9 MIN READ
What Digital Workplace Leaders Get Wrong About Intranet Adoption
Learn how ContextSpace was born from real-world needs to reduce context switching and boost enterprise productivity.
Namita Awasthi | November 17, 2025
For more than a decade, digital workplace leaders have been trying to crack the intranet adoption puzzle. They’ve invested in new platforms, rolled out redesigns, launched intranet relaunch campaigns, and conducted endless governance workshops. Yet in most enterprises, usage numbers remain stubbornly low.
According to the 2023 CMSWire State of the Digital Workplace Report, only 12% of employees rate their digital workplace experience as excellent, and a majority say they lose time daily because they “cannot find the information they need.”
Meanwhile, Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2024 highlights that findability has officially become the #1 barrier to employee communication effectiveness.
Even after millions spent on redesigns, most intranets still struggle to become part ofthe natural workflow. Why?
Because the problem is not the intranet. It’s what we assume about how employees work.
Below are six major misconceptions that repeatedly limit intranet success and how shifting your approach can transform usage, employee experience, and enterprise productivity.
According to the 2023 CMSWire State of the Digital Workplace Report, only 12% of employees rate their digital workplace experience as excellent, and a majority say they lose time daily because they “cannot find the information they need.”
Meanwhile, Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2024 highlights that findability has officially become the #1 barrier to employee communication effectiveness.
Even after millions spent on redesigns, most intranets still struggle to become part ofthe natural workflow. Why?
Because the problem is not the intranet. It’s what we assume about how employees work.
Below are six major misconceptions that repeatedly limit intranet success and how shifting your approach can transform usage, employee experience, and enterprise productivity.
#1 Misconception: People Don’t Use the Intranet Because They’re Not Motivated Enough
Most organizations treat intranet adoption as a behavioral problem.
- “Employees need to be trained better.”
- “We need more internal marketing.”
- “We need to make it more fun.”
- “Leaders must encourage usage.”
But adoption is almost never a motivation problem. It’s a friction problem.
Employees are extremely motivated to get their work done. What they are not motivated to do is jump between 8–12 tools, navigate complex pages, remember where information lives, or guess which version is the latest.
According to Gartner’s Digital Workplace Report 2023, 47% of employees say they struggle to find the information they need to perform their jobs effectively.
Real-world example: A Fortune 500 company redesigned their intranet twice in four years. Beautiful UI. Strong governance. Clear navigation. Yet adoption remained below 20%. When they tracked behavior, they realized employees weren’t looking for “pages” - they were looking for answers related to customers, products, and internal processes. But the intranet didn’t surface any of that proactively. It required manual searching every time.
Motivation wasn’t the issue. The intranet simply didn’t deliver the experience users needed.
Employees are extremely motivated to get their work done. What they are not motivated to do is jump between 8–12 tools, navigate complex pages, remember where information lives, or guess which version is the latest.
According to Gartner’s Digital Workplace Report 2023, 47% of employees say they struggle to find the information they need to perform their jobs effectively.
Real-world example: A Fortune 500 company redesigned their intranet twice in four years. Beautiful UI. Strong governance. Clear navigation. Yet adoption remained below 20%. When they tracked behavior, they realized employees weren’t looking for “pages” - they were looking for answers related to customers, products, and internal processes. But the intranet didn’t surface any of that proactively. It required manual searching every time.
Motivation wasn’t the issue. The intranet simply didn’t deliver the experience users needed.
#2 Misconception: Navigation Is the Main Problem
Navigation matters, but it's not the root cause.
Modern organizations are fluid. Teams reorg every quarter. Products evolve monthly. Customer structures change weekly. Navigation creates a static view of a company that changes constantly.
This is why Nielsen Norman Group’s Intranet Design Annual 2023 notes that employees often experience intranets as “outdated, hard to navigate, and disconnected from real work.”
Employees don’t want to browse through menus. They want the system to surface what matters based on:
Modern organizations are fluid. Teams reorg every quarter. Products evolve monthly. Customer structures change weekly. Navigation creates a static view of a company that changes constantly.
This is why Nielsen Norman Group’s Intranet Design Annual 2023 notes that employees often experience intranets as “outdated, hard to navigate, and disconnected from real work.”
Employees don’t want to browse through menus. They want the system to surface what matters based on:
- their role
- the customerthey’re working on
- the projectthey’re involved in
- the product they support
Context beats navigation, every time.
#3 Misconception: More Content Improves Adoption
When intranet usage is low, many teams react by adding even more content. New wiki pages. New dashboards. New newsletters. New announcements. The result?
A content swamp.
Digital workplace audits in 2023–2024 show that 60–70% of intranet content becomes outdated within a year, creating an overwhelming, unreliable information maze.
The problem isn't the volume of content. It’s the lack of contextual relevance. Employees don’t need more pages. They need one place where information relevant to their work (customer, product, region, project) is automatically aggregated and always up to date.
Digital workplace audits in 2023–2024 show that 60–70% of intranet content becomes outdated within a year, creating an overwhelming, unreliable information maze.
The problem isn't the volume of content. It’s the lack of contextual relevance. Employees don’t need more pages. They need one place where information relevant to their work (customer, product, region, project) is automatically aggregated and always up to date.
#4 Misconception: Adoption Should Be Measured by Page Views
Many companies celebrate metrics such as:
- page views
- time spent
- number of visitors
- number of content creators
But these are not indicators of success.
High page views may indicate that employees cannot find what they need.
Low time spent may indicate the intranet is efficient.
The only meaningful adoption metric is: Does the intranet reduce time-to-information and time-to-action?
A 2023 Forrester workplace productivity survey found that 51% of employees waste significant time switching between tools, hindering their ability to complete tasks efficiently.
A modern intranet should eliminate tool-switching, not add to it.
#5 Misconception: Integration Is a “Nice to Have”
Historically, intranets were content repositories and not operational systems. But today, work happens in dozens of tools:
- CRM systems
- Project management tools
- Support platforms
- Finance systems
- HRIS platforms
- Knowledge bases
- Communication tools
- External data sources
According to the Gartner Digital Workplace Survey 2023, employees use an average of 11 applications per day, and app switching is one of the top three productivity killers.
Yet many enterprises still treat integration as “phase 2.”
The truth is that if your intranet doesn’t integrate with systems where work actually happens, it will never become part of the workflow.
Real-world example:
A global advertising company integrated Jira, Salesforce, HRIS, and financial tools directly into their Confluence-based intranet. Meetings transformed overnight. People no longer had to prepare reports manually. Everything surfaced automatically in context.Adoption soared.
Integration wasn’t a nice-to-have. It was the breakthrough.
#6 Misconception: The Intranet Should Be a Destination
This is the biggest misconception of all. The intranet should not be a place employees goto.
It should be a system that comes to them.
Today’s employees work in Slack, Teams, email, Jira, Salesforce, and dozens of other tools.
Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2024 reports that employees want communication and information to reach them where they already are, not in a separate system they have to remember to visit.
The modern intranet must be:
Today’s employees work in Slack, Teams, email, Jira, Salesforce, and dozens of other tools.
Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2024 reports that employees want communication and information to reach them where they already are, not in a separate system they have to remember to visit.
The modern intranet must be:
- proactive
- personalized
- entity-based
- integrated
- dynamic
- role-aware
An intranet is no longer a destination. It’s an intelligent layer that follows the user.
The Shift Digital Workplace Leaders Need to Make
The organizations seeing the highest adoption rates have one thing in common. They build the intranet around business entities, not content. And they structure it as a dynamic, data-driven, context-aware layer that connects to the enterprise tech stack and not acollection of pages.
This approach solves the real adoption blockers:
This approach solves the real adoption blockers:
- No more searching
- No more outdated pages
- No more “who owns this?” confusion
- No more jumping between 12 apps
- No more manually assembling reports
- No more intranet relaunches every 3 years
Instead, employees get what they always wanted: An intranet that knows what they need.
The Path Forward: The Rise of Contextual Intranets
The future belongs to intranets that act like intelligent systems, not static portals. This is why we built ContextSpace.
ContextSpace creates Contextual Spaces - dedicated information hubs for entities like customers, products, teams, geographies, or employees. Each space automatically pulls live data from systems across the organization and presents it in a unified structure. Employees instantly get the information they need, in context, without searching.
This eliminates the major reasons intranets fail:
ContextSpace creates Contextual Spaces - dedicated information hubs for entities like customers, products, teams, geographies, or employees. Each space automatically pulls live data from systems across the organization and presents it in a unified structure. Employees instantly get the information they need, in context, without searching.
This eliminates the major reasons intranets fail:
- friction
- fragmentation
- outdated content
- poor personalization
- lack of real-time visibility
- tool switching
And most importantly, it makes the intranet useful again.
Intranet Adoption Isn’t an Engagement Problem - It’s a Context Problem
Digital workplace leaders don’t need another redesign, new navigation system, or fresh logo. They need to rethink the purpose of the intranet itself.
Intranets should help employees work faster. To do that, they need to deliver context, not content.
The companies embracing this approach are seeing higher adoption, better alignment, faster decision-making, and a dramatic productivity lift.
The message is clear: Fix the context, and adoption will follow.
Intranets should help employees work faster. To do that, they need to deliver context, not content.
The companies embracing this approach are seeing higher adoption, better alignment, faster decision-making, and a dramatic productivity lift.
The message is clear: Fix the context, and adoption will follow.
Namita Awasthi
A driving force behind ContextSpace, Namita led the ideation and development of the platform, turning bold ideas into a practical solution that helps teams streamline work, surface insights, and scale productivity.
