Building an intranet is one thing, getting your users to engage with the platform is a whole other thing. Here are some innovative ways to boost employee engagement. The trick is to build things that people have to click on to do their jobs. That’s how you drive up the adoption rates.

1) Virtual team-building activities: Use SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams to organize virtual team-building events, such as online game sessions or virtual escape rooms, to foster collaboration and boost employee morale.

2) Recognition and rewards program: Create a SharePoint site dedicated to recognizing outstanding employee achievements and contributions. Use Microsoft Forms to gather nominations, Microsoft Power Automate to autogenerate the certificates; and SharePoint News Posts and Pages to share the good news.

3) Company-wide idea challenges: Encourage employees to share innovative ideas by hosting idea challenges through SharePoint discussion boards. Allow employees to vote on their favorite ideas and reward the best submissions.

4) Interactive training and development: Utilize SharePoint and Microsoft Stream to create interactive training modules, webinars, and workshops for employees. Provide quizzes and tests using Microsoft Forms to ensure engagement and knowledge retention.

6) Virtual mentorship program: Use Microsoft Teams to connect experienced employees with junior team members for virtual mentorship and guidance. Create SharePoint sites to store resources, share tips, and track progress.

7) Employee wellness program: Create a dedicated SharePoint site for promoting employee wellness initiatives, such as virtual exercise classes, mental health resources, and healthy recipes. Use Microsoft Teams to schedule and host wellness events.

8) Town hall meetings and Q&A sessions: Use Microsoft Teams and SharePoint to organize virtual town hall meetings or Q&A sessions with company leadership. Employees can submit questions or concerns through Microsoft Forms, and leaders can address them in a live or recorded video session.

9) Skill-sharing workshops: Encourage employees to share their unique skills or hobbies with others through virtual workshops hosted on Microsoft Teams. Use SharePoint to create a repository of workshop recordings and resources for employees to access at their convenience.

10) eLearning Platform: Create a dedicated SharePoint site of blended learning content for each available course. Uses pages to structure the courses. Use Microsoft Forms to build the assessments. Make it fully self-service so that employees can learn on demand and write assessments that give them an instant passmark.