The people driving the best intranet projects in 2026 aren’t in the IT department. Here’s why that shift matters and what it means for your organisation.
Ask an internal communications director what their biggest frustration is, and the answer rarely involves technology. It involves not being able to reach people. Updates that go out and land nowhere. A internal communications channel that exists but isn’t used. A leadership team that wants to communicate better but has no reliable network to do it through.
The intranet was supposed to solve this. For too many UK organisations, it hasn’t, because it was built by the wrong people, for the wrong brief.
That’s changing. And the organisations getting the most from their digital workplace in 2026 are the ones who’ve worked out why.
The scale of the problem in the UK
The communication gap in UK businesses is significant. Only 10% of UK employees are engaged at work, making the UK one of the least engaged workforces in Europe. The UK economy loses over £257 billion every year to low worker engagement, roughly 11% of GDP. And at the heart of that disengagement, almost every time, is a breakdown in communication.
One in four UK employees feel voiceless in their organisation. A third say that a lack of open, honest communication negatively impacts their morale. These aren’t abstract HR metrics. They’re the direct consequence of organisations that haven’t given their internal communications teams the infrastructure to do their jobs properly.
The intranet, built and owned by IT, wasn’t designed to fix these problems. It was designed to manage files.
Who should be leading the intranet conversation
In the UK, 87% of communicators rate employee engagement as the most important metric to track, significantly higher than their counterparts in other markets. UK internal comms teams understand the stakes. The challenge is that they’ve rarely had ownership of the platform that most directly affects whether their work lands.
That’s the shift we’re seeing in 2026. Internal communications directors and people leaders are moving into the driving seat on intranet projects, not being handed a system at the end of one. And the results are consistently better when they do.
Because when the brief is written by someone whose job is to reach people, the questions change. Not “what’s the most secure file structure?” but “how does a shift worker on a manufacturing site access the update they missed?” Not “how do we configure permissions?” but “how does leadership send a message and know it reached everyone?”
Organisations with strong internal communication practices experience 47% higher engagement. That’s not a technology outcome. It’s a people outcome, enabled by the right technology and designed by the right people.
What people-led actually looks like
A people-led intranet isn’t one that ignores IT. It’s one where the design decisions are made around employees rather than administrators, and where internal comms combined with HR, has ownership of the platform day to day, not just publishing rights.
The most effective intranet projects treat implementation as a change management initiative, not just a technical go-live. Adoption is earned, not assumed. That distinction matters more than any feature set. And it’s a distinction that internal comms professionals understand instinctively, because earning attention is literally their job.
Making the most of what you already have
None of this requires a new technology investment. Most UK businesses are already running Microsoft 365. The platform is there. The licence is paid for. What changes is the brief, the design, and who owns governance once it’s live.
Attollo builds SharePoint intranets that internal communications and HR teams can own, manage, and be proud of, without going back to IT every time something needs updating. Award-winning. Built on M365. Designed around your people, not your file hierarchy.
If you’re an internal comms or people leader thinking about your digital workplace in 2026, we’d love to start that conversation.
Talk to us at thisisattollo.com/contact or call 01952 288365 and ask for Sam
Sources
- People Insight, Employee Engagement Statistics 2026 – peopleinsight.co.uk
- CHEER At Work, UK Employee Engagement Statistics 2025-2026 – cheeratwork.com
- Gallagher, Employee Communications Report 2025, via cerkl.com
- Forbes / Thirst, 22 Must-Know Employee Engagement Stats for 2026 – thirst.io
- Happeo, Intranet Employee Portal Guide 2026 – happeo.com