On August 18th, we’ll be going LIVE with the first episode of a new series called ‘The Great EX Debate.’ The motion for our inaugural episode is, The Intranet Is Dying, where we will debate whether the Intranet has been dethroned as your primary employee engagement, communication, and collaboration solution.
Is the Intranet still the right focus? Or should your internal communications team shift their focus around bringing different elements and solutions from your digital workplace to a platform like Microsoft Teams?
Whether your employee communication and collaboration hub is Teams or a SharePoint Intranet, benefits are present on both sides, and you shouldn’t neglect either. The main goal for many business leaders and employees alike is to improve EX regardless of platform prioritization.
Organizations must consistently adapt their employee experience strategies to meet or surpass employee demand. That said, solutions need to do even more. Today, organizations are more focused on creating a better employee experience with greater necessity than ever before. However, as companies and technologies adapt and figure out the new norm, EX (employee experience) still has room for improvement.
Forrester’s New Workforce, New EX Technology Report
If solutions can’t deal with the ebbs and flows that come with the ever-changing landscape, they can quickly become irrelevant. Luckily, Microsoft is a massive engine with the ability to pivot quickly. For example, the new Microsoft Viva experience from Microsoft is an excellent example of Microsoft’s ability to shift rapidly in the right direction. Then again, they have always been at the forefront of internal communications solutions.
Business technology is consistently changing to meet the demand of the world’s workforce. Innovations force us to examine the existing EX and Digital Workplace models and question what these innovations do better. Or, more relevant to this blog, will they make old technology and patterns obsolete over time?
Four years after Facebook and two years after Twitter revolutionized social to the masses, in 2008, Yammer brought social to the enterprise and Microsoft stack.
With the release of Yammer, many raised red flags and wondered if enterprise social was the future of communication and collaboration at work. Also, will Yammer dethrone the Intranet? In short, it didn’t but did add another layer to digital workplaces everywhere that enriched the employee experience, employee connectivity, and employee voice.
Instead of the typical linear discussions people were used to having, Yammer brought authentic conversations to the digital workplace, something that Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Viva Experiences would take one step further, potentially in a different and more impactful way.
For example, while leadership messaging has lived in Intranets for many years, Microsoft has taken the incredible work they’ve done with Yammer and is looking to the future by providing employee messaging and sharing experiences powered by Microsoft Viva Engage.
Teams caught fire quickly. It provides a digital workspace that enriches communication and collaboration while bringing your favorite applications into Channels. For these reasons, Microsoft Teams has become the hub of digital workplaces for many companies. If you ask what apps they use as employees, it’s usually Outlook or Teams at the forefront, not the Intranet.
The question is, has it killed the Intranet? That has yet to be determined. However, a recent Forrester report shows that 90% of employees would find an integrated EX platform valuable or extremely valuable. A question in the debate we will explore is whether the Intranet should be the EX platform or whether Teams or other experiences are a better long-term path forward.
So, while it has yet to be determined whether Microsoft Teams will take the place of the Intranet, organizations will need to use every tool they have to meet employees' expectations.
Before the dust clears on whether or not the Intranet is dying, there is no better time for a debate with two industry experts!
Have you watched The Great EX Debate? See the recording of our first live event! The motion: "Is the IntranetDying?"
For the motion #IntranetDying, we have our CTO andMicrosoft MVP, Richard Harbridge, and against the motion #IntranetThirving, wehave Brandon Pittman, our award-winning Digital Workplace Strategist. Bothcollectively bring the experience of having worked on hundreds of Intranetsfrom design to post-launch, and we can't wait to hear what they say.
