If you’re with a large company, you likely have an employee portal or intranet. It may include company news, benefits information, new hire info and more. Since most portals are content-heavy, it’s important to make it rich and refreshing. Here are five tried-and-true suggestions to keep your employees informed and engaged.

1. Establish governance.
   There may be several stakeholders for your portal content, so it’s a good idea to establish a process for handling updates. This will ensure your content is accurate and will help avoid multiple owners.
2. Write to design.
   Employees will glaze over content if it doesn’t come to life, and that’s where design comes in. Make sure you work with a skilled design team to create (and update) a pattern library that’s pleasing to the eye, is on brand and bolsters the content in a unique way.
3. Catchy (but informative) headlines are key.
   This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s extremely important. You want a headline that will grab attention while also hinting about what the following content is about. It’s very easy to have one without the other. Having both is best practice.
4. Use. Words. Sparingly.
   Say what you want to say in as few words as possible. Employees are busy, so if you want them to pay attention to your content, don’t write a novel. Include the most important information and leave the rest of the details to required documents, such as Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs), or provide contact information for additional questions.
5. Call attention to action items.
   If you need an employee to take a specific action, make sure you call it out and don’t bury it deep within the content. This also goes back to writing to design—your pattern library will dictate how important information is called out–be it by buttons, tiles or other web design elements.

With these principles in mind, remember to keep your content fun, too! Your portal is what you make it, so adding content such as personal employee stories, photos and leadership testimonials is a great way to showcase your people, your culture and ultimately, your values.