Intranet Easter Eggs – 5 ideas for surprises that drive employee engagement
It looks like the global COVID-19 pandemic is going to influence our work style for quite some time. This is why the internal communicators are challenged to adapt their strategy to the remote mode in the long run. With employees working from home, keeping them well-informed and connected is more critical than ever. Here are our intranet Easter eggs – some fun ideas on how to inspire employees to explore internal communication channels.
Intranet Easter eggs
While the term ‘easter egg’ has been used to mean a hidden object for some time, about an Easter egg hunt, it has come to be more commonly used to mean an unexpected or undocumented message, image, or feature hidden in a video game, movie, or computer software, included as a joke or a bonus. In internal communication, intranet Easter eggs can be used to drive employee engagement as people can have fun encountering them… and Easter is just an excuse.
Here are 5 ideas on what the intranet Easter eggs can be:
1. Laughing out loud
It’s no secret employees like to have fun while interacting with internal communicators. They love to exchange jokes, memes, and funny comments so why not prepare a surprise for them and arrange e.g., a laughing gif to appear whenever a ‘LOL’ is typed in a conversation. In the end, laughter is contagious!
2. In the mood for holidays
A digital employee experience platform (like Workai) is the heart of the information flow and provides access to other applications, e.g., the HR system for taking a leave. What if whenever someone clicks to enter this system, there appears a pop-up saying “Are you going to the mountains or the seaside?”, “Already planning holidays or just checking how many days off you have to cheer yourself up?”.
3. Found what I’m looking for
With employees switching to remote work overnight, they lost the chance for spontaneous information exchange in the office. That’s why they need to have efficient access to the knowledge (info on products, processes, changes, etc.) to be able to serve clients efficiently even from home. No wonder they look for key issues in the search engine. It could be fun to play with some words and add a little twist to the search results, for example, with a funny little animation of what they looked for.
4. Take a break
Usually, all the employees are very busy but to be productive, they need to disconnect from time to time. Now it’s impossible to have a little ping-pong game with colleagues from home, so a great digital fun could be, for example, a worms game that would appear on a given page on the intranet. It can also be a crossword or any other simple game that will add a bit of fun to daily work routines.
5. Ban for those under 21
Everybody knows the forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest. We can make the intranet seem somewhat secret and for adults only. When entering the newsfeed, a pop-up appears saying you need to be 21 to be able to enter. So you just need to hit “I am 21” when prompted on the homepage and you are welcome to enter. You need to make sure everybody on the team is over 21.
To be remembered
Hidden intranet easter eggs are not easy to arrange – they require thorough planning and technical development. The hidden jokes vary in format (text, visual/audio effects, hidden pages, special features, etc.) as does how they are found. As you can see above, intranet easter eggs can be as simple or complicated as you want them to be. Good luck, have fun, and Happy Easter from Workai!