason to gather this data and analyze all of this engagement data is to drive broader impact where it counts: broader business goals.

11. Lower Business Costs

Increased employee engagement and communications may seem like obvious intranet success factors once the software has been introduced. It may be less obvious that the increase in productivity usually happens along with a reduction in business costs.

A digital workplace can save money in several ways, such as spending less money on paper and printing costs and with less time spent finding information or onboarding new employees. If a company is employing remote workers, they don’t need to take up physical space, saving on real estate costs. Employees can collaborate digitally, which can mean lower business travel expenses. They can also submit HR, expense and other forms electronically, which is more efficient.

To determine whether business costs are lower, consider measuring:

• Administrative costs and relevant overhead
• Time spent on administrative tasks (payroll, employee documentation, expense management)
• Installations required for onboarding new employees

12. Higher Sales

When your sales team is able to access information more easily, it naturally follows they will be able to be more productive overall. As a result, sales levels may increase. Improved communication and collaboration with customer service and marketing teams can carry over into further sales to existing customers as well as to new customers.

Sales representatives can share ideas and information to relevant teams and work collaboratively using an intranet as a starting point. This may even result in more leads and more closed sales. To measure how well these policies are working, consider the following:

• Isolating and quantifying reduced time-spent finding internal information and any resulting increase in leads, meetings and more
• Administering sales team surveys

13. Increased Productivity and Time Management

Even though productivity and time are abstract ideas, they can still be measured. According to a study conducted by the Nielson Norman Group, lost productivity costs can be up to $15 million annually for companies with 10,000 intranet users with low-usability intranet sites (when compared to companies with top-rated intranets). This is time and money that is being lost only due to intranet performance. The Nielson Norman Group tracked intranet management, content, design trends, search usability, and employee use.

These factors can be translated into internal studies to measure productivity for intranet software. To measure results in your company, consider tracking the following:

• Time to complete specific tasks (before and after the intranet was introduced)
• Time spent searching for documents
• Calls made to IT for assistance
• Number of times employees use Help Desk feature on the intranet platform

14. Enhanced Marketing

Intranet analytics best practices include collecting relevant internal data to measure how various strategies are working internally. It also makes sense to collect data around marketing results externally since the company intranet was introduced.

Instead of focusing on employees’ actions alone, in this instance consider tracking consumers’ behavior in response to your employees’ actions — like customer service call satisfaction rates when an intranet is used as a knowledge base.

For social advocacy, metrics like website clicks generated from social media shares, engagement based on that content (likes, comments, re-shares), and leads generated from a specific piece of shared content are equally instructive. These results will lead to an overall increase in marketing because of a company intranet. To measure its success, consider tracking these intranet metrics:

• Employee shares from company intranet content to social media sites
• Outside web users’ clicks from posts shared by your employees
• Leads, clients, and sales generated from these clicks
• Overall consumer awareness after the intranet was put in place

15. Organizational Objectives

The organizational objectives in this category are specific to each company. It’s possible to get caught up on small intranet analytics and miss the bigger picture. Summarizing organization-specific KPIs on an intranet KPI dashboard is a good start, followed by notes on important insights, along with steps being taken and KPI definitions.

The intranet can measure bespoke analytics that are important to your company. These will change over time and as the business grows. Initially, user-adoption may be of paramount importance followed by developing high-quality personalized content, onboarding journeys and much more.

To ensure successful intranet adoption, it is not enough to put the technology into employees’ hands. A commitment to monitor it constantly, measuring different intranet success factors and making changes as appropriate is crucial to creating long-term favorable results.