Why and how to use your intranet as a knowledge base

Organizations today contain multitudes of information, but without a comprehensive, intuitive, and searchable knowledge base, this information can fail to reach the employees who need access to it most. With an intranet knowledge base, your organization can maximize its resources. This article explains five reasons why it’s considered best practice, plus expert tips on building and hosting a knowledge base using your intranet.

---

Do staff at your organization report difficulties accessing internal documents? Have you observed departmental silos that impact productivity? Do employees often waste time searching for the people and information they need to get their jobs done? Are HR and IT teams inundated with repetitive questions about company policies and procedures?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may benefit from a new or improved internal knowledge base, a managed space within your digital workplace that stores the information your company needs to help it run smoothly. A top-notch knowledge base is especially important in today’s landscape – estimates suggest that a lack of effective knowledge-sharing costs businesses a combined $31.5 billion annually.

There are several ways to construct a knowledge base, but intranet software is arguably the most effective. In this article, we’ll cover what an internal knowledge base is, why your intranet is the ideal place for one, and how to build an intranet knowledge base. 

What is an internal knowledge base?

An internal knowledge base, also known as a knowledge center, is a collection of content that makes up the lifeblood of your organization. It contains a wide variety of information your employees need to know and can house a plethora of documents to support business needs. Examples include: 

• An employee handbook – Any relevant office addresses and contact details, employee benefits packages, organizational structure, and updated contact details for colleagues 
• Values and culture – An explanation of what makes your organization stand out from competitors and the important values you want employees to embody 
• Onboarding information – Documents that introduce your company to new hires, explaining important policies, norms, and what to expect in their first few weeks 
• Customer service details – Anything that internal teams need to support customers on a daily basis 
• Finance – Details on relevant stocks and shares, payroll, tax information, and company bonuses 
• Calendars – A list of relevant company dates, events, and holidays 
• Marketing information – Summaries of your current marketing activities and how employees can support the external promotion of the company
• So much more – As a general rule, an internal knowledge base should include anything internally documented for which workers may have ongoing use

The information stored in your knowledge base is made up of anything pertinent to employees and their daily work lives. Precisely what you put there depends on the needs and wants of your users, and also on your internal cultural values. Whatever your organizational requirements, your knowledge base should put helpful information at your employees’ fingertips and serve to unite the organization.

5 reasons to build an intranet knowledge base 

Now that we’ve clarified what a knowledge base is, you may be wondering why you should spend time creating one. There are several benefits to centralizing information and making it readily available to employees via your intranet, including: 

1. Enhanced productivity 

Providing instant access to all the information your employees require is guaranteed to boost productivity. In fact, having relevant information can increase employee efficiency by up to 35%. Rather than asking a coworker, searching through old chats or emails, or contacting HR or another department, workers can find answers with a few clicks, saving countless hours in the long run.  

A knowledge base is especially useful for reducing the time spent accessing information that is pertinent, but not required by employees on a daily basis. Without this type of centralized solution, it can be unnecessarily time-consuming for employees to find documentation on a given policy or process, such as how to submit expenses or calculate the number of PTO days they can roll over into the following calendar year. If employees can’t find the information they need, or if that information is unclear or outdated, they may find themselves having to ask a colleague. This has a domino effect, creating inefficiency for their coworkers as well – an issue that is felt particularly by those in HR and IT who tend to be asked the same queries repeatedly. 

2. High-quality, consistent, and relevant information 

A centralized intranet knowledge base, with the right content management features, ensures your employees have updated, high-quality information at their fingertips. This starts in the content-creation phase with templates, design, tagging, and writing assistance that allows anyone at an organization – even those who are not natural authors or designers – to create content that’s informative, digestible, and findable. After content is created and posted, intranet managers and comms leaders can monitor the knowledge base to ensure it stays relevant and push the necessary information to those who need it. Here are a few content features that can make a big difference: 

• Customizable templates standardize content and make it easy for employees to create visually appealing posts 
• Content lifecycle management, with automated alerts, helps ensure content doesn’t fall out of date 
• Automatic AI summaries describe each piece of content to readers and enhance searchability 
• Content classification assigns content to an internal taxonomy for improved findability 
• Duplication detection uses AI to avoid repetitive content 
• Mandatory reads ensure critical information is read by the right people 
• Personalization and content recommendations get knowledge in front of the employees it is most relevant to 
• AI content analysis provides suggestions to improve readability and encourage positive, progressive language 

3. Increasing collaboration and uniting a dispersed, diverse workforce 

Collaboration between coworkers is vital for a cohesive and thriving workplace culture, but that becomes a challenge when these coworkers are spread across roles, teams, and geographies. An organized intranet knowledge base can help unite them.  

Increased knowledge accessibility gives workers in different time zones the ability to get the information they need regardless of who is online. Additionally, mobile access enables frontline workers to contribute and retrieve information from anywhere, and automated content translation allows international corporations to remain on the same page information-wise with minimal effort. 

A centralized intranet knowledge base also makes it easier for employees to find who they should be collaborating with. If they need someone with specific information, skills, or certifications, an intranet with a robust, searchable people directory gets them that knowledge instantly. 

4. Improving the onboarding process 

A thorough onboarding process is essential to engagement and retention. However, particularly for companies that hire often, the process can be time-consuming and put demands on internal resources. A knowledge base means key documentation can be distributed to all new hires during the first few weeks, ensuring the onboarding process is consistent and comprehensive. 

Any training, documentation, or internal policies can be accessed on demand, minimizing the need for unnecessary training sessions. Plus, employees can revisit the documentation whenever they need it throughout their tenure. This may be especially helpful in making information access inclusive for neurodivergent employees. 

Onboarding staff with the support of an intranet knowledge base also allows the organization to share cultural norms and values. Particularly in a dispersed setting, this makes for a faster, more seamless connection with the entire company.  

5. Drawing out new knowledge from your employees

While much of the knowledge organizations hold is straightforward – policies, processes, procedures, reports, org charts, and more – a great deal of their most powerful knowledge is far more difficult to codify and share. This is because it resides in the minds of employees. 

Employees have a wealth of experiences and skills they use to execute their roles and pursue company goals. But when they move on, they take much of that knowledge with them. An intranet knowledge base can draw it out and record it so that colleagues can learn from one another, and good ideas and methods are accessible to the entire organization. 

With the right features in your intranet knowledge base, you can uncover hidden, implicit knowledge your employees have to offer. These features include: 

• Blogging and other content creation capabilities. These give workers the space to share their insights, experiences, and tips, recording key knowledge that’s hard to insert into formal documentation but is invaluable to coworkers. 
• Forums. It’s natural for workers seeking out knowledge to turn to colleagues. But when questions are asked in a private meeting or message, the rest of the organization misses out. In a well-organized forum system, employees ask questions, and their colleagues can provide answers. This starts a public, documented, and searchable conversation among many voices. 
• A searchable people directory.  This helps employees hunt down colleagues with certain expertise, skills, or credentials. If they need someone who knows a certain coding language or has a specific certification, they’ll be able to locate them instantly and benefit from their knowledge. 

How to build your intranet knowledge base 

Now that you know why an intranet is the ideal place to build and host your knowledge base, these ten steps will help you utilize technology to create a comprehensive intranet knowledge center. 

Get clear on what your knowledge base needs are 

What do you want to accomplish with your intranet knowledge base, and how will it help your organization meet its goals?  It’s important to assess where you are right now, and what your organization needs most. Do some critical thinking about what could be improved upon, and which changes would be most beneficial to your employees. The five benefits in the section above should help you start to brainstorm. With clearly defined goals, you can begin to plan a customized knowledge center tailored to your needs. 

Look at what you have now 

Build a comprehensive picture of your current technology and information infrastructure. What’s working? What isn’t? Are there redundant or underutilized tools in place? Are there any glaring information silos? How efficient are your workflows? Is your digital workplace lacking any knowledge-related capabilities? 

Keep a special eye out for any opportunities to consolidate. Your new intranet knowledge base may not replace every application but making it a central hub that does and contains as much as possible is key to better information management. 

Gather feedback 

To build a knowledge base on your intranet, you need to understand employee sentiment and behavior. Gathering feedback from surveys and focus groups, as well as looking at user behavior data from analytics platforms can help you determine any themes. Identify common areas where users get stuck or frustrated, any workarounds they’ve developed due to limitations, and any knowledge-related features or capabilities they think are a must.  

Stakeholders from different functions such as IT, marketing, HR, operations, and other key functions can help you review your findings and brainstorm solutions. Working together will ensure a new solution serves the entire organization and keeps diverse perspectives and challenges front of mind. 

Make accessibility a priority in your knowledge base

Even the most informative content won’t be effective if employees can’t access it. It’s crucial to consider the diverse needs, geographies, and work environments of your users when building your knowledge center.  

Mobile is key here – all types of employees are now working on the go, and frontline workers especially need to have access to knowledge on the job without logging on to a computer. Also important is ensuring employees see the knowledge that’s relevant to their location, and in their native language. 

Ensure discoverability and usability 

Employees’ ability to use your platform should be a top priority in your knowledge base. A single, searchable interface across all your content will enable them to access what they need. Look for an intranet with search features that include natural language processing and machine learning to understand user intent, faceted search and filtering to help narrow results, federated search across multiple content sources, multilingual support, and robust people search.  

Considering user behavior is very important here. Take a human-centered approach and ground every choice in understanding your users’ needs and goals. 

Prioritize personalization 

You most likely have a wide range of employees, all of whom require information that’s specific to their needs. Of course, your knowledge base is going to have a wealth of information, but how do you ensure that each employee can access the knowledge they require? 

Personalization is the answer. Harness data and intranet features to personalize your knowledge base through permissions and roles, AI-powered content recommendations, granular content subscriptions, personalized search results, geofencing that automatically surfaces location-based information, and more. 

Make knowledge multichannel 

How do you alert employees about key information housed in your knowledge base? We’ve already established that your audience is likely diverse, so a one-size-fits-all method isn’t the most effective approach. 

Utilize your intranet as a hub for managing and deploying multichannel communications that alert employees to key information. Determine the most appropriate channels for your workplace based on job roles, work environments, and preferences – you may want to create employee personas to aid your efforts. Then, push out knowledge over those channels to maximize reach. 

Leverage integrations 

Taking advantage of enterprise application integrations with your intranet can improve the experiences employees have when accessing knowledge in your digital workplace. Providing a centralized way to access and search among and within these applications allows employees to retrieve knowledge from every corner of the organization without having to jump between platforms.  

Look at which applications you currently use and determine how you can integrate them so that you can add knowledge to your digital workplace – common integrations include collaboration tools, customer service platforms, CRM systems, HR management systems, finance tools, productivity suites, and cloud storage solutions. 

Encourage employees to contribute to your knowledge base

To be effective, your knowledge center needs to be used. That means you must incentivize contributions from employees at all levels of your organization.  How do you get employees involved? Try challenges that gamify knowledge sharing, a recognition system that rewards valuable knowledge contributions, or opportunities for users to showcase their expertise through featured employee articles. Encourage leadership to share insights, participate in forum discussions, and interact with employee-generated knowledge.

Always be improving 

A truly effective knowledge base isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it proposition. You’ll need to continue gathering continuous feedback to ensure your intranet knowledge base is up-to-date, relevant, and serving the specific needs of your employees. Make sure to use multiple feedback mechanisms such as pulse surveys, in-platform feedback buttons, user testing sessions, and focus groups. Use the data to enhance your platform over time, while also staying on top of new intranet features and evolving accessibility standards. Doing so will ensure that your knowledge base serves every employee, enhancing experiences and productivity at your organization.