It is widely thought that intranets are a tool for large enterprises and many small businesses don't realise that they could use an intranet as a knowledge sharing tool that is easily accessible.

For small business that haven’t fully established their HR processes, an intranet can be an excellent resource for company policies and can be used as an onboarding tool for new starters. Using the intranet in this way can dramatically ease the time and pressure of staff training for employers and employees alike.

We spoke to one of SMLWRLD’s newest recruits, Jasmin Castles to get her take on using the SMLWRLD Essential intranet.

How often do you use the SMLWRLD intranet?

Everyday! The documents and content on there are something that I look for every day, and it has really great search capabilities. I can find things easily without having to hassle anyone.

I find that sharing and collaborating on the intranet is really easy. I was able to upload my own article to help people with building article templates and content objects. I think the ability to add comments and feedback on those articles is a really good aspect and means that you can get recognition and feedback on your work from the whole team. 

How do you think the intranet could benefit other businesses?

The intranet is a great tool to store all of a company’s knowledge. When you have employees that come and go, they're not taking information with them. The expectation is that anything important has been uploaded onto the intranet and shared with others.

How have you found training, using the intranet?

I can spend however much time I want going through the intranet and reading articles. When you're in an office or training face to face it can be very time consuming for someone to sit there while you're reading through documents. You always feel like you're hassling the person training you and wasting their time when it's something you could easily doing on your own. The intranet makes information easily accessible and readily available. You can access it at any time, which I think is the best part.

The intranet is like a help site as well. As soon as you have a question or don't understand something you can jump on right away and find the information. If you can't find what you are looking for, then that is time to speak to somebody. For me, being in Australia and most of the team being in the UK, I can't just speak to someone whenever I want. That's how the intranet works really well for me.

What is your favourite function of the SMLWRLD Intranet?

I really like how the articles are fresh at the top of the home page. You can see what people have added. Because we don't speak to each other daily, there is less of an opportunity to let other people know when you have added something. Being on the other side of the world if the rest of the team add something, I can actually see it there the next time I log on and vice versa.

How easy is the intranet to use?

The first time I created an article, it was really easy. As a new person uploading information it was very straight forward and including images such as screenshots is self-explanatory.

The quick links on the homepage are great. They are links to the tools that we use most often and it saves you having a heap of bookmarks at the top of your browser bar. Instead of having clutter on my browser, I just have a bookmark for our intranet. From there I can quickly go into the quick links. My intranet page is always up whenever I'm working because it's like a little map, anything I need can be found on there.

Does the intranet help you to connect with SMLWRLD’s identity?

Our job is to build intranets that's why our intranet works so well. It is a digital reflection of the company and being on the intranet feels just like I'm in the office with the rest of the team. It's excellent to see all the contributions from different people. You can see who wrote the articles and learn so much from them and then ask that person directly if you have any questions about the information they provided. All of the documents and general information about the company that we need to know as employees is there.

Overall, the intranet is very inclusive. Anyone can add an article, and anyone can read it. I feel that the ability to share and collaborate; easily and readily makes everyone in the team feel valued.