In the past few years, the world of intranet technology has seen meaningful improvements and innovations that make it easier for employees to do their jobs efficiently. Social, workflow and other engagement features within an intranet are now key to the running of a successful digital workplace.

Today’s intranet is a well-oiled machine with intuitive features, time-saving elements and an increased capacity for collaborative efforts. 2025 is set for even more advances to allow intranets to take businesses to new heights of success and efficiency.

Here are our trend predictions in intranet features over the coming year.

1. AI to Fast-Track Productivity

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to revolutionise how intranets and digital workplaces function in 2025.

This year, we’re going to see AI being adopted more widely, likely in these four key scenarios:

  • Content Creation and Enhancement: The most widespread use case for AI is in creating new content or enhancing existing material to better resonate with your audience. Whether it's crafting engaging blog posts, updating policy documents, or refining training materials, AI can help you deliver content that’s both high-quality and tailored to user needs.
  • Enhanced Search Functionality: AI can significantly improve search capabilities by delivering more contextually relevant results. Through learning from user interactions, the AI search engine will continually refine its understanding, offering increasingly accurate and useful information over time. This makes finding the right document or resource faster and more efficient for all users.
  • Behavioural Analysis and Insights: AI tools will become invaluable for analysing user behaviour and content performance. By identifying patterns and trends, AI can provide actionable insights to improve the intranet experience. For example, it can highlight underused resources, suggest optimal times for content publishing, or pinpoint navigation bottlenecks.
  • AI-Powered Chatbots: AI chatbots will play a pivotal role in boosting productivity by providing instant answers to user queries. These chatbots will be able to access your database to deliver accurate, context-specific responses. From HR policies to IT support, users can get the information they need without delay, reducing reliance on helpdesk teams and enhancing overall efficiency.

As important note about AI, is that it is just as important to ensure your employees are on board with your AI efforts. Otherwise, they’re going to resist the change and they might end up disengaging.

Some really interesting findings have come out of the Qualtrics EX Trends Report. They found that employees are more open to the types of AI that they can control and direct. Not surprisingly, writing was the task employees are most comfortable getting AI support from at 61%, followed by AI as personal assistants at 51%.

Qualtrics Employee Experience Trends Report - AI

By all means, use AI to help employees do their jobs effectively, but on their terms

2. The Digital Workplace and Intranet

The digital workplace was one of the biggest trends last year, and it will only become more popular as businesses realise the benefits of going digital. Intranets are central to the digital workplace, which could include a variety of tools available to employees in order to complete processes and engage the workforce.

Acting as a gateway to these tools, an intranet provides numerous benefits. It facilitates teamwork, engagement and productivity while also providing benefits to organisations that rely on remote team members.

Easy and fast set up means you can start seeing positive changes from day 1 of your new intranet and digital workplace package strategy.

Need help getting started? Access out free Intranet Planning guide.

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3. Mobile Integration

The focus this year will (again!) be on optimising intranet access and intranet features on mobile devices. This is naturally the next step for intranet technology.

Platforms are being used extensively in workplaces, however, remote team members and team members who are required to work while travelling without a desktop will benefit from improvements to intranet mobile integration. Intranets need to be user-friendly no matter the device, situation or location.

Mobile-friendly intranet interfaces and features will mean optimised touchscreen performance, fast implementation and smart innovation. Introducing a mobile integrated intranet will also allow an organisation to gather more data that can be used to optimise and improve mobile features in the future.

Some enhancements you can make include:

  • Responsive Design: Ensuring intranet interfaces adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes, offering a consistent and intuitive user experience.
  • Touchscreen Optimisation: Features such as swipe navigation, drag-and-drop functionality, and touch-friendly menus make interacting with the intranet on mobile devices more efficient and engaging.
  • Offline Access: Enabling employees to access critical documents, announcements, and tools without internet connectivity, which is invaluable for those in transit or working in areas with limited connectivity.
  • Security: Prioritise security features like biometric login, single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA) and encryption, as well as restricted features, to protect sensitive data on mobile devices.

Northeast Health Wangaratta, for example, custom-developed scenarios designed for secure, flexible access to their intranet. On-site staff benefit from full access to all resources and links, while off-site or mobile access offers a tailored experience with certain functionalities restricted to protect confidential data.

Remote users can still view essential information, such as rosters, news feeds, career opportunities, training, events, and key documents, ensuring they remain informed and connected while working outside the secure network.

 Northeast Health Wangaratta Intranet

4. Social Collaboration

Social features in intranets are just as important as positive company culture when it comes to employee engagement. Social intranet tools like blogging, sharing, chat, team workspaces and video conferencing are included in workforce intranets to encourage engagement between teams and between individual team members.

Social tools will continue to play an important role in an intranet platform this year. New features to look out for could include employee updates (where they are, what they are working on) and more in-depth personal profiles.

The more users engaging with the social tools in an intranet, the more feedback you’ll get on how to improve and optimise this area of your digital intranet strategy. If you haven’t implemented a social intranet yet, read our guide on building a compelling social intranet business case in your organisation.

5. Personalised Experience

 

Personalisation is successful in many digital areas including content strategies and website user experience.

Another area where it has seen success and will continue to do so is intranets. Hundreds of employees might use the same intranet platform at work.

How do organisations create a personalised experience on their intranet so employees will keep coming back and adding value to an intranet? More meaningful and efficient interactions with an intranet will mean more customisation and personalisation of features for individual employees or teams. If users are seeing what they want and need to see on an intranet platform, they are more likely to enjoy using that platform. This could be as simple as showing company news specific to a particular department or team or suggesting relevant internal content based on an employee’s interests and skills.

An intranet personalisation strategy is not only of value to the users of the intranet, it benefits the entire organisation with increased productivity.

Here are the ways you can give people precisely what they need, when they need it:

  • Dashboard Customisation: Allow users to decide which widgets, tools, or information appear on their main dashboard.
  • Content Filtering and Tagging: Enable users to tag or filter content based on their interests or departmental needs.
  • Profile Personalisation: Allow users to tailor their profile with a photo, role, department, skills, and interests.
  • Learning and Development Paths: Provide users with options to tailor their learning experiences based on their career goals and interests.
  • Notifications and Alerts: Allow users to customise the type, frequency, and medium (e.g., email, pop-up) of notifications they receive.

By focusing on these strategies, you can ensure your intranet and other digital workplace tool is tailored to the company's and users' evolving needs. 

We’ve deployed 4 personalised intranets via the Elcom multi-site license, centralising communication for 12,000 staff. The multi-site setup allows shared services and cross-brand content delivery without duplication, while enabling retail brands to maintain their unique identity and deliver brand-specific communications to employees.

Melissa Adeson
Learning & Development Manager
Spotlight Group

Read the case study

6. Integrating Systems

No system can handle all your needs. You will have an ecosystem of support systems, platforms and tools to help your employees succeed in their positions from CRMs and information management systems to Microsoft Exchange and identity management providers.

Intranet providers understand this, which is why integration to other systems will become more accessible and easy to set up this year. Intranets are still often the start of the internal journey for users, and they can be used to access other systems that make it possible to get the job done. This is just one way companies can improve workplace productivity and organisational tools this year. 

Does your intranet come with native integration to popular systems? How deep is the integration (what information is pulled through and pushed back? Can you extend on the platform and build new integrations? Can you access a free API? There are many questions you should be asking around integration!

Country Fire Authority, for example, built an integrated digital hub which includes an intranet for staff and volunteers and website for the Victorian public to view the latest fire information in their area. 

CFA Intranet Case Study

The intranet serves as a user-friendly hub for information, tools, and applications, keeping members informed of news and events. It integrates data from corporate sources, such as incident details on the homepage, which links to an internal CFA system. For example, the homepage features an Incident List which displays details of incidences including district number, location, date and number of vehicles attending. Only the top 5 incidents are listed, though the user can open the ‘All Incidents’ list. This content is dynamic and is integrated with comes from an internal CFA system.

Personalised user experiences are managed through access restrictions, and Elastic Search powers the search functionality, ensuring relevant results through security trimming.

7. Intranet Engagement

Intranets have been making it easier for large organisations to stay connected and engaged for years. In fact, they can support the key drivers of employee engagement. 2025 should see improvements to inter-departmental and team engagement opportunities like workspaces, calendars, event organisation and management and collaboration tools in general.

Engagement is slowly becoming one of the most important metrics to measure the success of your intranet.

8. Measuring Intranet Success

Analysis of key metrics and data-driven decisions will improve intranet features and help with managing internal processes in 2025. A minor change to an intranet system can make a big difference in enhancing productivity and performance, so this type of change is not to be taken lightly.

Analysing engagement statistics as well as feedback from users can assist with making intranets more user-friendly and personalised to a business and it’s employees.

Companies that make progressive changes in a more intuitive manner will be able to better maximise intranet performance year after year, or even month to month.

The 5 best practices for measuring intranet success include:

  1. Develop an intranet metrics strategy and roadmap
  2. Talk to your stakeholders
  3. Optimise and understand your intranet metrics dashboard
  4. Reformat your reporting and overhaul the related process
  5. Diarise a review of metrics and plan actions
Free Resource

The Ultimate Guide to Measuring & Improving Intranet Success

The Ultimate Guide to Measuring & Improving Intranet Success

 

9. Security and Privacy

successful intranet platform will have robust security and privacy controls. In 2025, these will be critical for safeguarding sensitive information and maintaining trust within the organisation.

As cyberattacks grow more sophisticated, organisations are recognising the importance of employee-centric intranet security measures. Educating staff about phishing, data handling, and best practices is moving from optional to essential, reflecting a broader cultural shift towards collective responsibility in maintaining security.

Role-based access control is another trend gaining momentum, with organisations leveraging granular access rights to minimise the risk of internal breaches. This shift ensures sensitive data is accessible only to those who need it, reducing vulnerabilities tied to over-permissioned access.

Finally, compliance with evolving data protection regulations is shaping how organisations approach intranet security. As regulatory landscapes grow more complex, businesses are embedding compliance measures into their intranet designs, balancing legal requirements with their commitment to user privacy. 

As part of ensuring sensitive patient information remains private, Northeast Health Wangaratta, have added in extra security overlays have been added to protect their resources and systems. Staff can connect from multiple devices and off-site locations with multifactor authentication, enabling access to resources from various settings for our diverse operations that need access to resources from various settings.

10. Leveraging More Data-Driven Insights

You can’t make an informed and effective decision without analysing your data!


Enhanced analytics tools are now providing deeper insights into how employees interact with digital tools, enabling continuous improvement of the digital workplace based on data-driven decisions.

This data is invaluable for internal communications and HR teams in understanding employee behaviour and improving the intranet and digital workplace experience. 

To take advantage of this trend, organisations should consider:

  • Creating a comprehensive analytics dashboard to provide a visual representation of key metrics, allowing you to quickly grasp the performance of various aspects of your digital workplace and make informed decisions.
  • Monitor user engagement to understand how employees interact with the intranet, so you can tailor the digital experience to better meet their needs.
  • Lastly, integrating intranet data with other data sources to offer a holistic view of our organisational performance. This integration will help you draw more comprehensive insights, leading to better decision-making across the board.

Next Steps

Intranets have made huge improvements to efficiency and company culture in recent years, and enhancements to existing technologies are only expected to continue. Today’s intranet embodies both productivity enhancements and social benefits for workers, with both company profits and employee satisfaction increasing.

The 10 intranet trends for 2025 discussed here can be used as best practices to guide your intranet project. Businesses that adopt one successfully can expect increases in productivity, worker satisfaction and improvements to the bottom line.

So where do you start?

If you're ready to get underway with a new intranet project, our guide on how to successfully plan, deploy and launch an intranet will help you get started.

If you want more detailed insights not only into the top intranet and digital workplace trends, but how to practically implement them into your organisation, check out our on-demand webinar.

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Top Intranet & Digital Workplace Trends

  • Most impactful intranet and digital workplace trends
  • Strategies to integrate these trends into your digital workplace
  • Ways to boost productivity and collaboration
  • Tips on building a resilient and future-ready digital workplace 

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