The digital workplace, intranet and digital employee experience – Johan explains the concepts

The intranet – a look back

Since the beginning, the intranet has been fighting an uphill battle. It is constantly questioned and has always needed to justify its existence while we have welcomed the digital workplace and digital employee experience players with open arms.

We also see that management has historically had a lack of interest in the intranet as only a few organisations report to management. According to the trend report "How is Sweden's intranet doing in 2024?", only 18% regularly inform management about how they are doing against the set goals.

Intranet, digital workplace and digital employee experience – a mixed bag?

How do all these concepts fit together, really? Let's take a closer look at them:

The intranet

The intranet has always been the digital home of an organization's internal communication – for both content and channels. Even though we've covered different types of intranets such as top-down intranets and social intranets, nothing has really changed: the intranet continues to play an important role in today's modern organisations.

In recent years, the intranet has increasingly taken on the role of a digital doorway to organisations' other information sources and tools. Never before has the intranet been more closely linked to various business systems and collaboration tools.

"Do we really need an intranet?". Our daily work is not just about digital collaboration – to maintain high quality, we need to rely on information that lives in processes, policies and governance documents. This is information that you can't ask a colleague for the answer to – you need to be able to find it on the intranet. That's why the intranet is a mission-critical system that should serve you with the answers to the 500 most frequently asked questions. And you don't want to find this information in a file structure in Sharepoint or in OneDrive – no, this should be done through a user-friendly experience on an intranet.

Many of today's intranets also have the vision of being a one-stop-shop – the platform that all employees use in their daily work.

The digital workplace

The digital workplace is actually older than the intranet because it consists of an organisation's collective digital tools. The intranet is one of those tools – just like Office 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce.

We often talk about the digital workplace from a holistic perspective. It consists of a set of tools, platforms and work environments that are delivered together, thus increasing efficiency.

The digital workplace also wants to be a one-stop-shop, which is a good option if you work a lot in Office 365 or Google Workspace, for example.

Digital employee experience (DEX)

Digital employee experience is about the employee's digital journey through the workday – where they get information and how they perform their tasks. It is also about the interaction between employees and the digital opportunities and conditions offered by the organisation.

The focus of digital employee experience is to create a shared digital experience. The design and content must be consistent so that the experience is the same wherever the employee is. It is also based on a holistic perspective where, among other things, HR is an important part as the work is also about interaction between employees.

How does it all fit together?

First of all, all these tools and perspectives should coexist and not compete with each other. Digital employee experience is a concept that brings harmony to an employee's digital life and gives context to different tools and tasks.

Organisations are often good at acquiring new digital tools and this can lead to complex digital workplaces. The tools themselves can be great, but the overall complexity can have a devastating effect. That's why it's super important to integrate and adapt all tools to the digital workplace.

Also, avoid 'silo' visions of the intranet and the digital workplace as both vendors and product owners often strive to be the platform that brings all tools and information together – the one-stop-shop.

So, anyone who wants to equip for a modern organisation needs to make the concepts of intranet, digital workplace and digital employee experience coexist.