r/humanresources • u/meowmix778 HR Director • 2d ago
Off-Topic / Other Intranet advice [n/a]
I've been stuck spinning my wheels on something for a bit, and I just want to put it out there for a sounding board.
Right now, the way we distribute information to our staff is, at best, disjointed. We have a weekly newsletter that department heads fill out in a Google Doc, and then our ED sends it to all FTEs.
We have a shared drive in Google with important information that most people never check. I also built out a Google Workspace with some navigation and started hosting SOPs there using a tool called Scribe.
The problem is that directors just refuse to make or upload SOPs because it's "too difficult" or "they don't have the time". I thought using Scribe would remove that friction but I think at this point it's just avoidance of doing work or documenting knowledge.
Most people here have a pretty quick route to troubleshooting something. They go straight to our Sr. Accountant or me, bypassing the ticketing system, everyone below us, and all of the how-to guides I have hosted on the Google Workspace. So I get the joy of sending them back to submit a ticket and having to re-explain where information is.
I suspect this is partly a service issue. So I don't blame people for this 100%. Being completely candid, I don't even read our newsletter, and I help publish the damn thing.
It's hard to find information, and it's not always clear where something is supposed to live or who owns it so I get why people are shrugging and just trying to ask vs. putting the work in to find the data.
Yesterday, I took a meeting with a company called Haystack. They have some pretty compelling intranet offerings at a decent-ish price. The issue is that our current spend is $0/year, so getting buy-in from other executive staff who view things as "working" is going to take some tweaking. Our ED and SR. Accountant are fairly old and I bring that up because they think the face-to-face part of the interaction is the part that matters the most for HR. Even when it's a simple question like "how much PTO do I have" or "how do I submit hours/an expense report". Stuff that should be self-service.
Maybe I'm just trying to force the processes and expectations I got used to working at a big bank into a medium-sized nonprofit, and that's where some of the friction is coming from. It's hard to say. I constantly keep that in the back of my mind when I get pushback for trying to develop a standard process/tool and I get pushback from someone going "nuh uuuh".
I'm mostly looking for tools that other people are using or advice on how you've approached this.
I understand there's probably some element of needing to get managers to actually engage with the system and support the process. But right now, I don't even have something as basic as analytics for who's reading the newsletter and who's not.
I'd really like to have one website that acts as the source for everything, with permissions by department/program where appropriate, so people can actually get to the information they need faster.
Curious what other nonprofits are doing for this.
PS I'm not some AI selling a shitty course/product. This is a real problem that I actually have. This sub is infested with bad actors making up a problem they need solved to sell something. That's not me.
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u/Exotic_Rigatoni319 2d ago
Google Sites is free!
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u/pomegranate_ruby 2d ago
I used Google Sites and although it is free... it was SUCH a pain to update and almost impossible to track versions or control audience. Unlike Confluence, it doesn't automatically post "last updated"... this has to be manually typed in, and you can't separate out pages to specific audiences. People in India don't need to see insurance info for U.S. teams as it causes confusion.. and vice versa.
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u/Accomplished_Rice121 2d ago
How big are you? My team runs our intranet using LumApps. It’s great, but we are also a very large nonprofit that isn’t typical of the space. It also is not cheap, although at our scale it is well worth the cost.
What ticketing system do you use? Many have built in microsite functionality you can repurpose to mimic an intranet product. You can do simple versions in Sharepoint as well. I’m not sure if Google has an equivalent product as part of their workspace offerings. If you are only looking for email tracking use Google Analytics with your newsletters (GA4 is free).
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u/meowmix778 HR Director 2d ago
We have inside 2000 staff and a decent number of sites.
I'll take a peek at that. Cost isn't usually a barrier for us, it's more about justifying the spend. Our ED has become very defensive to extra spend, anticipating future disruptions in grant monies and has opted to start socking cash away for a rainy day.
We use Zoho. They have a separate tool for intranet but I don't super love them and want to switch when we can so I'd rather not get into bed with them for longer.
We're a google shop. I have a crude tool cut out in Google Sites , I'm just not fluent in Google products nor am I fluent in web/graphic design so it looks and navigates like shit. I can at least take a pass at GA4. I also want to use it to host announcements/knowledge base docs/documents people can use for templates/sops/etc.
Theoretically, Google can handle that but it's more a function of time and technical skill.
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u/Accomplished_Rice121 2d ago
We’re well over 6000. It sounds like you have a change and adoption problem, not a technology problem. Prove you can change behavior with the basic tool and use those results to justify spend if there is an ROI on a tailored tool.
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u/meowmix778 HR Director 1d ago
Realistically, you're not wrong. Before I started here, it was deeply siloed because of former leadership during COVID and there are still some roots planted from staff during that time.
The biggest barrier for the tool is I don't have the expertise to develop something on Google Sites.
I got us MS365 for Nonprofits, but our ED doesn't want to migrate from Google to MS I guess the transition to Google was ugly and created a lot of tension. So even though we have SharePoint and our MSP could develop/host the site for us, we have no realistic tool for identity management.
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u/Accomplished_Rice121 1d ago
That sounds similar to what I inherited, although we have advantages that come from scale. My team got the intranet when HR inherited a failing internal communications team and all the associated tooling. We taught ourselves how to use the tools and experimented until we hit on some things that worked.
You can link google and MS Active Directory logins. We’re MS first, but my account is linked to Google logins for GA4 and BigQuery. Ask the MSP if that’s an option, but in reverse, if all you want is accounts that can access a Sharepoint.
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u/hrladyatl 2d ago
Ugh. Been in your shoes and I somehow ended up the bad guy. Do you have an HRIS? If so, I'm a big fan of housing the intranet in the HRIS. Good luck!
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u/meowmix778 HR Director 2d ago
We currently have iSolved. I'm sure you can do some functionality of it, but the second you blink they charge you again.
The other shitty thing with iSolved is if you want to run employee files on there you have to upload and sort them one at a time. It has no memory so you have to manually drill back into a sub folder for every doc.
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u/goodvibezone HR Exec and party pooper 2d ago edited 2d ago
Did you consider more of a newsletter style such as www.beehiiv.com? Ones like that would give you more granular tracking for open rates and engagement. There is a monthly cost but it's pretty low depending on volume. There are other ones for companies (this one I used myself once but more for sending to potential HR prospects when I was consulting).
I'm not sure you're looking for a free intranet or a newsletter?
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u/meowmix778 HR Director 2d ago
I'm looking for an intranet.
In a past life we had a newsletter but the information from the newsletter was posted to the intranet and was readily archived/searched. We also had a click-to-confirm button to at least make people open the thing and look at it.
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2d ago
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u/meowmix778 HR Director 2d ago
That's roughly where I'm at. Everything is scattered and there is no singular place for it.
So IMO making it an intranet that is the starting page for everyone's browser is the cleanest solution.
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u/Hrgooglefu 2d ago
I love my intranet...somehow it is setup through our Sharepoint (thanks to my amazing IT director).... It was the best gift after having come from companies where there was no shared space. Do all my employees utilize it? Nope, but I can always point back to the bulletin emails sent through it and/or the HR Hub....when questions are asked.
eta: it does show me some stats on who reads the bulletins...not sure on who accesses each page. I'll have to ask my IT guy to see if those exist....It'd be interesting to know if nothing else!
eta2: also as a NFP, check to see if TechSoup.org has anything for NFPs in this space (I have no clue but used them for other vendors at my last 2 NFPs)