How many modules should I include in my intranet?

Start with the three or four that solve your biggest daily pain points — usually a document library, staff directory, announcements, and one form (leave or expense). You can add modules incrementally once the core is adopted. Launching with everything at once often leads to a cluttered, underused intranet.

Do I need to build all of these custom, or can I use off-the-shelf tools?

Many businesses use a mix — a custom intranet for the core (staff directory, documents, announcements, forms) with integrations to existing tools like Xero or your payroll system. Custom build gives you exactly the fields, workflows, and permissions your business needs without paying for features you'll never use.

Is a knowledge base the same as a document library?

Not quite. A document library stores files — policies, forms, templates. A knowledge base contains written guides, how-tos, and procedures — structured for reading and searching, not downloading. Both are valuable; the document library usually comes first.

How do I handle sensitive HR records in an intranet under the NZ Privacy Act?

The key is role-based access control. HR records should only be visible to the employee themselves and authorised HR/management users. Your intranet should log who accessed what, and data should be stored on NZ or Australian servers if you're concerned about data sovereignty under the Privacy Act 2020.

What to Include in Your Business Intranet: A Module-by-Module Guide

Not sure what should actually go in your intranet? This module-by-module guide covers the essential features NZ businesses are using to centralise their operations.

One of the most common questions I get when talking to NZ business owners about intranets is: "What should actually be in it?" They've heard the word, they get the general concept — a central place for staff — but they're not sure what that means in practice. Should it be just a file storage system? A directory? A noticeboard? All of the above?

The honest answer is that a good intranet is built from modules. Each module solves a specific operational problem. The right set of modules for your business depends on what's currently causing the most friction — and you don't need to build everything on day one. In fact, starting small and adding incrementally is usually the smarter play.

This guide walks through the main intranet modules I see NZ businesses using, what each one does, and — importantly — who actually needs it. Not every module belongs in every intranet. Think of this as a menu, not a checklist.

1. Staff Directory

A staff directory sounds almost too simple to mention — but the absence of one causes real problems once a business gets past 10 or 15 people. Without it, staff are asking around for a phone number, CCing the wrong person on an email, or going through a manager to find who handles accounts payable.

A good intranet directory goes beyond a list of names and emails. It includes a photo (so new staff can put faces to names), role and department, direct phone number, location if you have multiple sites, and sometimes a short bio or "what I'm working on." For businesses with remote staff or regional offices, the directory becomes even more critical — it's often the only way staff across different locations actually know who their colleagues are.

Who needs this: Any business with more than 8–10 staff, multiple departments, or remote workers. It's the most-used module in almost every intranet I've built.

NZ-specific note: If your directory includes personal contact details, this is personal information under the NZ Privacy Act 2020. Make sure the directory is access-controlled (staff only, not publicly visible) and that employees have consented to having their information included.

2. Document Library

The document library is arguably the most important module in any intranet. It's where all the official, up-to-date versions of your business documents live — policies, procedures, templates, forms, contracts, compliance documents.

The problem it solves is version chaos. In most businesses I talk to, the same document exists in five different versions across a shared drive, three people's email inboxes, and someone's desktop. Staff don't know which is current. Outdated procedures get followed. Wrong templates get used. It's a slow, invisible drain on productivity and accuracy.

A proper document library has a clear folder structure, version control (so you can see when something was last updated and by whom), and access permissions so the right documents are available to the right people. Finance templates don't need to be visible to warehouse staff, and sensitive HR documents definitely shouldn't be.

Who needs this: Every business. Even a 5-person team benefits from a single source of truth for documents. Businesses in regulated industries — healthcare, financial services, construction — need this urgently because outdated procedures create liability.

NZ-specific note: If you're subject to Health & Safety at Work Act (HSWA) requirements, having your H&S procedures in a centrally maintained, version-controlled document library is good practice and demonstrates due diligence. IRD also expects businesses to maintain records in a reasonably accessible format — a document library helps here too.

3. Announcements and Noticeboard

Announcements are how leadership communicates with the whole team — new hires, policy changes, company news, upcoming events. Without a central noticeboard, this kind of communication typically happens by email (which gets lost), in a Slack/Teams channel (which scrolls away fast), or not at all (which creates an information vacuum and gossip).

An intranet noticeboard gives announcements permanence. Staff can read them when they log in, find them later via search, and know they haven't missed anything. You can pin urgent notices to the top, and archive older ones so the board doesn't become cluttered.

Some intranets also let you target announcements to specific teams or locations — so a policy change relevant only to the Wellington office doesn't clutter the feed for staff in Auckland. This kind of segmentation becomes really useful as businesses grow.

Who needs this: Any business where leadership communicates regularly with staff. Particularly valuable in multi-site businesses, shift-based workplaces, or anywhere where not everyone is in the same place at the same time.

4. Leave Requests

Leave management is one of those things that sounds boring but causes a surprising amount of friction in small businesses. Annual leave, sick leave, public holiday requests — if the process is "email your manager and hope they remember to tell HR," you'll eventually get double-bookings, disputes over entitlements, and records that don't match what's in your payroll system.

A leave request module in your intranet gives staff a form to submit a request, routes it to the right approver, sends notifications, and logs the outcome. At a glance, managers can see who's away when — useful for planning. HR has a clean record for payroll reconciliation.

The best integrations connect this directly to your payroll system — like Xero Payroll or PayHero — so approved leave flows through automatically without manual double-entry.

Who needs this: Any business with more than 5 staff, or any business where leave disputes have been an issue. Especially useful for managers who oversee multiple team members across different shifts or locations.

NZ-specific note: Under the Holidays Act 2003, employees are entitled to annual leave, sick leave, bereavement leave, and public holidays — and employers are required to keep accurate records. A centralised leave module makes compliance far easier.

5. Expense Forms

Most businesses have an expense process that involves receipts in someone's wallet, a spreadsheet emailed to accounts, and a lot of chasing. It's manual, slow, and error-prone. An expense form on the intranet gives staff a structured way to submit claims — category, amount, date, description, receipt upload — routes them for approval, and gives accounts payable a clean record to process.

For businesses that reimburse mileage, this module can also include a mileage form with a per-km rate (updated to match IRD's current rate). Staff fill it in, it calculates the reimbursement, and approvers can see and act on it quickly.

Who needs this: Any business where staff regularly spend money on behalf of the company — travel, supplies, client entertainment — and particularly those where the current process involves paper receipts or email.

6. Compliance and CPD Tracking

For businesses in regulated industries — healthcare, financial advice, education, construction — keeping track of staff licences, certifications, and continuing professional development (CPD) requirements is a genuine operational necessity. Let a certification lapse unnoticed and you can end up with a staff member operating outside their authorisation, which is both a liability and a compliance breach.

A compliance tracking module in your intranet stores each staff member's certifications, their expiry dates, and any CPD hours or training requirements. It can send automated reminders when renewals are approaching and give managers a dashboard view of who's up to date and who needs attention.

Who needs this: Healthcare providers, financial advisers (under the Financial Advisers Act), real estate agents, engineers, construction companies (WorkSafe-related competencies), and any business with a workforce that holds professional licences.

NZ-specific note: The Health and Safety at Work Act requires businesses to ensure workers are competent for the work they're doing. For roles with formal competency requirements — operating machinery, working at height, forklift operation — having a documented record of training and certification in your intranet is solid evidence of due diligence if something goes wrong.

7. Reporting Dashboards

Dashboards give the right people a live view of the numbers that matter. For a business owner or manager, that might be sales vs. target, job pipeline, open support tickets, or cash flow. For a team leader, it might be their team's current workload or weekly output.

The power of a dashboard in an intranet is that it pulls data from your existing systems — your CRM, your accounting software, your job management tool — and surfaces it in one place without anyone having to run a report manually. The business owner opens the intranet and immediately sees the state of play.

Dashboards are probably the most technically involved module to build well, but they're also the one business owners tend to get most excited about — because the insight they provide changes how decisions get made.

Who needs this: Business owners who are currently pulling data manually from multiple systems to understand how things are going. Also useful for managers who need visibility across their team's workload or performance.

8. Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is your internal Wikipedia — a collection of written guides, how-tos, and procedures that capture how your business actually works. How do you handle a customer complaint? What's the process for raising a purchase order? How do you set up a new client in the CRM?

This knowledge often lives in people's heads. When those people are on holiday, or leave the business, that knowledge goes with them. A knowledge base makes it explicit, searchable, and accessible to everyone who needs it.

The best knowledge bases are easy to update — so they stay current — and have a clear ownership structure so you know who's responsible for keeping each section accurate.

Who needs this: Any business that's experienced the pain of a key person leaving and taking institutional knowledge with them. Also invaluable for businesses that are growing and onboarding staff regularly.

9. Onboarding Checklists

Getting a new staff member up and running costs time. A lot of it. There's IT setup, system access, introductions, training, paperwork, and a dozen other things that need to happen in roughly the right order. Without a system, onboarding is inconsistent — some new hires have a great experience, others slip through the cracks.

An onboarding checklist module in your intranet assigns a structured checklist to each new starter. Tasks are assigned to the right people (IT sets up email, HR sends the employment agreement, the manager introduces the team), and everyone can see what's been done and what hasn't. The new employee also gets their own checklist — what to read, who to meet, what to complete in week one.

In a tight NZ labour market where candidate experience matters from day one, a smooth onboarding process makes a real difference to early retention.

Who needs this: Any business that hires more than a few people a year, or where poor onboarding has been identified as a problem. Particularly useful for businesses with complex role requirements or multiple departments involved in onboarding.

10. Time Tracking

Time tracking in an intranet is useful for businesses that bill by the hour, need to allocate staff time to projects for costing purposes, or want visibility into where time is actually being spent. It doesn't have to be complex — a simple log of hours against a project or client code is enough for many businesses.

The advantage of integrating time tracking into the intranet (rather than using a separate tool) is that the data lives in the same place as everything else, and it's easy to connect to a reporting dashboard or export to your billing system.

Who needs this: Professional services firms, consultancies, trades businesses, and anyone who needs to track billable hours or allocate labour costs to specific jobs.

11. Links Hub

A links hub sounds almost embarrassingly simple — it's basically a curated list of links to all the tools and systems your business uses. But it's consistently one of the most-used parts of any intranet I build, and its absence is a constant minor friction in businesses that don't have one.

Without a links hub, staff are Googling "Xero login" every day, bookmarking things that get lost, or asking colleagues where to find a particular system. With one, the intranet becomes the launch pad for the whole day — you open it, see what's on, and navigate to wherever you need to go.

Organise links by category (Finance, HR, Sales, Project Management, Communication) and make sure someone is responsible for keeping it updated when new tools are adopted or old ones retired.

Who needs this: Every business. Especially those using more than five different software tools day-to-day.

Where to Start

If you're planning an intranet from scratch, I don't recommend trying to build all of this at once. Start with the modules that solve your biggest pain points right now. For most NZ businesses, that's a combination of document library, staff directory, announcements, and one or two forms (leave requests and expenses cover most of the day-to-day friction).

Once those are live and adopted, you have a platform to add more. Compliance tracking, knowledge base, and dashboards are excellent second-phase additions. Onboarding tools and time tracking can come later if needed.

The most common mistake I see is trying to build the perfect intranet in one go — and ending up with something overwhelming and underused. Start useful. Stay useful. Add as you go.

If you'd like to talk through what modules make sense for your specific business, get in touch. I'm happy to have a no-obligation conversation about what your intranet should include and roughly what it would cost to build.