As global organizations scale and are in a bid to increase their digital footprint, they tend to fall short on adopting and optimally using an intranet solution. This, in turn, can have a negative impact on workplace productivity.

Why? Employees struggle with clunky interfaces, confusing navigation, or simply fail to see the value of the intranet. This leads to poor adoption and engagement rates. The cost of poor adoption goes beyond wasted investment. 

Teams duplicate work because they can’t find existing resources. Decision-making slows down when information is scattered. Remote workers feel disconnected from company culture and updates. Innovation stalls when collaboration tools remain unused.

Overcoming enterprise intranet adoption challenges can bring measurable benefits. Effective intranet adoption strategies not only simplify workflows but also integrate essential employee productivity tools, helping leaders boost productivity and foster collaboration across departments.

This blog explores the key challenges hindering intranet adoption and how they directly affect organizational performance and growth.

Common Intranet Adoption Challenges

Many intranet failures stem from similar causes. Recognizing these intranet adoption challenges is the first step to finding useful strategies in response. Here is a summary:

User Experience Issues 

When your intranet takes dozens of clicks to access basic information or takes time to load, employees will stop using it. What seemed feature-packed may not have been simple to navigate for the users. If it takes you longer to find a document than it would to just email someone to obtain it, it is likely that people will continue to use emails.

Mobile Accessibility Issues 

With a growing hybrid work model, employees will increasingly want to access company resources from anywhere. If your intranet is only designed to work on desktop computers or laptops, you are potentially shutting out an increasing cohort of workers. If an employee is working from home or is a field or mobile first employee, the latter can’t use the intranet optimally.

Integration Issues 

When your intranet platform exists as an island and is detached from the daily workflows, it becomes a cause of adoption failure. Let’s say your employees are using email, project management, messaging systems, and other tools, and your company intranet does not integrate within these systems, it simply becomes another piece of work the employee needs to remember to access.

Search Issues

The user experience challenge does not stop there. Few things are more frustrating for a user than when they know information exists, but they cannot find it. 

These challenges have genuine business implications that often transcend IT metrics. 

Reduced Productivity 

When employees cannot find the information quickly, it leads to a massive amount of wasted time from searching, asking team members, or recreating work that already exists. Research shows that knowledge workers find approximately 20% of their time is spent finding internal information. Multiply that by the number of knowledge workers in your organization, and the total amount of wasted productivity is eye-popping.

Poor Communication 

Without an easy-to-use central “single-source-of-truth” platform, there are important updates employees miss. Different departments are working off of different information. Remote teams may feel even more ignored and disconnected. This disconnection makes it more challenging to make decisions and adds unneeded confusion to the work you are trying to execute across projects and initiatives. 

Broken Knowledge 

When a cherished and knowledgeable employee leaves the organization, so does their expertise. Without the structure and systems in place to capture and share knowledge, employees constantly “solve the same problem” repeatedly. Silos emerge when file sharing, project coordination, and communication among departments is painstakingly difficult. Cross-functional efforts become cumbersome. 

Ineffective Collaboration 

Silos arise when it’s difficult for people to share files, coordinate projects, or communicate between departments. Cross-functional initiatives are a challenge. While innovation requires diverse perspectives, facilitating that collaboration is nearly impossible without effective collaboration systems in place. 

Increase in Compliance and Security Risks 

When employees circumvent clunky systems, it is often to the detriment of the organization and leads to security implications. Employees share sensitive documents through insecure channels. The policies and procedures that have been established within the organization aren’t going to be read just because there is awareness, and because they don’t come up in the search in the antiquated system they are buried in, employees suffer the consequence. These issues expose the organization to regulatory and legal risk. 

Ways to Successfully Drive Intranet Adoption

Overcoming Intranet adoption challenges has to be thoughtful and people-based, and not just brushed aside as a technology concern or issue. 

Get Feedback and Iterate 

Before you start to implement changes, you must understand how employees work in real life. What information do they seek out most? What is the biggest pain point with the system (be it in the process and/or the tool)? Survey every employee, run focus groups, and observe how a variety of people navigate their day-to-day. Design based on the real needs of people and not assumptions. 

Simplify The Intranet for Ease of Use

The content that is shared most frequently should be only one or two clicks away once the employee gets to the homepage. Organize everything in a simple user-friendly manner and make understanding the logical grouping simple for the employees – categories should be easy. A strong search engine that understands synonyms and evergreen content is important – returning results that are approximately what the user is looking for is crucial. Remember to take employees through every change in the navigation and layout; don’t rely on outdated feedback.

Build Integration with Existing Workflows

Connect your intranet with the tools employees already use daily. Integrate with email systems, calendar applications, and project management platforms. Allow single sign-on to reduce friction. Bring information to where employees are working rather than forcing them to go somewhere else.

Build Productivity and Collaboration Features As Key USPs

Go beyond static information to provide tools that help people work better together. Implement shared workspaces for teams, document collaboration features, and communication channels that keep conversations organized and searchable.

How Infince Helps

Infince offers an up-to-date intranet platform that helps businesses quickly adapt to the Intranet without the common Intranet adoption challenges.

• The platform’s design begins with an elegant user interface that customers’ employees can use without extensive training. The user interface is clean and orderly, so individuals can find what they are looking for, while encouraging them to use the platform frequently instead of out of frustration.
• Communications boards provide tailored messaging to employees at the right person at the right time. Instead of drowning in more irrelevant messaging, employees can see what matters to them according to their role and their location. 
• Centralized file storage and file sharing eliminate the chaos and confusion of scattered documentation and version control. Teams can have the most current files all secured in one location, not only for real-time collaborative efforts but for organized repositories that define and protect institutional knowledge. This in itself addresses the biggest productivity challenge which is wasted time looking for information.
• The app marketplace provides the solution for the commonplace workplace integration challenges. Instead of making employees choose between the apps they use and the intranet, Infince can help consolidate all of what they need in one easy-to-access location.

Try Infince today and explore how you can enhance your business operations and communications.  

A regular hybrid workday consists of workers navigating between dispersed messages, video meetings, and multiple document drives. Alignment is challenging and productivity suffers. The result is a day that is unaligned and unproductive and this indicates disconnection gaps and lack of collaboration. 

Gallup survey data from 2025 shows that nearly 85% of the workforce is disengaged at work. 

Disconnected communication is now one of the largest roadblocks to collaboration and culture, particularly as hybrid and remote working models multiply. 

This is where an intranet solution can save the day. However, merely implementing an Intranet solution won’t make a difference until you follow intranet best practices. Here are the top six!

The Challenges of Disengaged Teams and Remote Workforces

Today’s workforce faces many challenges, including information overload, endless digital fatigue, and blurred work-life boundaries. These difficulties lead to disengagement with the potential for:

• More frequent attrition occurs as employees actively leave their jobs.
• Less or ineffective collaboration among team members.
• Slower innovation and decreased productivity.

What is an Intranet and How Will it Help with Employee Engagement?

An intranet provides organizations with a secure, private network for sharing information and resources “inside” an organization. 

An intranet helps address the challenges associated with disconnected information and workflows and becomes a centralized, digital place for employees to easily access tools, resources, and information about the organization that are secured but available. 

An intranet addresses these challenges by increasing collaboration among workers, improving communication, and creating a sense of belonging with a remote and increasingly distributed workforce. Today, many modern companies are utilizing intranet platforms to help keep remote employees connected and engaged.

Better engagement means employees:

• Collaborate more easily.
• Drive positive innovation ideas.
• Stay longer with the company.

Best Practices for Modern Intranet

In the past couple of years, we have seen intranets evolve from a digital bulletin board to a collaborative platform where employees connect to their information and processes. Below are a few examples of how to utilize an intranet in an effective way:

Enabling connected communication

Rather than responding to multiple emails or apps, the intranet can be your single source of truth. HR communications, company news, and leadership messages all exist in the dashboard – no one will complete each update. Employees log into one source for everything, making it more efficient to find information and greatly reducing miscommunication and wasted time.

Facilitating collaborative interactive feeds

Gone are the days of one-way, top-down messaging. Interactive activity feeds give employees a way to comment, share ideas, and ask questions in real time. Teams can share team wins, provide peer feedback, and brainstorm in community spaces. Two-way conversations build inclusion and create acknowledgment and transparency.

Streamlining workflows with integrated tools

When all chat, video conferencing, storage, and calendar tools are all in one intranet, employees will spend much less time switching to different tools and searching for documents. For example, project teams could start a video call from the intranet, share project documents saved in the cloud back and forth during the call, and then text chat messages back and forth in a central chat conversation about the project, while also managing the organization and timelines on the project management tools.

Assigning a dedicated space for teams/projects

 Each team or project has its own part of the intranet, which includes shared to-do lists, common calendars, and library access. Each team or project has their own space, it will reduce information congestion on the intranet and keep similar information and teams focused on their respective projects on one page. Teams and projects will know exactly where to go for their team updates and team resources, with preventing going through numerous emails and or chat streams.

Getting easy access to people through directories

 A searchable directory simply makes it easy to identify the right person fast. Need a subject matter expert? Simply search the directory by skills, projects, and or even roles, and you will quickly find contact information to reach them. This creates a collaborative shared experience across departments and offices—easily connecting remote teams.

How Infince Intranet Fosters a Connected and Engaged Workplace

In the modern workplace, we all seek connection, clarity, and convenience; Infince Intranet delivers all three.

• Infince is a unified employee communication tool that connects data, team members, and workplace tools into a single space, keeping it secure while enabling the easiest collaboration possible with colleagues in real-time, from anywhere.
• With company-wide communication boards and team dashboards, you can help inform, communicate, and relate to everyone across your organization to keep the messages from your senior leaders, events, company announcements, and policies consistent, instead of having pockets of communication on the different communication tools of your organization. 
• Workplace feeds and team spaces create opportunities to engage since your employees will be able to share updates related to colleagues, quickly react, and collaborate on projects—right there from their personal dashboard. This also provides an avenue for teams that are in a distributed workforce situation or a hybrid situation to leverage a collaborative experience. It keeps employee engagement levels high with workplace comms versus switching pages to page in a multi-app environment. 

Frequently Asked Questions About the Infince Intranet Solution

Can employees use Infince on the go?

Yes, the Infince Mobile App allows employees full access to communication boards, team spaces, documents, and dashboards from anywhere. Even field staff and those who work remotely can now collaborate and message coworkers, and manage their updates in real-time with their cell phones.

How secure is the Infince intranet?

Infince operates from a dedicated private cloud, while using encryption, role-based permissions and controlled sharing of information within Infince to protect the company’s data. Therefore, the risk of internal leaking or third-party breaches is eliminated.

How does Infince benefit remote or hybrid teams?

Remote teams can access company resources, announcements, and collaboration tools anywhere and anytime. Interactive feeds and communication boards keep remote employees engaged with company culture. Direct chats, meetings, and shared drives allow teams to stay on track and keep work flowing without delays, should remote work be done.

Does Infince make it easier to onboard employees and collaborate across teams?

Sure does! New employees will have access to the company policies, directory, and communication threads beginning the first day on the job; therefore, the top reason for not onboarding employees is eliminated. Each team has its own team spaces to collaborate within their departments without crossing over projects to manage. This leaves projects organized and transparent.

Can external stakeholders or clients securely use the intranet?

Yes, Infince enables controlled guest access for partners or contractors, allowing them to view and collaborate on designated materials without exposing internal data.

Conclusion

Adhering to these intranet best practices is essential for creating a connected, engaged, and productive workplace in today’s hybrid work environment. By streamlining communication, fostering collaboration, and providing easy access to resources, an effective intranet bridges the gaps caused by remote work.

When implemented well, an intranet improves employee experience and drives organizational wins. To get a sense of how Infince’s unified intranet platform can transform your workplace, request a demo today. Take the first step towards building a more engaged workforce. Request a free demo with Infince today!