3 Tips for Naming Your Company Intranet

It goes without saying that you understand the importance of the company intranet in digital workplace strategy.

It’s a vital channel for meeting employees’ needs, and it’s ideally suited to deliver the personalized communications, seamless access to enterprise applications, and on-demand answers to top questions your workforce expects and deserves.

The responsibility of your company intranet is big. Giving it the right name is the first step in ensuring it has the power to drive traffic and increase engagement.

That’s why you’ve been doing everything you can to make sure you’re building a modern, intelligent intranet experience that will help employees effectively navigate today’s ever-changing workplace.

You’re reading all the right best practice advice – every infographic and checklist you can get your hands on. You’re also digging deep to take steps many organizations never even consider with their intranet, like ensuring you avoid the common integration mistakes many companies fall victim to and making sure to use integrations to their fullest potential.

But have you given any thought to what you’ll call your intranet once it’s live? If you haven’t, you should. Names are important, as anyone named Helga or Egbert would surely tell you.

Names have the power to impact the success of everything they’re assigned to, and the intranet is no exception. In fact, the right company intranet name will help distinguish it from other internal sites, help convey the brand vision of the company, create a sense of ownership and belonging, and even increase adoption and engagement with the site.

To help you get this part right, here are three key tips for naming your intranet:

Tip 1: Choose a name that humanizes your company intranet

I think we’d all agree that it’s easier to feel comfortable with a person when you’re on a first-name basis. Being able to call them by their name when you pass them in the grocery store just implies a level of familiarity that’s integral to our sense of community and belonging - both of which are key to the long-term success of your company intranet. Plus, it’s so fun to anthropomorphize house pets (“Come here, Elaine. Such a good kitty you are!”), think of how fun and engaging it would be for employees if a human element was added to what they might initially think was yet another boring old intranet?

There are lots of great people names currently being used for company intranets, such as: Elvis, Boris, Minerva, Simon, Max, Merlin, Spike, Henri, and Hal. While those are some pretty great names that conjure lots of great associations, there are still lots of traditional and contemporary names to choose from if you opt for this path.

Your company intranet doesn’t have to be named after a wizard or rock-n-roll icon to inspire employees with the value it delivers. (Image Sources: Minerva McGonagall, Elvis Presley, Merlin)

Tip 2: Give your company intranet a name that aligns with its goal and benefits

Assuming that your intranet will deliver a modern experience that helps employees work more effectively, it might make sense to give it a name that captures the essence of the value it will deliver, sending a subliminal message to employees about what they can expect from the experience.

For example, if the main goal of your company intranet was to deliver personalized, contextual communications, you might name the site The Loop, Pulse, The Spoke, or InterComm. If your focus was on helping employees seamlessly access enterprise systems from the intranet, however, you might opt for a name like Portal, FastTask or MyWork.

The options for this approach are as varied as the features and functionality your company intranet seeks to embody. While an intranet that’s focused on helping employees find information and get answers to top questions could flaunt a moniker like The Oracle or Infopedia, a site with the aim to facilitate collaboration is better suited to a name like Engage or Connect.

Ultimately, whichever path you choose, there are plenty of options, just like these inventive and successful company intranet names that have been selected by other companies.

Tip 3: Use an industry or product-focused name for your company intranet

While the ultimate goal is of course to drive traffic to your company intranet, a good name serves many purposes, one of which is to reinforce the branding of your organization. Employees who feel connected to an organization outperform those who don’t, so it might make sense to consider names that reinforce your organization’s overall identity:

• The Hardhat (construction)

• The Odyssey (aerospace)

• MyVilla (hospitality)

• IntraFresh (grocery)

• MyCity (municipality)

When done right, modern intranets serve as a hub for the communications and resources employees need to be productive.

Of course, you could also simply put “my” before your company name or “hub” after it and call it a day. Plenty of companies do that and while it isn’t the most inspired approach, it works and will differentiate your intranet as the resource your employees can rely on for easy access to tasks and information they need to be successful.

Whichever route you choose, make sure to involve your employees. It is, after all, their resource, so the more you involve them in the process, the more invested they’ll feel in the long-term success of the site. And remember - make sure you give thought to the name of your company intranet sooner rather than later. It’s an important part of the deployment process and will have a big impact on how well the site performs for your employees.

Now that you've got some ideas on how to name your intranet, be sure that you've got the best features to deliver an intranet experience your employees will love.