Intranet manager

Spark Trajectory Intranet and Digital Workplace Roles and Teams > This role

What does the role Intranet manager do?

The Intranet Manager is responsible for the operation and ongoing development of the organisation's intranet, covering the homepage, primary navigation, content governance, publisher coordination, and search. The role combines product management (such as owning the platform roadmap and vendor relationship) with operational management of the intranet team, typically line-managing roles such as Content Manager, Search Manager, and Community Manager. It is one of the most generalist roles in the digital workplace field, requiring editorial, technical, and stakeholder management skills in roughly equal measure.

Also known as

  • "Intranet name" manager
  • Digital workplace manager (erroneous)
  • Intranet product owner
  • Digital communications manager
  • Intranet lead
  • Intranet coordinator
  • Employee portal manager
  • Digital workplace coordinator
Widespread prevalence

This role is often found in larger organisations

Primary responsibilties

  • Manages the day-to-day operation of the intranet including homepage, navigation, and platform configuration
  • Coordinates the publisher network and oversees content governance processes
  • Owns the intranet product roadmap and manages the relationship with the platform vendor
  • Line-manages specialist roles including Content Manager, Search Manager, and Community Manager
  • Monitors intranet analytics and drives continuous improvement to employee experience
  • Represents the intranet function to internal stakeholders and in wider digital workplace programmes

Related teams

We've known this role to be part of the following teams:
Digital Workplace Team
Intranet Team

Skills profile

Note: This is what we documented as an exemplar. It's unlikely to always be the case and relates to a role's involvement with the delivery of digital employee experience and perhaps not everything they do. You can open this in the Skills Profile Builder if you want to customise it.

Apprentice

Limited but increasing capabilities based on learning and on-the-job experience, but guidance and mentoring is required to fulfil potential.

Practitioner

Good professional capabilities sufficient for many circumstances and roles. Able to guide and mentor apprentices.

Master

Abilities that are the best in the professional field, gained from significant experience. Able to teach and guide others in their development.
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Outline job description

The Intranet Manager leads the operation and development of the organisation's intranet. This is a senior individual contributor or first-line management role that sits at the centre of the digital workplace: responsible for what the intranet contains, how it works, and where it is going.

About the role

You'll own the intranet as a product and as a service. Day-to-day, that means keeping it running well: maintaining governance, supporting the publisher network, and ensuring content across the platform meets quality standards. Strategically, it means owning the roadmap, managing the vendor relationship, and making the case internally for investment and improvement.

Most Intranet Managers line-manage a small specialist team, typically including a Content Manager, Search Manager, and Community Manager, though team shape varies by organisation and platform maturity.

The role reports into digital communications, internal communications, or IT depending on the organisation. In smaller organisations it may be the only dedicated intranet resource; in larger ones it sits within a broader digital workplace function.

What you'll actually be doing

A typical week spans platform operations, content governance, and stakeholder management in roughly equal measure. You'll be keeping the homepage and navigation working well, supporting the publisher network, monitoring analytics, and dealing with whatever the platform throws at you, while also progressing longer-term roadmap work and managing the vendor relationship.

The management side matters too: you'll be developing your team, representing the intranet function at senior level, and building the internal relationships that mean the intranet gets proper attention in wider digital workplace programmes.

What we're looking for

Deep hands-on experience in content management, content publishing, and publisher coordination: this is the operational core of the role. Strong capability in intranet strategy and operational governance is essential: you need to be able to run the platform today while planning what it needs to be tomorrow.

You'll also need solid grounding in product management, information architecture, search management, and content strategy, and be comfortable making evidence-based decisions from analytics. You don't need to be a developer, but you should understand how enterprise intranet platforms are configured and changed, and be able to work effectively with IT and vendor teams.

Typical background

Most people in this role come from internal communications, web content management, or digital project delivery. Experience with at least one enterprise intranet platform is normally required. Broader digital workplace, search, or UX experience is an advantage, particularly in larger or more complex organisations.

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Errors? Disagreements? Omissions?

We have hopefully created these exemplars with thought and care. It is not the only way of looking at these roles and teams in the world, and relates specifically to the intranet and digital workplance profession. It therefore concentrates on some things and ignores others.

If you find an error, disagree wholeheartly or feel there is a glaring ommission we'd love to know.

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License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons License

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.