Intranet Management 50 Stats to help push forward your intranet business case The stats below demonstrate the real impact in the workplace when employees are recognized for their achievements and contributions. 9 minute read You might also like… Whitepaper Intranet use cases Whitepaper 10 Award Winning Intranets Looking to acquire a new intranet but can’t convince your stakeholders? Is the IT team concerned about the effort involved in maintaining another new piece of software? Is the finance team concerned about the cost implications? Is the leadership team concerned about adoption or ROI? To successfully move your intranet business case forward you need to arm yourself with the most compelling data, research, and proof you can find to alleviate potential concerns or push back from teams or team members. To make this process easier, we have compiled a list of 50 statistics that speak on some of the many challenges intranets solve: communication, engagement and culture, employee recognition, communication, knowledge, and productivity. These stats will help make a bulletproof business case, so you can get the right people to pay attention, follow the data, and hopefully say yes! Ready to build your intranet business case? Download our step-by-step guide to building your intranet business case. Download now Engagement and culture Engagement and culture are often used interchangeably, however there are distinctions. Culture is the overall practice, behaviors, and priorities that unite and motivate employees to achieve company goals, whereas engagement is the level of connection, motivation, and commitment a person feels for their workplace. Stats on employee engagement and corporate culture help intranet stakeholders understand the impact on your most important resource—your people. Only 15% of workforces are actually engaged within their organization. Connected employees can improve productivity by 20 to 25% which equates to a potential improvement in revenue of up to $1.3 million a year. Disengaged workers cost the U.S. $483 billion to $605 billion each year in lost productivity. Research shows that engaged employees are more 17% more productive. According to Harvard Business Review, when employees feel comfortable and engaged, they are more likely to voice their concerns and opinions. Another study from Harvard business review stated that positive work culture results in more productivity of the employees. In a recent engagement report by Gallup, it was revealed that highly engaged business units achieve a 10 percent increase in customer metrics and a 20 percent increase in sales. 99 percent of senior-level company leaders say keeping their workforce aligned and engaged is an important or critical strategic goal. 32 percent of US workers consider themselves engaged at work. In his ‘Are Your Employees Motivated?’ eBook, Dale Carnegie discusses how engaged employees outperform companies with disengaged employees by up to 202%. Investing in employee engagement means you’ll reap the rewards in the form of enthusiastic employees. Companies with engaged employees have 89% greater customer satisfaction and 50% higher customer loyalty than ones with disengaged employees. Less than 31% of leaders strongly agreed that their companies make engagement a priority. Because they are often disconnected from the corporate and in-office workers, 80% of remote workers said they are more likely to feel excluded than in-office employees. Furthermore, 54% of them believe their employer views them as disposable or temporary workers. Research by Ragan shows that just 56% of deskless workers in the United States feel connected and engaged with their employers. Corporations that cultivate a positive and strong workplace culture could see a 400% growth in revenue. Employee recognition Employee recognition is a powerful motivator in the workplace. It helps retain talent, increases employee engagement, and encourages high performance. The stats below demonstrate the real impact in the workplace when employees are recognized for their achievements and contributions. A study conducted by Gallup suggests that under 30 percent of employees feel appreciated. The study revealed that public acknowledgment from a senior leader or direct manager is the most desired form of recognition. A large international study with Harvard Business Review found that those who felt respected by their leader reported 56 percent better health and wellbeing, 1.72 times more trust and safety, 89 percent greater enjoyment and satisfaction, 92 percent greater focus and prioritization, and 1.26 times more meaning and significance. A large international study with Harvard Business Review found that those who felt respected by their leaders were more likely to stay with their organizations. A Salesforce report found that employees that feel heard were 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work. Companies who make it a priority to recognize employees raise sales by 37% and increase productivity by 31%, and companies with highly engaged employees outperform non-engaged companies by 167%! 51% of workers say their last work anniversary was not acknowledged. The future of the workforce is going to be human centered. Forbes found that the companies with the best corporate cultures encouraged leadership initiatives and employee recognition grew 682% in revenue. 69% of employees said that they’d work harder if they were better appreciated. When employees receive feedback it shows them their efforts are being recognised. Communication Effective communication in the workplace is the most important factor for maintaining a happy and productive atmosphere, avoiding interpersonal conflicts, and ensuring employees are kept in the know. The stats below help intranet stakeholders recognize the consequences of poor communication in the workplace. Research by Ragan shows a shocking 84% of deskless workers say they don’t get enough direct communication from top management, and only 10% feel strongly connected to their companies. A recent survey revealed that 27 percent of internal communicators feel that leadership doesn’t value internal communications, and 64 percent say the executive team doesn’t understand the importance of what they do. 74% of employees have the feeling they’re missing out on company news because the internal communication department is non-existent or doing a poor job. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. found that 60% of companies don’t have a long-term internal comms strategy and of those that do, 12% don’t measure the effectiveness of these communications. 33% of employees said a lack of open honest communication has the most negative impact on employee morale. Harvard Business Review found that over 90% of people said they wanted weekly communication from their company with 29% wanting daily communication. A joint study between Poppulo and Ragan Communications showed that 99 percent of communicators rely on email as their main news channel, yet Deloitte’s survey indicates that 77 percent of employees don’t think email is an effective way to communicate. A study by the IDC (assuming a salary of $75,000 per year), looked at the average time spent on associated tasks and determined the average cost. Approximately 13 hours per week were spent on email (cost: $21,000). only 65% of internal emails are ever opened. And of those who do open emails, even less actually take action By 2023, it is predicted that there will be global email users will number 4.3 billion 56% of corporate communicators say they struggle to keep employees informed and engaged. Knowledge management Knowledge Management refers to the capturing, sharing and efficient handling of information and resources of an organization. As workplaces become more dispersed, it’s more critical than ever that they have an effective way to capture and share employee knowledge. According to a McKinsey report, employees spend 1.8 hours every day searching and gathering information. On average, that’s 9.3 hours per week. Put another way, businesses hire 5 employees but only 4 shows up to work; the fifth is off searching for answers, but not contributing any value. The average worker spends nearly 20 percent of their workweek looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. If you are doing the math, you know that’s a full day wasted from a 40-hour work week. According to a study by the International Data Corporation (IDC), employees spend approximately 2.5 hours per week searching for people and information within the company, which costs companies on average $7,000 per employee, per year. For an organization of 500 employees, that equates to $3.5 million dollars. IDC estimates that Fortune 500 companies lose $31 billion from not sharing knowledge within their organization every year. Studies estimate improving employee access to information and tools could save organizations roughly $2 million a month for every 4000 employees. 74% of organizations estimate that effective knowledge management disciplines increase company productivity by 10-40%. Coveo’s 2022 relevance report, which surveyed 4,000 workers, found employees spend 3.6 hours each day searching for information — a nearly 40% increase from 2021. 83% of Canadian businesses surveyed believe it is a big loss when older employees retire without passing along their knowledge to younger employees, with two-thirds of them saying knowledge transfer is essential for employees to perform their job responsibilities with others. Productivity Engagement and culture are lovely concepts, but your intranet stakeholders are likely going to want to know how this all relates back to productivity. The below stats illustrate the impact remote working has on productivity, as well as the cost(s) of lost productivity. Gallup has found that 83% of UK employees are either disengaged or have doubts about their employer. These are amongst the most shocking figures for Western Europe. It’s costing the UK up to £70 billion per year in lost productivity. A Salesforce survey of more than 1400 corporate executives, employees, and educators found that 86% of the participants believed that lack of collaboration was responsible for workplace failures. As revealed by consulting firm McKinsey, the use of social technologies can raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25 percent. A bad intranet not only damages your productivity by up to 25%, but it impacts the quality of your work and the engagement of your employees. A study found that 73 percent of those who work from home said they put more effort than required into their job, compared to 68.5 percent of those who work from the office. A study by Boston Consulting Group revealed that 75 percent of employees who have transitioned to or remained remote during COVID-19, are at least as productive in performing their individual tasks as they were before the pandemic struck. And about half report that they are at least as productive on collaborative tasks that normally would be performed in conference rooms. A study by Stanford of 16,000 workers over 9 months found that working from home increased productivity by 13 percent. In this same study workers also reported improved work satisfaction, and attrition rates were cut by 50%. Another study by ConnectSolutions revealed that 77% of those who work remotely at least a few times per month show increased productivity, with 30% doing more work in less time and 24% doing more work in the same period of time. One study showed that satisfied and happier employees were 12% more productive, while unsatisfied employees were less by 10%. For more information and help with building your intranet business case, check out our ebook: Building an Intranet Business Case.