Common Intranet Governance Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Intranet governance is the backbone of a successful digital workplace. Without a clear governance framework, your intranet can quickly become disorganised, outdated, and underused. From unclear ownership to poor content standards, many organisations fall into common governance traps that hinder employee engagement and productivity.

In this guide, we’ll explore the most frequent intranet governance mistakes—and how to avoid them. Whether you'relaunching a new platform or refining an existing one, whether you are using SharePoint or an intranet packaged solution like Interact or Unily, these governance best practices will help you improve intranet performance, streamline content management, and align your intranet strategy with business goals.

What exactly is "intranet governance"?

We define intranet governance as the actions involved with the operation and development of an intranet within an organisation. It comprises processes, as well as other controls such as standards, decision making bodies, specific roles and records to document who owns what. In its widest sense governance can be described as the operating model for an intranet. It is the foundation on which your intranet runs.

We prefer "strong governance" to governance that is ad hoc, vague or not well-thought-through. Our view of governance certainly isn't about ruling everything with an iron fist—that's not really our style—instead, think strong coffee. Strong governance brings clarity so eveyone understands what they are required to and how it all fits together. We also break down intranet governance into some key areas around ownership, processes, content and strategic decision making.

Intranet, site and content ownership

You really need to know who owns what and what different teams and individuals responsibilities are. If you can't track that you can't manage anything.

Mistake 1: It's not clear who is responsible for the intranet

In many organisations, amazingly, it isn't clear who owns the intranet. This isn't as bizarre as it sounds. What does it mean to own something? Lots of different teams work together to bring you an intranet and even if you point and shout loudly at the Head of Internal Communications that they own it, they can't do everything on their own. Intranets are digital channels but they are also relatively complex IT systems too. However, IT is always terrified that it's going to be on the hook for keeping the content up to date and the content publishers in line. You need to get to the bottom of who does what and where the buck stops.

Solution: Create a RASCI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, Consulted and Informed) for different areas of the intranet and different aspects of change and get the key players to agree it in principle. This will allow you to figure out a more nuanced view of ownership and foster more collaborative and cooperative relationships between the big players.

Mistake 2: It's not clear who owns and updates different sites (or what they are for)

If you start handing out different sites as people ask for them, you can lose track. It's suprisingly easy to miss not only who looks after what, but what each site is supposed to be doing. When they are forty or fifty different sites? Who knows! It is also very likely that you have a relationship with the publisher, rather than the manager of the particular area, and when that publisher leaves, the content doesn't get updated and you've got nobody to get on the phone to.

Solution: You need a site register. At its most basic, this is a spreadsheet of all your intranet sites and who the publishers are but you should also add in what the site is intended to achieve and what audience it is seeking. For bonus points, add who the site sponsor is: the operational manager from that area who actually controls people's time. And for bonus-bonus points don't track this using a spreadsheet, but embed it into site metadata using your intranet software and have some automated report that does it all for you. Sorted!

Mistake 3: It's not clear who owns the content

Publishers very often don't really own the content on the sites they publish. They will be passed something from someone from their business area who does own it and be told to "post this on the intranet". They often forget who gave them something when the time comes to update the content on their sites and the real owners of the information have no idea that they are responsible for some important and juicy content on the intranet.

Solution: Have an intranet role called "Information owner". When your publisher is working in this capacity, they can add some metadata to the page that the person to speak to is "Bob". This is great, because when the publiisher is updating the page in six months' time they will know who to talk to, or if they move on, their replacement won't have so much of a challenge. You can level-up here (depending on your intranet platform) by being able to provide Bob with an automated email or a report, that details all of the content that the intranet says belongs to him. If Bob leaves, you've then got a tidy list to hand to Bob's replacement. Bingo!

Processes for operational intranet governance

Intranet governance also means you need to make it clear how good stuff gets done. You need to have clarity about the front-door processes that the organisation needs from the intranet management team, and the processes you need to cope with when things go wrong.

Mistake 4: It's not clear how to ask for a site or ask for help

People don't know how to get a site, or how to be added to the navigation, or to do the basic things to make their site look good. It isn't even clear where to ask for help. People call the help desk or log tickets, or more likely ignore the intranet as a channel entirely.

Solution: Get a front door! Create a site on the intranet with all the processes, forms, help, training, policies and standards. Throw up a Teams channel or a Viva Engage community for publishers to ask questions and get support.

Mistake 5: It's not clear what to do when publishers move or leave

When your publishers leave, it's like they are doing so under the cover of darkness. No one tells you and there is a risk of entire swathes of content becoming unmanaged. Sometimes the first you hear about it is when someone you have never heard of wanting access to publish in a site.

Solution: You really need a process for movers or leavers and a process for providing permissions to publish. Leavers will be taken out of anything connected to your directory, but movers will retain their rights in their new jobs which is risky. You also need a way of making sure that when you give the rights to publish to that area that the replacement has done their training beforehand, and they aren't just some random (and if you don't know who the site sponsor is, you'll need to turn into Sherlock Holmes for the afternoon.)

Mistake 6: It's not clear what to do when sites or content gets abandoned

It happens. Sites and content can get abandoned. This is not usually a problem in SharePoint, Teams or Viva Engage. You expect a bit of mess and usually only a few team members have access to a collaboration space. But on the intranet, dead content is a killer. People across the organisation will notice the out-of-date sites and sections and it will tarnish the brand of the intranet, as well as mess up search. But nobody will feel confident enough to prune the dead wood. "Who knows if someone is still using that?" (They aren't.) "We could get in trouble." (You won't.) Sometimes something really important (like policies or HR information) might end up lost in the wilderness.

Solution: You need a process to be able to escalate abandoned content. This might just be someone's replacement not having been assigned and trained and the business area will be (relatively) happy to pick it up again. Or a whole division might have been reorganised, or a whole country's operations divested. Ultimately, you need to be able to wield the secateurs and cut out the rot. Probably by withdrawing the content from the CMS and seeing if anyone squeaks.

Standards for intranet content governance

You need to make it clear to the authors of the intranet content about what good looks like and what to avoid. People need solid and explicit quality criteria against which to judge their work. We used to regard an intranet like an empty bucket that got filled to the brim with liquid content. Not anymore. We need to be selective.

Mistake 7: It's not clear what content publishers should and should not publish

What is it that you want the content on the intranet to do? It is very unlikely that you publishers will naturally know the answer to that question. Managers are naturally drawn to vanity content. Part-time content publishers are drawn to collect stuff together like magpies and take copies of useful documents and republish them. Enthusiastic and well-meaning people pile content into their sites, far in excess of what can be maintained in the future. It's content soup.

Solution: You need to create a content strategy: a plan for saying what content goes where, maximising its usefulness and minimising the fluff. That needs to be made clear to publishers by reminding them who their audience is, and the sort of tasks they are trying to achieve when they go on a sort of site; different sorts of sites will have different needs such as HR support information or sites that represent a physical location. One way of doing that is to provide exemplars: examples of a good sites that are ticking the boxes for each different sort of site. Another is by describing sites using user stories ("I need to find news and updates about my location", "I need to find information about how to travel to this location").

Mistake 8: It's not clear about what goes on the intranet and what goes elsewhere

People are horribly confused. They have different SharePoint sites, but also Teams channels and Viva Engage communities. Then there is Confluence and a document management system and on top of it all a policy management system. Then there is the intranet. What goes there? What goes everywhere else?

Solution: You need to create a system of governance that extends beyond the intranet into the rest of the digital workplace, working with other system owners to make it absolutely clear where different things are stored, in particular documents and very much in particular policies. You need to ensure that you are working hand-in-hand with your IT request people to make sure that people aren't requesting sites to publish on the intranet outside of the site request process. Equally, you need to ensure that important types of content (from the content strategy) that need to be on the intranet are actually on the intranet and not in random SharePoint sites somewhere.

Mistake 9: It's not clear about the standards that publishers should be held to

The intranet looks like a great big, inconsistent muddle. Pages look radically different, read very badly and have little or nothing to do with your branding. Things that ought to be in consistent places are scattered to the four winds. There is the occasional pocket of outstanding people trying really hard, but it is rare.

Solution: You need to write down what standards are expected. Standards for branding, tone of voice, template usage, document usage, usability and accessibility. It needs to be put down in black and white so people can refer to the rules, then made into digestible guidance and training. If people don't know what it is all supposed to look like, they are going to improvise.

Strategic governance for the intranet

Mistake 10: It's not clear about who to ask for changes

Organisations change over time and the intranet needs to change with it. If someone has an idea for change there needs to be a place for it to go. Implacable and inflexible environments are characterised so-called mavericks doing their own thing and going their own way. But that is the result of the environment.

Solution: Engage with the organisation and become a steward of the intranet world, looking to maximise its exploitation. Put yourself out there and be known as the person or team that is responsible for defining and refining requirements and finding solutions to tricky problems. Make it clear on the intranet itself about how the operating model of the intranet ensures that all stakeholders has both sources of governance support, as well as means of representation into a steering process.

Mistake 11: It's not clear what the intranet is for

This is one of my favourite questions for stakeholders of intranets that have lost their way and lost focus. "Can you tell me, in your own words, what you think the intranet is for?" There will be an exasperated sigh, a lengthy pause and then a stuttering attempted explanation. Many people will use the phrase "one-stop-shop" or "single pane of glass" but do so with a degree of embarrassment.

Solution: In organisations that have clarity, stakeholders will state, freely and trippingly, a unified statement of purpose. This usually has its roots in the clear intranet strategy or intranet content strategy that have all worked on collectively. This purpose goes through their collective understanding like words in a stick of rock. Define purpose together… and then write it down for God's sake!

Mistake 12: It's not clear about who gets to decide onward strategy

Everyone has an opinion, but opinions don't necessarily match. Stakeholders go round and round in circles and nobody makes a decision about what to do next.

Solution: Formalise where the buck stops. The RASCI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, Consulted and Informed) that you created for different areas of the intranet (see Mistake 1) will show you the way.

OK great, sounds like your pitch is next…

Right on time and I can see that you're very perceptive. Spark Trajectory loves governance. We work with intranet management teams to implement all the governance controls that you could possibly need to ensure success. And we don't start from scratch. We have our Intranet Governance Accelerator service to really hit the ground running, an online and collaborative resource full of templates that we use together to rapidly diagnose your governance problems and then generate and implement governance controls.

Anyway. You've got to concentrate on governance for intranets. Governance is intranet management and without these simple intranet governance practices you are going to be lost. You might think you have a successful intranet implementation on intranet launch day, but over time these twelve intranet governance pitfalls will come and ruin all your hard work. Before you think of just throwing it all away and having a do-over, kicking off a new intranet project or getting a new intranet platform, ask yourself what you could do with a tighter, more effective, clearer intranet governance model. It will enhance your intranet’s efficiency and user engagement for very little cost.

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