How to Build an Intranet Your Employees Want to Use

If you’re like most companies, your customer experience is probably polished, modern, and thoughtfully designed. But what about the tools your employees use every day? Chances are, they’re clunky, outdated, and just plain frustrating. It’s a common problem: many organizations pour energy into external experiences and forget the ones meant for their own people. Yet, great employee experiences lead to happier, more productive teams that deliver better outcomes for customers. In fact, Forrester found that companies prioritizing EX alongside CX report a 1.8x higher revenue growth rate than those focused on CX alone.

The good news? Your internal tools can be just as great—and it starts with listening. At Rightpoint, we believe the best digital workspaces are built around people, not IT checklists. Here’s how:

1. Align Your Stakeholders Early

Start with a cross-functional visioning workshop. Bring together stakeholders across key functions that impact your employee experience—HR, IT, Internal Comms, etc.—to align on goals and priorities. Too often, departments build in siloes, leading to overlap, confusion, and a tangled ecosystem of tools that’s hard to maintain—and even harder for employees to navigate. When everyone’s aligned on the bigger picture, you meet department goals without creating chaos.

2. Talk to Real Users

IT requirements matter, but they’re not the whole story. If you don’t talk to employees who’ll use the tools day-to-day, you risk building an experience that doesn’t address real needs. And, when you do talk to them, don’t just ask about the platform. Ask about what’s happening in work more broadly to uncover the real pain points and opportunities. A few quick interviews or co-design sessions with 5-6 representatives from each employee group can go a long way. Plus, when people are part of a process, they’re more likely to champion the final product.

3. Keep Listening After Launch

A workspace isn’t a one-and-done project. You need to maintain it. Leverage analytics to see how people are using it and usability testing to understand why. This helps you prioritize updates based on real behavior, not just internal wish lists. It keeps your workspace relevant and useful as your people and business inevitably evolve.

4. Choose a Workspace Solution that Works with You

Traditional intranets are often rigid, hard to customize, and slow to adapt. That’s why we developed Spark Workspace. It’s an intranet accelerator designed to move with your people. You can launch a modern, AI-ready intranet in as little as 12 weeks—at a similar cost to a one-year subscription.

Spark Workspace is:

• People-first: Designed to support personalization and engagement—and fully owned by you

• Co-created: Built through collaboration between design, tech, and business teams

• Flexible and sustainable: Grows with your organization—with no recurring fees

• AI & future-focused: Integrates with Microsoft’s evolving AI ecosystem, so you can scale

Ready to build something with your people in mind? Contact us to talk about Spark Workspace.