Even well-established intranets tend to drift. As content expands, habits evolve, and those tiny friction points can add up until engagement quietly drops off.
This checklist is designed for teams who want to take stock of their intranet without running a formal survey or pulling Analytics reports first. It gives you a structured way to evaluate five areas using what you already observe day to day: whether the platform feels useful, whether employees actually return to it, and whether you are making the most of what the platform can do.
You don't need to act on every section at once. Start with the area where the checks raised the most questions and go deeper using the related articles. Revisiting this checklist periodically helps you track progress and make sure your intranet keeps pace with how your organization works.
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You will find specific Analytics tips inside the relevant checks throughout this article. They point to the data that helps you answer each question more precisely than observation alone.
Does your intranet deliver clear daily value?
An intranet works best when employees return to it naturally because it saves them time or helps them get things done. This section looks at whether yours is doing that, and whether the first impression it makes is strong enough to pull people in.
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Does your homepage make a strong enough first impression? Open your intranet as if you were a new employee seeing it for the first time. Does it look current, intentional, and worth exploring? A cluttered or dated homepage signals that the platform is not actively maintained. Check whether the hero teaser is being used to highlight something timely and relevant, and whether visual elements are up to date. |
Review your homepage layout and hero teaser setup. Prioritize one or two key messages rather than trying to surface everything at once. A well-designed homepage doesn't need to be complex: it needs to feel alive and relevant to the person looking at it. |
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Do employees use the intranet as part of their daily work? Review the most common employee journeys and consider whether the intranet actively helps people complete everyday tasks, or mainly functions as a broadcast channel. Analytics tip: Review which pages generate consistent return visits. Low repeat traffic on key pages often signals that the content is not practically useful enough, or can't be found. |
Surface practical tools, links, and task-related content more prominently on homepages, using the Launchpad, and in the Employee Space. Create clear jump-off points to other systems so employees have a reason to start here. |
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Is the intranet easy to access for mobile and non-desk employees? Check whether key content and journeys work well on mobile devices, or whether they assume desktop access. Consider whether employees without regular computer access are effectively excluded. |
Prioritize mobile-first content formats and make sure critical information is accessible through the mobile app. Review whether digital signage or other non-screen channels could help reach employees in physical workspaces. |
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Is the intranet the easiest place to find everyday tools and information? Assess whether employees instinctively start on the intranet or look elsewhere first. If people regularly go to email, chat, or shared drives for things that should live here, that is a signal. |
Consolidate daily resources in one predictable place and reduce unnecessary duplication across other channels. The Employee Space is well-suited for this role if it's not already being used that way. |
Related articles: Best practices for building engaging homepages | Best practices for high-impact hero teasers | Improving the reach of news and information on your intranet | Creating content for a mobile-first audience | Getting deskless workers to use your employee app | Best practices for the Employee Space
Is your content trustworthy and easy to find?
Trust in the intranet drops quickly when employees encounter outdated pages, duplicated information, or content that feels irrelevant to them. This section helps you assess whether your content is holding up.
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Is the intranet clearly positioned as the source of truth? Review where official information is published and whether employees know where to look first. If the same content appears in shared drives and the intranet simultaneously, the intranet loses authority. |
Define which content belongs exclusively on the intranet and reduce parallel publishing. Communicate clearly to employees that the intranet is where official information lives. |
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Can employees find key information quickly? Test common search and navigation paths yourself. If you cannot locate something important without asking a colleague, employees won't be able to either. Analytics tip: Use the search analytics report to identify frequent searches and review the results they return. Something missing? These are direct signals of navigation and content gaps. |
Improve navigation labels, page structures, and apply search-friendly publishing practices. Regularly review which popular searches return poor results. |
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Is content current, clearly owned, and relevant to different audiences? Review key pages and confirm that ownership and review dates are clear. Also, check subscriptions to see whether everyone sees the same generic content regardless of, e.g., their role or location. Analytics tip: Check page-level visit data by user group to see whether targeted content is actually reaching the groups it's relevant for. |
Archive outdated content, remove duplication, and assign clear owners with defined review cadences. Use user groups and subscriptions to surface more relevant, role- or location-specific information. |
Related articles: Principles for structuring your intranet | Best practices for creating search-friendly content | Best practices for creating user-focused pages | Best practices for segmenting your users into groups | Evaluating metrics to enhance your intranet
Is leadership actively and visibly involved?
Leadership participation is one of the strongest signals to employees that the intranet matters. It also sets the tone for the kind of engagement you want to see from everyone else.
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Do leaders contribute beyond major announcements? Review recent leadership activity on the platform. Check whether leaders post, react, comment, or respond to questions on a regular basis, or only appear for formal communications. Analytics tip: Compare engagement rates on leadership posts vs. standard content posts in Analytics. A significant gap may indicate that leadership content lacks the visibility or format needed to generate responses. |
Introduce lightweight, recurring leadership formats such as short updates, behind-the-scenes reflections, or Q&A sessions. Use the publish-on-behalf functionality to reduce the effort required from busy leaders. |
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Is leadership engagement visible to employees, not just tracked in the background? Check where leadership activity happens and whether employees can actually see it. Reactions and comments on posts are more visible than private messages or announcements no one can respond to. |
Encourage leaders to engage directly on posts and in communities, not only through official channels. Visibility is part of what makes leadership participation meaningful. |
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Is leadership presence consistent rather than occasional? Look at activity patterns over time. Sporadic bursts around major events are not the same as regular presence. Employees notice the difference. |
Build leadership engagement into recurring formats or editorial schedules. Even a short monthly post or regular reaction to employee content makes a consistent impression. |
Related articles: Encouraging leaders to participate on your intranet | Best practices for leveraging Publish On Behalf
Are employees encouraged to interact, not just read?
An intranet that only broadcasts rarely builds lasting engagement. This section helps you assess whether interaction and employee contribution are genuinely supported, and whether the contributions people make are actually visible and recognized.
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Does your content invite responses, or just deliver information? Review recent posts and check whether they end with a question, a poll, or any prompt to react. Content that expects passive consumption usually gets it. Analytics tip: Check the reaction and comment rates on recent posts in Analytics. If engagement is consistently low across content types, the issue is likely structural rather than topic-specific. |
Use simple prompts, questions, and polls to lower the barrier to interaction. Reactions and comments should feel like a natural next step, not a bonus. |
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Do employees have spaces to ask questions, share knowledge, and connect with each other? Check whether communities and discussion spaces are easy to discover and clearly organized. If they exist but are hard to find or feel inactive, they won't attract participation. |
Highlight active communities and create clear spaces for peer support and knowledge sharing. An open help community or department-based discussion space can generate organic interaction without requiring admin effort. |
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Are employees contributing their own content, and is it being recognized? Assess whether user-generated content has any real presence on the platform. Employee-created content takes many forms: stories, photos from events, questions, kudos sent to a colleague, contributions to a scavenger hunt, or seasonal campaigns. If employees only ever receive content rather than create it, the platform is working in one direction only. Check whether employee contributions are visible in the main feed and whether they get any response from admins, leaders, or peers. |
Create low-effort entry points for contribution, such as photo-sharing prompts, open questions, or campaigns with a clear call to action. Kudos are a particularly light-touch format: employees can recognize a colleague in seconds, and those moments of visibility tend to prompt others to do the same. When you get employee content, respond to it, feature it, and make it clear that contributions are noticed. That signal matters more than any publishing template. |
Related articles: Turning viewers into interactors on your intranet | Turning viewers into creators on your intranet | Best practices for building thriving communities | Strategies for increasing intranet adoption and engagement
Is ownership clear and the platform sustainable?
Long-term intranet success depends on distributed ownership, not a single person or team carrying everything. This section looks at whether your platform is set up to stay healthy without being fragile.
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Are roles and responsibilities clearly defined? Review key pages, communities, and features and check whether owners and their responsibilities are obvious. If only one person knows how something works or who maintains it, that is a risk. |
Assign explicit owners and define what ownership includes, such as review cadence, moderation, and escalation. Document this in a way that survives staff changes. Check if weekly task routines can be optimized. |
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Would engagement continue if one key person was unavailable? Consider whether intranet activity depends heavily on a single IC or admin. If the answer is yes, the platform is more vulnerable than it looks. |
Distribute responsibility through a champions or task force model. Even a small network of engaged contributors reduces dependency on any single person. |
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Is there enough onboarding support to keep the platform relevant as people join? Review how new employees are introduced to the intranet. If onboarding is informal or relies on managers mentioning it, many employees will take months to build the habit. |
Build a structured onboarding journey that surfaces the intranet early and makes its value immediately clear. Define what a new employee should see and do in their first days. |
Related articles: Building and scaling an intranet champions network | Understanding the user onboarding journey | Example: Onboarding page | Your weekly intranet playbook (If you only have X hours per week, do this...)