How to replace an intranet without adding another login

Replacing an intranet means moving the jobs it was meant to do, mostly announcements and must-read updates, to the places your employees already look. Most intranets don’t fail because they were badly built. They fail because people stop visiting.

Updates sit on a homepage nobody opens. You can count page views, but you can’t tell who read the policy change. This playbook covers how to make the move without giving people one more thing to log into. If you’re still comparing tools, our guide to intranet alternatives sorts them by why your intranet failed.

Why do intranets stop being used?

Intranets stop being used because they ask people to come and look, and busy employees don’t.

• Nobody owns it. Content goes stale, and once people find one out-of-date page, they stop trusting the rest.
• It sits behind a login. Every extra sign-in is another reason not to check.
• It assumes a laptop. Frontline and shift staff with no work device rarely see it at all.
• It can’t tell you who read what. Page views don’t show whether the people who needed an update got it.

What does a good intranet replacement look like?

A good intranet replacement gets every important update to the right people on a channel they already open, and shows you who read it.

• Announcements reach desk staff in email, Teams or Slack, and frontline staff by text.
• Nobody needs a new password to read a company update.
• Policies and documents still have a home, whether that’s SharePoint, Confluence or a simple front page.
• Each message goes to the groups it’s for, not to everyone.
• You can see reads and clicks by team and location.
• The old homepage can go dark without anyone noticing a gap.

How to replace an intranet in 6 steps

Run this over a quarter. Move the traffic first and switch the old system off last, so nothing gets lost along the way.

Step 1 (week 1): Audit what the intranet actually does

List every section and who uses it. Sort each one into two piles: things people need to find, such as policies, forms and the handbook, and things people need to be told, such as news, changes and deadlines. A dead intranet is often fine at the first job and failing at the second.

Step 2 (week 2): Decide where documents will live

If your document library works, keep it. SharePoint or Confluence can stay as the place files live, with a simple front page that links into them. Only move documents if search and ownership are broken too.

Step 3 (weeks 3 to 4): Match each audience to a channel

Work out where each group already reads. Desk teams might live in Teams or Slack. Shift workers might only see texts, which is where frontline communications come in. Pull location, role and team from your HRIS, so each message reaches the right people without hand-built lists.

Step 4 (weeks 5 to 8): Send the next big announcement the new way

Pick one real update, such as a benefits change or a policy refresh, and send it on the channels from step 3. Link to the full detail in your document store. Track who opened it.

Step 5 (weeks 8 to 10): Point the old homepage at the new route

Replace the intranet homepage with a short note telling people where updates now arrive and where documents live. Keep old links working, so bookmarks still land somewhere useful.

Step 6 (end of quarter): Retire what nobody misses

Check which old pages still get visits. Move anything people still use, then switch off the rest. If you pay for an intranet license, this is the point to review the contract.

How should you tell employees the intranet is going away?

Tell employees what changes for them in one line: where updates will now arrive and where to find documents.

• Do say “Company updates now come to you in Teams and by text.” Don’t explain the project.
• Do keep old bookmarks working. Don’t break links to forms people use every week.
• Do brief managers first so they can answer questions. Don’t let the change land as a surprise.
• Do ask what’s missing after a month. Don’t take silence as a sign it worked.

How do you prove the change worked?

The change worked when more of the right people read important updates than did on the intranet, and you can show it by team.

Before you start, note what you can measure today, even if it’s only intranet page views. After each announcement on the new channels, track delivery, opens, clicks and replies, split by team, location and channel. That split tells you which groups you’re still missing.

Ask people too. A two-question pulse a month after the switch, asking whether people can find what they need, catches gaps the numbers miss.

Common worries, and what to do about them

“People are used to the intranet. They’ll push back.”

The people who still use it will tell you, and that’s useful. Keep their pages working until you’ve moved them. If usage is already low, there’s less habit to break than it feels like.

“We still need somewhere for policies and forms.”

Keep it. Your documents can stay exactly where they are. Each announcement then links to the document behind it, so a homepage no longer has to do the telling.

“Won’t this just add noise to Teams and Slack?”

Only if everything goes to everyone. Send each message to the groups it affects, keep a steady rhythm, and save the urgent channel for urgent things.

Reach people where they already are

ChangeEngine sends internal comms to email, Teams, Slack and SMS, so employees get updates without logging into anything new.

You write a message once, and ChangeEngine formats it for each channel and targets it by HRIS fields such as role, location and team. You see reads, clicks and reactions by team, location and channel, and follow-ups go only to the people who missed it. See how on the internal comms software page.

If you want one front page for news and policies, Employee Hub AI builds one that opens on any phone with no app store. It can run as a SharePoint web part or a Teams tab, so you can keep SharePoint or Confluence for documents.

For IT and security: SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certified, GDPR compliant, SSO and 75+ HRIS integrations.