Solving the connectivity crisis in UK housing

UK housing associations face a stark digital divide. While office-based staff have ready access to policies, forms, and internal communications, frontline teams—repairs officers, housing inspectors, and caretakers—often work from vans, tenant properties, or estate walkabouts. These dispersed teams need instant access to health and safety documents, up-to-date compliance checklists, and HR tools, yet many organisations still rely on clunky file servers or email chains that simply do not work for mobile staff.

Budget constraints make the choice even harder. Custom-built intranet platforms can run to tens of thousands of pounds, and most housing associations already pay for Microsoft 365 licences. That fact alone pushes many IT directors toward SharePoint as the “free” solution. However, out-of-the-box SharePoint sites often feel dry, lack mobile responsiveness, and require significant time to configure properly. This raises a practical question: should you stick with native SharePoint, invest in an overlay product like Omnia to polish the experience, or opt for a standalone software-as-a-service platform that sits outside your Microsoft ecosystem?

A team of professionals collaborating on a strategy whiteboard in a modern office.
Successful digital transformation in housing requires cross-departmental collaboration to ensure the platform meets the diverse needs of both office-based and mobile teams.

This article takes a pragmatic approach to that decision. We will examine what frontline housing staff genuinely need from an intranet, compare the cost and capability of SharePoint versus enhanced solutions, clarify UK compliance rules around cookies and data privacy on employee portals, and provide a realistic 30-day rollout plan. By the end, you will have a clear checklist to evaluate your options and choose a platform that actually serves your people rather than gathering digital dust.

What frontline housing teams actually need

The single most important requirement for any housing association intranet is mobile readiness. Repairs teams and housing officers spend their days on the road, visiting properties, conducting inspections, and responding to emergency callouts. If your intranet does not display properly on a smartphone or tablet, it becomes useless to the very staff who need it most. This means responsive design is non-negotiable, not a nice-to-have feature. Pages must load quickly on patchy mobile networks, navigation must work with a thumb on a small screen, and critical documents must be accessible in a couple of taps.

Offline access to essential compliance documents ranks just as high. Health and safety policies, gas safety procedures, asbestos handling guides, and fire risk assessment checklists cannot wait for a strong Wi-Fi signal. Frontline staff often work in basements, lift shafts, or remote estates where connectivity drops. An effective intranet solution needs to cache key documents locally or provide a downloadable policy library that works without an internet connection. Without this, teams default to printing reams of paper or guessing procedures on site, both of which create risk.

HR self-service tools must be simple and immediate. Housing staff work irregular shifts, handle emergencies, and rarely sit at a desk for hours. Booking annual leave, checking payslips, updating personal details, or submitting expense claims should take one or two clicks from a mobile device. If the process involves logging into multiple systems, navigating nested menus, or filling out complex forms, staff will avoid it and fall back on phoning the HR office. That defeats the entire purpose of digital self-service and wastes administrative time.

Social features such as employee forums, comment sections, or recognition walls often fail in housing contexts unless they solve a practical problem. Unlike corporate environments where staff engage with company-wide announcements, housing teams value targeted, operational content. A “shout-out” board may see little use, but a quick-reference page for local authority contacts, emergency contractor numbers, or tenant liaison officer schedules will be visited daily. When designing your intranet, prioritise utility over aspiration. Consider what staff need to do their jobs, not what feels modern or trendy.

Core mobile and offline priorities

  • Responsive design that works on smartphones and tablets without pinching or scrolling sideways
  • Cached or downloadable versions of H&S policies, compliance checklists, and emergency procedures
  • Single-click access to HR self-service: leave booking, payslips, personal details, and expense forms
  • Quick-reference pages for contractor contacts, local authority details, and emergency escalation paths
  • Search functionality that actually finds documents by common terms (not just file names)

Comparing SharePoint, Omnia and SaaS alternatives

Native SharePoint comes bundled with most Microsoft 365 subscriptions, which makes it appear cost-free at first glance. In reality, the “free” tag hides substantial configuration time and the risk of a bland, confusing user experience. Out-of-the-box SharePoint sites require careful information architecture, custom page layouts, and ongoing governance to remain usable. Without a dedicated intranet manager or skilled SharePoint developer, organisations often end up with a maze of document libraries, inconsistent navigation, and pages that look functional but uninspiring. For small housing associations with limited IT resources, this can mean the intranet becomes a burden rather than a productivity tool.

Omnia Intranet sits on top of SharePoint to provide a polished, user-friendly layer that solves many of these issues. It offers pre-built templates, drag-and-drop page design, mobile-optimised layouts, and governance features that make content management simpler. When evaluating options, looking at a well-structured Omnia intranet example for HR teams can demonstrate how superior design improves adoption compared to basic SharePoint sites. Omnia integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365, so staff still log in with their existing credentials and access SharePoint document libraries, Teams channels, and Outlook calendars. The trade-off is cost: Omnia licences typically run from a few thousand to tens of thousands of pounds annually, depending on user numbers and feature sets. For medium to large housing associations, this investment can pay off quickly through higher adoption rates and reduced support tickets.

Standalone SaaS platforms such as Workvivo, Unily, or Interact offer fast setup and slick user interfaces, but they create a data silo outside your Microsoft ecosystem. Staff must log into a separate system, documents live in a different repository, and integration with SharePoint or Teams requires additional configuration. These platforms often shine in features like social feeds, employee recognition, and targeted news distribution, which may or may not suit housing association workflows. The recurring subscription costs are comparable to Omnia, but the disconnection from your existing Microsoft tools can frustrate users who prefer a single sign-on experience.

Cost and capability comparison

Solution Upfront Cost Annual Cost (500 users) Mobile Experience Governance Tools Microsoft Integration
Native SharePoint Included with M365 £0 (licences only) Basic, requires customisation Manual, needs skilled admin Full, native
Omnia on SharePoint £5,000–£15,000 £8,000–£20,000 Optimised, responsive templates Built-in, user-friendly Seamless, native
Standalone SaaS £10,000–£25,000 £10,000–£30,000 Excellent, purpose-built Strong, platform-native Via connectors, requires setup

Navigating UK compliance and privacy rules

Many organisations mistakenly believe that internal employee portals sit outside the scope of UK cookie regulations. This is not the case. If your intranet uses non-essential cookies—such as analytics trackers, social media widgets, or marketing pixels—you must obtain informed consent from users under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). The Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on cookies makes clear that organisations need to tell users what cookies are set, explain what they do and why, and gain active consent before placing non-essential cookies on devices.

Essential cookies remain exempt from consent requirements. These include session cookies that maintain user login state, load-balancing cookies that distribute traffic across servers, and security cookies that prevent cross-site request forgery. If your intranet only uses these types of cookies, you do not need a consent banner, but you should still provide clear information about their purpose in a privacy notice. The distinction matters because many intranets inadvertently deploy analytics tools like Google Analytics or third-party chat widgets that set non-essential tracking cookies. In those cases, you must implement a compliant cookie banner that allows users to accept or reject categories of cookies, and you must respect their choice.

Handling sensitive tenant data requires extra care. Your intranet should never become a public repository for case notes, tenant contact details, or vulnerability information. Even within a secure employee portal, access controls must limit who can view what. For instance, housing officers may need access to tenant records relevant to their patch, but HR staff or finance teams should not. SharePoint and Omnia both support granular permissions at the site, library, and item level, allowing you to lock down sensitive content while keeping general resources widely available. Conduct a data protection impact assessment when setting up your intranet, especially if you plan to store or display personal data about tenants or staff.

Privacy notices on staff-facing platforms often get overlooked. Even though employees have a work relationship with your organisation, they still have privacy rights under UK GDPR. Your intranet should include a clear privacy notice explaining what personal data you collect (such as user activity logs or search queries), how you use it, how long you keep it, and who has access. This notice should be easy to find, written in plain English, and updated whenever you add new tracking tools or change data handling practices. Transparency builds trust and helps staff understand why certain information is collected.

Cookie and privacy dos and don’ts

  • Do audit all cookies and tracking scripts on your intranet before launch
  • Do provide a clear cookie policy and privacy notice accessible from every page
  • Do implement granular permissions to protect sensitive tenant and staff data
  • Do allow users to withdraw cookie consent easily and respect their preferences
  • Don’t assume internal sites are exempt from PECR just because they are employee-only
  • Don’t deploy analytics or social widgets without checking if they require consent
  • Don’t store tenant case notes or vulnerability data in publicly searchable intranet areas
  • Don’t bury privacy information in lengthy legal documents—keep it clear and accessible

Your 30-day rollout roadmap

Week one focuses on content audit and clean-up. Before you build a single page, comb through your existing document repositories, shared drives, and old intranet sites to identify what actually matters. Housing associations often accumulate outdated policies, superseded forms, and duplicate guidance over the years. Delete obsolete content ruthlessly, consolidate duplicates, and flag documents that need updating. This process may feel tedious, but it prevents your new intranet from becoming a dumping ground. Assign owners to each remaining document so someone is accountable for keeping it current.

Week two covers technical setup and structure. If you are using native SharePoint, this means creating site collections, setting up navigation menus, defining permission groups, and configuring search. If you have chosen Omnia, the setup is faster thanks to pre-built templates, but you still need to map your information architecture. Decide on your top-level categories (such as HR, Operations, Health and Safety, IT Support) and create placeholder pages for each. Test the structure on mobile devices to ensure it works well on smaller screens. At this stage, do not worry about populating every page with content—focus on getting the skeleton right.

Week three is all about content population and champion training. Identify a small group of “intranet champions” from different teams—ideally people who are trusted by their colleagues and understand frontline needs. Train these champions on how to add content, edit pages, and manage permissions. They become your first line of support when the intranet goes live. Work with them to populate the most critical pages: health and safety policies, HR self-service links, emergency contact lists, and frequently requested forms. Keep the initial content focused and high-value rather than trying to migrate everything at once.

Week four is your soft launch and feedback loop. Roll out the intranet to a pilot group of 50 to 100 users, ideally a mix of office and frontline staff. Collect feedback through a short online survey, informal conversations, and usage analytics. Look for pain points: pages that load slowly, confusing navigation, broken links, or missing content. Address the quick wins immediately and plan fixes for larger issues. Encourage the pilot group to share the intranet with colleagues and become advocates. Once you have ironed out major problems, you can proceed to a full organisation-wide launch.

Four-week launch checklist

  1. Audit existing documents, delete obsolete content, assign content owners, and consolidate duplicates
  2. Set up technical infrastructure (sites, navigation, permissions, mobile testing) and finalise information architecture
  3. Train intranet champions, populate high-priority pages (H&S, HR, emergency contacts), and ensure mobile usability
  4. Run a soft launch with pilot users, gather feedback via surveys and analytics, fix quick wins, and prepare for full rollout

Keeping content relevant for property professionals

The quickest way to kill an intranet is to let it become a digital graveyard of stale news and outdated policies. Housing staff will abandon a portal that only posts birthday announcements and corporate platitudes. Instead, focus on operational content that helps people do their jobs. For example, you can adapt real estate blog content ideas for your intranet news section, covering topics like local housing market updates, new tenancy regulations, energy efficiency schemes, or changes to building safety requirements. This type of content keeps staff informed and positions the intranet as a go-to resource rather than a vanity project.

Using the intranet to educate staff on market trends makes particular sense for housing associations that manage mixed portfolios of social and market-rate properties. For instance, you can use market cycle insights in an internal knowledge hub to help lettings teams understand when rental demand is likely to rise or fall, or to brief sales staff on buyer sentiment. These insights equip frontline teams to have smarter conversations with tenants and applicants, and they demonstrate that the intranet offers real professional value.

Creating resource pages tailored to departmental needs drives sustained engagement. A lettings team benefits from a page that consolidates tenancy agreement templates, referencing guides, and links to credit check services. Sales teams appreciate a library of property marketing tips, conveyancing checklists, and stamp duty calculators. Repairs officers need quick access to contractor contact lists, parts suppliers, and diagnostic guides for common maintenance issues. When each team finds content that directly supports their work, they return to the intranet regularly. Centralising this knowledge also reduces the endless email chains where staff ask colleagues for information that should be readily available.

Practical content ideas for housing intranets

Choose a platform that serves your people

The most important lesson in choosing an intranet is to prioritise user experience over technical features. A beautifully designed platform loaded with social feeds, gamification, and video walls means nothing if frontline staff cannot find the health and safety document they need on a mobile phone in a poorly lit stairwell. Whether you stick with native SharePoint, invest in an Omnia overlay, or opt for a standalone SaaS solution, the decision should hinge on what actually works for your dispersed teams. Mobile usability, offline access, simple navigation, and fast load times matter far more than trendy features that look impressive in a sales demo.

Governance remains the foundation of a successful intranet regardless of platform. Appoint clear content owners for each section, establish a regular review schedule to keep policies current, and empower your intranet champions to maintain their areas. Without governance, even the best technology will degrade into a cluttered mess. Start by addressing the mobile needs of your field staff and work backwards from there. Test every page on a smartphone, ensure critical documents are accessible in two clicks, and ruthlessly cut anything that does not serve a clear purpose. Review your budget and compliance checklist one last time, then commit to a platform and launch date. Your teams deserve an intranet that actually helps them work, not one that gathers digital dust.

Author lukas
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