Your Intranet Users Don’t Know What They Want – But You Still Need to Listen to Them

It can be hard to really find out how employees are enjoying themselves using intranet as a service. Even harder, though, is trying to listen to your employees when they give you feedback. Some employees give useful feedback, some don’t. Most of the time, actually, Intranet users like to list all the fun features they would like to have, complain about something that can’t be changed, or give really nonsensical suggestions.

It’s your job to sift through these suggestions and feedback to tailor your company’s intranet as a service to them specifically. But how?

What You Can do to Effectively Research Your Users

1. Get to know them

Really get to know your users. You don’t need to have tea with their family, but you should fully understand how they go about using intranet as a service. You can do this through interviews. When you are interviewing first-hand you are collecting data in the most efficient way. This way you can effectively see how the users utilize the intranet as a service. Something else this does is makes the employees feel involved and it encourages them to be productive and helpful.

2. Ask efficient questions

Make sure the employee knows exactly what you are doing and why. They should know that it’s a vital service to really understand how they use intranet as a service and what their feedback is.

Have a list of topics and questions, but be conversational in your manner, not robotic. Don’t ask leading, close-ended questions. Focus on frequent tasks that the user accomplishes when using intranet as a service.

3. What not to do

Do not ask what they want. The user could give you some fantasy list of all the wonderful magic they want to see. It’s not their place to suggest what they want, but if they give a good suggestion then take note of it. Also, don’t get trapped in talking about some frustration they have; change the subject when you can so you’re back on a topic concerning intranet as a service.

Intranet as a Service Concerning Security

When you are interviewing your users, it would be good to ask them about how secure they feel their intranet is. How confidential are the files? Is the permissions system easy to understand? How involved do they feel?

LS Intranet has all the things that employees will be looking for when it comes to security in intranet as a service. Employees are involved, and there is an easy to understand permissions system that allows certain groups permission to access different parts of the site. Everything that needs to stay confidential will remain that way. There are countless benefits to listening to your employees, one of them is to increase the security of your intranet as a service.