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Wondering how an employee experience platform or intranet benefits company culture? This post explores what good organizational culture looks like, why it drives performance, and the specific ways a modern intranet or employee experience platform can strengthen trust, belonging, and daily momentum – along with practical steps and a quick FAQ you can use right away.
Culture isn’t a slogan – it’s the everyday pattern of how your organization makes decisions, shares information, and treats people. When that pattern is healthy, employee engagement rises, execution speeds up, and teams stay aligned even as priorities change. When it isn’t, confusion spreads quickly – especially across hybrid and frontline workforces – making internal comms feel noisy and unreliable.
This article shows how to translate culture from ideals into habits by harnessing the benefits of a modern intranet or employee experience platform. We clarify the elements of strong culture (leadership, coordination, communication, engagement, and learning), then map them to the capabilities of a modern intranet.
Read on if you want to:
- See the broad cultural impact areas (recognition, transparency, belonging, findability, voice, values) of an intranet or employee experience platform
- Get concrete techniques to accelerate cultural outcomes
- Learn how to sustain adoption so that your intranet functions as a true company culture platform
How do we define company culture so we can improve it?
Company culture is the umbrella term for the beliefs and behaviors that determine how people within an organization make decisions, share information, and interact with each other. As organizational consultants Terry Deal and Allan Kennedy, defined it in the 1980s, company culture is simply “the way we do things around here.”
Why is improving company culture so important?
In addition to creating a better work environment, culture has a proven impact on business results. According to Gallup, those who feel connected to their organization’s culture are:
- 4.3 times as likely to be engaged at work
- 62% less likely to suffer from burnout
- 47% less likely to be looking for other jobs.
Improving culture should be on every organization’s to-do list, and a modern employee experience platform or intranet can benefit culture in several major areas (more on that later).
What are the key elements of company culture that an employee experience platform or intranet can improve?
Strong cultures are built on consistent leadership, transparent coordination, high engagement, and continuous learning – all of which can be supported by the right modern workplace tools.
Here’s how each key element of culture works:
- Leadership. Culture follows leaders. When leaders consistently act in line with stated values, employees know what “good” looks like. Trust rises, cynicism drops, and healthy, productive norms are established by example. Visible, authentic leaders set the tone for the rest of the organization, making your values a default setting rather than a poster on the wall.
- Coordination, trust, and communication. Without this trio, smart people pull in different directions and progress stalls. With it, information flows predictably, decisions become transparent, and accountability feels fair.
- Engagement. Engaged people bring discretionary energy – the curiosity to improve a process, the care to help a teammate, the resilience to get through hard weeks. Engagement increases performance and retention because it binds identity (“people like us do things like this”) to outcomes, not perks.
- Learning and innovation. Cultures that absorb feedback, share lessons, and iterate openly avoid blame cycles and move forward faster. This growth mindset preserves momentum during change and ensures employee behaviors that create future value.
What are the benefits of an intranet on company culture?
A modern intranet improves culture by normalizing recognition, boosting transparency, fostering belonging, reducing work friction, amplifying voices, and reinforcing values.
Here’s more details on the ways an intranet benefits company culture:
How does an intranet make recognition the norm?
Recognition has the biggest cultural impact when it’s visible, equitable, and tied to values. A modern intranet gives recognition a public stage – such as workplace social shout‑outs, value‑tagged kudos, and homepage spotlights – so appreciation isn’t hidden in email threads.
When employees can see what “good” looks like, they emulate it. When recognition is consistent, trust grows, supporting retention and pride in the organization. This is one of the clearest ways in which improving internal comms with an intranet translates into a healthier culture (and why buyers often view the intranet as their foundational company culture platform).
How does an intranet boost transparency and trust?
Culture erodes when people are unsure what’s true. The intranet’s role as a single source of truth, with company announcements, org charts, policies, and FAQs, reduces misinformation and second‑guessing. Targeted publishing and version control ensure employees see accurate, relevant information, while audit trails and intranet content governance reinforce confidence. In other words, the best internal communications software doesn’t just push messages; it creates a stable information environment where trust can compound.
How does an intranet foster belonging across locations and schedules?
Belonging thrives when employees can find their people. Community spaces, interest groups, blogs, feeds, comments, likes, and @mentions turn the intranet into a social tool, connecting employees across locations, shifts, and roles. These lightweight interactions normalize participation, surface diverse voices, and help new joiners feel part of something bigger.
For remote, hybrid, dispersed, and frontline teams, this social layer is often the cultural glue – and a key reason many organizations consider a modern intranet among the best platforms for improving company culture.
How does an intranet make work easier (and does that matter to culture)?
Reduced friction means better daily experiences. Nothing strains culture like wasted effort. Enterprise search, clear information architecture, and self-service mean employees can find info and complete tasks fast (think locating an internal expert or submitting an IT ticket) without ping‑ponging through chats and emails.
When the intranet removes friction from routine tasks, people feel competent and supported, and internal comms and HR teams can shift from “Where is this?” to “Here’s what we’re doing next.” That momentum improves collaboration and raises the quality of day‑to‑day interactions.
How does an intranet help more voices be heard?
Healthy cultures invite input, not just compliance. Discussion threads, pulse surveys, and sentiment tools embedded in the intranet give employees a visible way to contribute ideas and perspectives.
Clear community guidelines create psychological safety at scale, so constructive debate can happen in the open. The result is a culture that listens and learns – where improving internal comms with an intranet means dialogue, not just distribution.
How does an intranet drive home your mission, vision, and values?
Values guide behavior only when they’re easy to see and apply. The intranet brings mission, vision, and values to the places employees already visit – homepages, onboarding hubs, recognition posts, and more – so they become part of the daily context, not a once‑a‑year slide. Editorial calendars and content templates help teams narrate progress through a values lens, turning abstract principles into shared stories that reinforce identity.
How does an employee experience platform benefit company culture?
An employee experience platform includes everything a modern intranet does, plus other features that extend beyond the traditional definition of an intranet (for example, greater multichannel reach, pulse surveys, or employee idea management). Those capabilities further extend your culture into every corner of the business.
How can organizations use an employee experience platform or intranet to improve company culture?
Organizations can amplify the cultural impact of an employee experience platform or intranet with the right strategic moves. By using an intranet to reinforce values, create a culture of wellness, share in-person cultural moments, and more, communicators and employee experience leaders can get even more out of their company culture platform of choice.
Tip 1: How to use an intranet or EX platform to reinforce values
Make it impossible for employees to forget what you stand for. Pin your mission, vision, and values to prominent intranet locations (homepages, onboarding hubs, team spaces) and link real stories to each value so employees see how they show up in practice. Require value tags on recognition posts so appreciation teaches what “good” looks like, and use content templates to keep the values lens consistent across updates.
A company culture platform with personalization ensures each audience sees the most relevant value stories while still feeling part of one company narrative.
Tip 2: How to use your intranet or EX platform to create a culture of wellness
Wellness and work-life balance are key to a thriving culture. Build a wellness hub that centralizes mental health resources, benefits links, and work-life balance guidance, then conduct lightweight, periodic nudges via newsletters, mobile, and digital signage so support is timely but not overwhelming. Multichannel publishing keeps the signal consistent – which is why centralized multichannel capabilities are offered by the best internal communications software and EX platform vendors today.
Tip 3: How to magnify IRL culture using your intranet or EX platform
Treat your modern intranet as the front door to culture: create or solicit short posts from company events, community volunteering, or everyday moments. Built‑in social features and @mentioning are designed to amplify this kind of participation, and can make a simple post from one office’s breakroom into an internally “viral” moment.
Tip 4: How to use your intranet or EX platform to identify and nurture culture champions
Identify naturally active voices – those who are already engaging in the digital workplace, connecting colleagues, or modeling values. Once you’ve found them, give them visible roles such as intranet ambassadors, story curators, or content authors. These internal champions will help you spread momentum that’s peer-to-peer rather than top-down.
Tip 5: How to use your intranet to ensure culture spreads to the frontline
Frontline employees make up nearly 80% of the workforce, but they’re often the least connected to culture. To build a culture that reaches and engages every frontline employee, you need to be sure your comms and employee experience strategy are tailored to deskless workers.
Design your intranet content for mobile‑first access with short formats and skimmability. Use your employee experience platform to publish shift‑aware updates and route key messages to screens employees actually see (like digital signage). Targeted, permission‑aware publishing and email orchestration ensure highly relevant aspects of your culture reach everyone, not just desk workers.
Tip 6: How to use your intranet or employee experience platform to create a culture of listening
Blend quick polls with targeted pulse surveys and idea channels for deeper input. Route ownership (who reviews, who replies, what changes) before you ask, then publish “You asked, we did” updates to make progress visible. This combination—surveys, forms/workflows, and structured listening—turns internal comms into a two‑way system and is standard in robust company culture platform implementations.
Tip 7: How to ensure the cultural benefits of an intranet by increasing adoption
Consistency and relevance of comms and experiences drive adoption. Try these tactics to keep people using your EX platform so that it maintains its cultural impact:
- Publish comms on a predictable cadence (weekly wrap, monthly “what’s new”)
- Batch routine updates into digests and reserve instant alerts for time‑critical items
- Feature short leader notes and value‑tagged recognition to keep people returning
- Encourage the use of workplace social by harnessing your internal champions
- Give content authors lightweight templates to post in minutes
- Track returning users, search success, and read‑to‑action conversion so that you can fix or retire underperforming pages.
These tactics will establish both your internal comms and company culture platform as useful, trustworthy, and – most importantly – indispensable resources for employees.
FAQ: The benefits of an intranet on company culture
A modern intranet centralizes news, policies, org context, and recognition, which builds trust, improves internal comms, and makes positive behaviors visible. In short, an intranet benefits company culture by turning information, voice, and values into shared habits.
An EX platform includes all the benefits an intranet has for company culture, plus even more cultural gains from additional features. These added culture-builders include capabilities such as multichannel publishing that reinforces culture to a broader audience, employee surveys that help everyone feel heard, and idea management that fosters innovation.
Use your modern intranet or employee experience platform to promote your values, make work flow smoothly, and facilitate recognition. Use your employee experience platform for all of this too – but also to run targeted newsletters, pulse surveys, and idea management campaigns that make your culture even stronger. With the right management, these platforms build belonging, trust, and collaboration so that culture is lived, not just stated.
Visible, values‑tagged kudos make appreciation equitable and instructive. They show what “good” looks like, strengthen belonging, and support retention by making great work recognizable.
Communities, blogs, comments, likes, and @mentions turn readers into culture contributors across locations and shifts, which is why they’re core to the best platforms for improving company culture. They boost belonging and engagement, while creating spaces where culture can flourish.
Track returning users, search success, and read‑to‑action conversions (e.g., policy read + form submitted), plus participation in recognition and communities. Adjust targeting and content accordingly.
