Red Hot Take: The Intranet Was Never the Problem

A conversation with Jackie Carow, North American Agency Director, HAVAS People

Everyone is rushing to add AI to their internal tools. The promise? Better access to information, stronger employee engagement, a smarter workplace. But before organizations hit deploy, there’s a more fundamental question worth asking: Is your intranet actually set up to work?

Linda Descano, CFA®, HAVAS Red Group’s Global Chief Integration & Marketing Officer, sat down with Jackie Carow, Agency Director of Havas People, North America to find out.

Linda: What do most organizations get wrong about AI and their intranets?

Jackie: They treat AI as a fix for a content problem when it’s really a governance problem. AI can help employees find information faster, but if that information is outdated or nobody owns it, you’ve just made it easier to find the wrong answer quickly.

Linda: So, what should the intranet actually be doing?

Jackie: Three things. Helping employees find what they need. Pushing the right messages to the right people at the right time. And creating shared experiences — recognition, leadership visibility, community. That third job is where trust and culture actually get built, and it’s the one that gets overlooked most.

Linda: Where does AI genuinely help?

Jackie: The first two, absolutely. AI makes search faster and can personalize communications so a message lands differently for someone in Singapore than someone in Chicago. That’s real value.

The third ask of the intranet is trickier. Shared experiences remain the strongest drivers of trust and engagement. Internal benchmarks consistently show that when shared experiences are designed intentionally, they bring strategy to life because they translate ambition into behavior that employees can see and believe. But AI can’t manufacture belonging. AI can’t decide what stories matter or model the behaviors a company actually wants from its people. That takes human judgment.

Linda: What’s the risk if organizations skip that distinction?

Jackie: You get more activity, not more impact. There’s a tendency right now to mistake visibility for contribution. AI can accelerate that confusion if you let it; your intranet just becomes a faster version of the same broken thing.

Linda: What does a good intranet look like in an AI-first world?

Jackie: Governed. Someone owns the content. There’s a clear definition of what “good” looks like. And it’s designed as a place where culture is actively performed, not just posted about. AI handles speed and relevance. People handle meaning.

Red Hot Take is a HAVAS Red Group series featuring perspectives from across our global network.