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title: ✍️ When SharePoint becomes the strategy
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Communication and collaboration aren’t the same job, even when they share a tool. ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­    ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­  

| View in browser Issue #13 September 10, 2026 Most tools are built to do one job well. SharePoint gets asked to do two: hold onto everything, and communicate it clearly.   Karen Downs, Head of Strategic Communications Practice, Global Markets at Staffbase, has spent years watching organizations try to make that work. In this issue, she looks at what changes once you stop asking one platform to do both.   Off to Karen! — Kim True or false ↘ Before an employee reads a single word on your intranet, their mind has already decided where to look. Scroll to the bottom for the answer. Karen Downs, Head of Strategic Communications Practice, Global Markets, Staffbase  For years I used to say, “SharePoint is the fastest way to a very bad intranet.” I wasn’t wrong. And I wasn’t alone.   In the practitioner communities I knew, SharePoint was often chosen not because it was best for employee experience, but because it was already “free.” When you’re leading an internal, non-revenue-generating program, it’s hard to beat “already paid for.”   It was never really free. Licensing rarely covered the whole employee population. Frontline and deskless workers were often excluded by default.   Making it usable took real technical effort, and maintaining it inevitably became someone’s full-time job. Giving employees unrestricted access to a raw SharePoint environment, without a curated interface, is one of the most reliable ways to undermine the investment before it starts.   Why I retired my sharpest critique I stopped using that line in the middle of the pandemic. Vendors (Microsoft included) made real advances for suddenly distributed workforces. With enough architecture and sustained investment, it became possible to approximate a good experience in SharePoint.   That matters, and my critique had to evolve.   But possible and optimal are not the same thing. The advances improved what SharePoint could do technically. They didn't change what it was designed for strategically. Where organizations still struggle Reach. In many industries, frontline employees still don’t have M365 licenses. If employees can’t reliably access the experience, it isn’t an employee experience. Technical dependency. Structure, permissions, and integrations need continuous support, not a one-time project team. Measurement. Page views don’t answer what communicators care about: Did this reach the right people, did they understand it, did it change anything? Governance at scale. As ownership spreads without oversight, a carefully designed intranet devolves into duplicated content and unclear accountability. Campaigns. SharePoint excels at repositories. Communication happens in moments. A campaign has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and someone needs to control that arc. In SharePoint, that control lives in workarounds. Frontline experience. Mobile-first, interruption-friendly communication is still hard to deliver consistently. Teams respond with golden hubs, stricter templates, editorial councils, and announcements duplicated across sites just in case — reasonable moves by smart communicators working with what they have. They still fall short when one tool is asked to do two fundamentally different jobs: communication and collaboration.   Microsoft has continued to improve the experience, most recently folding Viva Connections into the SharePoint app in Teams. For organizations already invested in M365, that creates a more curated entry point for news, resources, and the intranet inside the flow of work. It’s a meaningful improvement. But it still doesn’t resolve governance at scale, campaign sequencing, frontline reach, or measurement tied to communication intent. Those are strategy and operating-model challenges, not simply platform features.   Stratifying the digital workplace Mature organizations stop debating tools and start clarifying use cases. Broadcast communication and collaboration get treated as distinct needs. That might mean an employee experience platform as the front door for leadership messages, Teams for project collaboration, and SharePoint for reference content. The entry point matches the moment, and employees learn to trust each channel for what it's built to do.   Over time, the conversation shifts from “Which platform should we use?” toward “What does this moment require?”   I don’t use that rhetorical line anymore, but the instinct under it still holds: SharePoint earns its keep when you stop asking it to deliver the entire experience. Pair it with a communication-first front door, let M365 do what it does best, and you’re not duplicating content — you’re meeting employees where they already are. In my experience, that’s where trust in the digital workplace begins.   \* \* \*   If any of this is landing for you, I go deeper on it here — or if you’re sitting with a version of this problem right now, I’d love to hear how it’s showing up. Reply to this email or message me on LinkedIn. 📚 Reading list Digital Workplace Group The hidden shift: How AI is rewriting the digital workplace Copilot is quietly becoming a shadow intranet. Employees are getting answers without ever opening the platform, and most digital workplace teams haven’t noticed the shift yet. Here are three signals to watch for. Full article → TechRadar The most critical digital workplace skill we still don’t know how to hire, measure, or reward Why do so many intranets get rebuilt every few years? The real problem isn’t the platform. It’s the absence of someone who can translate strategy into decisions before misalignment turns into confusion. Full article → Vision2Voice What happens when AI meets a messy intranet? Nobody sets out to build a messy intranet. It just happens, one abandoned page at a time. This piece is a friendly reminder that AI won't untangle that mess for you, but fixing it might finally be worth the effort. Full article → The answer is true. This isn’t just design instinct — it’s Gestalt psychology, which shows that humans automatically group and rank visual elements before consciously processing content. Learn more about intranet design best practices in our Intranet Lookbook. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe to The Workplace Rewrite to receive the next issue! Staffbase Inc., 408 Broadway St, New York, NY 10013, United States Unsubscribe Manage preferences Site Notice Privacy Policy |
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