‘Just Put it on the Intranet’ is Not a Strategy
‘Just put it on the intranet’ is one of the most common responses to communication challenges inside organizations.
We think it’s one of the biggest cop outs in internal communications - at least when you say it without strategy in your voice - because publishing content is not the same as designing a content experience.
We’ve seen this play out throughout our corporate and nonprofit content leadership experiences. When clarity breaks down, organizations default to distribution instead of design, which means the intranet becomes the catch-all solution even when it’s not equipped - or structured - to solve the real problem.
Publishing Is Easy. Experience Is Harder
For many, publishing intranet content checks the good enough box.
Except existence doesn’t equal effectiveness.
We’ve seen intranets with well-written pages that employees rarely visit because the experience doesn’t support how they actually work. Content is buried under competing priorities, mislabeled due to internal language, or disconnected from the moments when employees actually need it.
In those cases, the intranet isn’t failing as a tool. It’s failing as an experience.
Employees Don’t Start With the Intranet
One of the biggest misconceptions in internal communications is that the intranet is the starting point.
It’s not.
Employees start with a question. They might search. They might ask a colleague. They might open a ticket. They might check an email they half remember receiving weeks ago.
The intranet is one possible stop along their journey to an answer - and often not the first.
In our work overseeing employee content ecosystems, the most common breakdown happens when teams design content for the intranet instead of for the employee journey. Pages are created without considering how employees will find them, what context they bring with them, or what action they need to take next.
When that happens, the intranet becomes a storage system, not a support system.
More Pages Don’t Create Clarity
Adding content rarely resolves confusion because every new page introduces another decision for the employee:
- Is this the right information?
- Is it current?
- Does it apply to me?
Over time, duplication creeps in. Similar pages say slightly different things. Ownership becomes unclear. Trust erodes because the experience feels unreliable.
We’ve watched organizations respond to employee confusion by creating more microsites, FAQs, and explainers without addressing the underlying experience problem. Employees adapt by asking managers, opening cases, or ignoring the system entirely.
Strategy Starts With Intentional Design
A real content strategy doesn’t start by asking where something will live. It begins by asking how it will be experienced.
This means asking better questions:
What problem is the employee solving?
Where are they likely to start?
What do they already know?
What does success look like in this moment?
When teams shift their thinking, the intranet becomes one component of a larger system, not the default answer to every question. Content is designed to connect across platforms, supported by search, reinforced by campaigns, and measured by adoption rather than existence.
The Intranet Is a Tool, Not a Fix
When designed well, intranets can anchor employee experiences, provide reliable information, and support self-service at scale.
But no platform can compensate for a lack of intentional design.
In the most effective organizations we’ve worked with, the intranet succeeds because content is thoughtfully designed to meet employees where they are - clear, connected, and trustworthy.
‘Just put it on the intranet’ feels efficient.
Designing a content experience takes more effort.
Only one of those actually solves the problem.
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If our perspective resonates with you, The Employee Content Experience Playbook goes deeper into how employees actually experience content and why most organizations misdiagnose the problem.
It’s designed to reframe thinking, not prescribe solutions.
