Intranet for new Joinees

When new employees join an organization, they have several open questions in mind and they look for their answers in the first 1-30 days to feel comfortable. Usually these questions are related to following topics

• Information about their project.
• Other projects in their department or organization?
• Career and growth path for their area of expertise.
• Information on their colleagues to people of common interest.
• Information about their manager(s), Org structure and company history.
• People whom he can approach for his work or general queries.
• Activities other than work such as Corporate Social.

While most of the organizations address these needs through a structured induction program, there is always a need for something which is available to employees all the time. Disadvantage with structured induction program is that they are very generic and are available only for a limited period. Also, people who are a bit introvert do not interact during the structured sessions and go back with several open questions in their mind.

A well designed intranet can be of great help to answer these questions for everyone at all the time. Following features can be leveraged to address “new employees’” needs

• Career Path education: Career path related documents can be maintained by HR in a “Resource Centre”. In addition HR team can also upload employee testimonials and videos.
• Project workspaces: Departments can publish their project information in access controlled workspace and allow authorized individuals to learn about the projects.
• Client Wiki: Since knowledge about a customer is spread across multiple stakeholders, Wiki is the right tool to capture history of a client. Every time a new client gets added to the organization a Wiki page can be provisioned.
• Social Collaboration: Ability to post suggestions/questions/queries in a collaboration workspace could make it easy for new Joinees since they may not know about the right channels of obtaining a particular information. Even if people do not ask a lot of questions, they can learn a lot by reading the interactions which other people are having.
• People Search: This is very helpful for people to know about people of certain interest
• Suggestion box: New employees usually have a lot of suggestions to make since they compare their current organization with the earlier one. It will be good to encourage them to contribute. Using concepts like Gamification, you can reward new Joinees more for giving out suggestions.
• New Joinee Workspace: HR can create a specific workspace for new Joinees to make it easier for them to locate all the information that they may require during their first few months in the organization.
• Learning Material: There could be a repository of online courses which can be posted specifically for new members.
• Quiz: HR can also host quizzes specifically for new Joinees to check their level of awareness and give our prizes for the winners.

To summarize, intranet can become a powerful tool for HR to engage with new Joinees and create a culture of collaboration.

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About the author:-

Sandeep Goel - CEO at Acuvate Software, has 17 years of experience in IT consulting and expertise in knowledge management, collaboration and productivity solutions.

About Acuvate:-

Acuvate software is a global software consulting, solutions and services company with offices in UK, US, India and Netherlands. Acuvate offerings are an optimal blend of software services and off the shelf products. This allows Acuvate customers to have the best of both worlds.

For more information please visit www.acuvate.com , www.o365intranet.com