Social Intranet

A social intranet is an internal website designed to help your employees better collaborate and share information. It's a place where employees can share ideas, post updates, ask questions and engage in conversations with colleagues.

Social intranets are the next step in collaboration for businesses. They offer a way for employees to connect deeper than ever, leading to greater collaboration and productivity.

What is a social intranet platform?

A social intranet is an internal digital platform that combines communication, collaboration, and social networking features to engage employees.

Unlike traditional intranets, social intranets enable interactive conversations, peer-to-peer recognition, announcements, feedback sharing, and culture-building activities — all in one place.

With modern social intranet platforms like Empuls, employees feel connected, informed, and part of a thriving workplace culture.

What are some of the social intranet best practices?

A successful intranet requires the right combination of features, functionality, and content. Here are some key social intranet best practices that will help you get started:

Create an environment where employees can share ideas.
Provide tools for collaboration.
Enable your employees to connect with each other.
Use gamification and rewards to encourage participation.
Create a culture of collaboration and innovation.
Make it fun and relevant for your people.
Communicate clearly and openly with employees about any changes to policies or procedures that may arise as a result of your new platform (and get their feedback).
Have a clear process for dealing with sensitive information and discussions.

What are some of the social intranet examples?

Here are some examples of social intranets:

Empuls: Empuls is one of the best social intranet solution, which enables companies to connect with their employees, align them with their values, and ensure positive behaviors to create an engaged workplace.
Salesforce Chatter: A cloud-based platform available as a part of Salesforce or as a standalone product, Chatter allows companies to create private communities for internal communication and collaboration.
Yammer: Many companies use Yammer as an internal communication tool that lets employees post updates about their work, ask questions, and share their thoughts on different topics.‍
Flash: At Adobe, employees use an internal social network called "Flash" to share ideas and discuss work-related topics. This helps employees collaborate more effectively on projects.

What are some advantages and disadvantages of social intranet software?

Here are the advantages social intranet advantages:

Boost employee engagement
More efficient internal collaboration
Better communication between departments
Easily post updates, create discussion boards, and polls
Increase communication between teams

Here are the disadvantages of social intranet:

Certain platforms might have limited functionalities
They may not be suitable for all types of businesses
Can be expensive if you have a large team working in your organization
Lack of robust features for collaboration

Pro Tip

Empower employee communication and collaboration with Empuls social intranet. Join the movement today!

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What features should a social intranet have?

The following are some of the key features you should look for in a social intranet:

Search: An essential feature of any intranet, search allows users to find content quickly and easily.
Collaboration tools: Allows employees to share ideas and information with each other. The ability to post comments on other people's opinions allows users to interact with each other in meaningful ways.
Feedback tools: The ability to create surveys and polls can help you gauge employee satisfaction.
Communication tools: This includes instant messaging or sharing posts, which is a great way to collaborate with your team members, especially in a large organization.
Voice and video calling: This feature helps reduce the time spent on emails as you can communicate face-to-face instead of typing messages back and forth.
Document sharing: You can't collaborate if you can't share documents with each other. And you probably want to keep them private, so they're unavailable through search engines or unsecured websites.

Why is a social intranet important for organizations?

A social intranet helps foster transparent communication, employee engagement, and cross-functional collaboration.

For HR teams and people managers, it becomes a centralized hub to:

Align teams with organizational goals.
Encourage open dialogue and feedback.
Promote peer recognition and celebrate milestones.
Strengthen company culture.
Reduce silos across remote or hybrid teams.
Boost morale and overall employee wellness.

By offering real-time access to information and interactive features, social intranets drive belongingness and productivity.

Employee pulse surveys:

These are short surveys that can be sent frequently to check what your employees think about an issue quickly. The survey comprises fewer questions (not more than 10) to get the information quickly. These can be administered at regular intervals (monthly/weekly/quarterly).

One-on-one meetings:

Having periodic, hour-long meetings for an informal chat with every team member is an excellent way to get a true sense of what’s happening with them. Since it is a safe and private conversation, it helps you get better details about an issue.

eNPS:

eNPS (employee Net Promoter score) is one of the simplest yet effective ways to assess your employee's opinion of your company. It includes one intriguing question that gauges loyalty. An example of eNPS questions include: How likely are you to recommend our company to others? Employees respond to the eNPS survey on a scale of 1-10, where 10 denotes they are ‘highly likely’ to recommend the company and 1 signifies they are ‘highly unlikely’ to recommend it.

Based on the responses, employees can be placed in three different categories:

Promoters
Employees who have responded positively or agreed.
Detractors
Employees who have reacted negatively or disagreed.
Passives
Employees who have stayed neutral with their responses.

When should companies implement a social intranet?

Organizations should consider adopting a corporate social intranet when:

Teams are distributed across locations or working remotely.
Communication gaps hinder collaboration and alignment.
Employee engagement needs revitalization.
Leadership aims to build a transparent and inclusive culture.
Existing intranet social tools feel outdated or underused.

Introducing the best social intranet early supports healthy cultural foundations and scales effectively as organizations grow.

How does a social intranet work?

Social intranet platforms operate as digital ecosystems where employees:

Access centralized company news and announcements.
Participate in polls, surveys, and quizzes.
Join community groups based on interests or departments.
Share feedback, ideas, and recognize peers.
Celebrate work anniversaries, birthdays, and personal milestones.
Engage in leadership AMAs (Ask Me Anything) and open forums.
Integrate seamlessly with HRMS, collaboration apps, and productivity tools.

With Empuls, AI-powered features enhance participation through nudges, recognition prompts, sentiment analysis, and content moderation — ensuring inclusive and respectful communication.

Explore how Empuls can help your organization