The 2026 ClearBox review of leading intranet and employee experience platforms has named Interact as top tier choice for 2026. ClearBox, an independent analyst firm specializing in intranets and employee experience, release their report yearly – a benchmark in the employee experience space.
Described in the report as offering a host of innovative AI features and a commitment to delivering a category-leading product, here’s our quick-fire guide to Interact’s latest employee experience features, what they mean for your organisation and how they can improve employee experience.
What is employee experience?
As you likely already know (but just in case you don’t!), the last few years have seen an explosion of attention paid to the workplace employee experience (EX) – the interactions and feelings an employee has with and about their organization.
A holistic view of the entire employee lifecycle, maintaining and improving EX has become a crucial priority for businesses around the world as they focus on creating an environment that values, supports and empowers their people.
As workplaces still grapple with the transition from traditional, office-based organizations to agile, flexible and remote global operations, EX has become one of the most valuable tools by which to analyze and impact company culture and employee engagement. It’s what potential employees look for, what your people expect – and what industry leaders strive to deliver.
The ClearBox review of Interact’s employee experience platform
Fresh from our recognition as an elite status platform in 2025, this year’s ClearBox report highlights not only our technical offering, but Interact’s unanimously positive customer feedback and superb level of customer service as well.
Describing Interact as a “mature product with excellent and varied features” and a market-leading solution built on almost three decades of experience, what separates Interact in this year’s report is Interact’s “significant innovation, especially around AI.”
Of equal praise is our continued investment in new capabilities, demonstrating “the vendor’s commitment to keep on delivering a top-tier product.” This was reinforced by fantastic customer feedback, with clients highlighting the “continuous innovation behind the platform” and a “thoughtful development roadmap that takes the customer experience to heart.”
What makes a positive employee experience?
At Interact, we believe that successful EX is built around seven pillars which combine to deliver a human-centred approach to workplace development.
- Communication: Clear and consistent communication builds trust and transparency, the foundation of any valuable relationship.
- Self Service: By empowering your people to work autonomously, they gain the confidence to develop an optimal working style and you gain a satisfied and committed workforce.
- Tool Access: A consistent and uniform approach to operations, and widespread system adoption is a must-have for an agile organisation that needs to adapt to real-life market conditions.
- Knowledge: Democratized knowledge and improved information access result in better informed employees. The result? The right people getting the right answers at the right time.
- Community: This one is a no-brainer. By supporting people to connect and collaborate, you unleash the full force of your peoples’ creative ability and their desire for upskilled productivity.
- Alignment: An aligned workforce is an optimized workforce. A positive employee experience encourages people to embrace task management hubs to track and contribute toward organisation goals and team progress.
- Recognition: Effective recognition can take many forms, but employees who feel their contributions are acknowledge are more likely to remain committed and aligned to organisation goals.
At its heart, an employee experience strategy is about truly understanding your people and shaping the human side of work. It aligns what the organization needs with what employees expect, creating a workplace where both can succeed.
When individuals feel appreciated and connected, they’re more likely to stay, contribute at a higher level, and champion the organization. It’s why improving employee experience is at the heart of business strategy in 2026, and why ClearBox tracks the leading platforms available.
How to improve employee experience in 2026
According to ClearBox’s independent analysts, improving employee experience isn’t about ticking boxes – it’s about delivering “excellent and varied features” that actually work for your people. Their 2026 evaluation assessed platforms across eight key scenarios, from communications management to frontline support. Interact scored 4 out of 5 or higher across every single one.
But here’s what really matters: how does our EX delivery experience translate to your employees’ day-to-day workplace experience?
Seven ways to improve employee experience with Interact
The ClearBox report highlights several areas where we excel at transforming employee experience. Here’s how each maps to what your workforce actually needs.
1. Make finding information effortless
ClearBox praised Interact’s “two-pronged approach” to search, combining classic indexing with semantic AI. The result? Employees ask a question and get an AI-generated summary with sources, not a list of documents to wade through. The analysts noted our Workplace Search features a “well-designed search results page” that genuinely helps people find answers.
For organizations drowning in content sprawl, this alone can transform the employee experience.
2. Reach every employee, everywhere
Your frontline workers cannot be an afterthought. Often the lifeblood of operations, people who are not tethered to a desk must nonetheless be directly connected to your mission and message.
ClearBox highlighted Interact’s “multiple options to enrol frontline workers” and specific content targeting for different mobile audiences so that they receive relevant information on their terms.
The report specifically called out the mobile app as “pleasantly contemporary” with features that “work equally well” as the desktop experience.
3. Create content that people want to read
Improving employee experience isn’t just about technical development and software roll outs. Internal communicators often battle with outdated tools that make even exciting news look dull, making the very business of keeping your people informed and connected a huge challenge. ClearBox found Interact’s Block Editor offers “powerful features to create content” with an experience that’s “rich in functionality and yet intuitive to use.”
The magic wand AI assistant particularly impressed – it can automatically generate FAQs, training guides, and quizzes from page content.
That’s not just a time-saver; it’s a way to make knowledge genuinely accessible.
4. Target the right message to the right people
Information overload is the bottleneck to engagement. You can’t just throw masses of content at the wall and hope the right things stick.
ClearBox noted Interact’s “strong audience targeting” capabilities, allowing organisations to create dynamic personas based on department, location, hire date – even physical presence on a specific site through geofencing.
The result of this is that employees see content that’s relevant to them, receiving a steady trickle of valuable insights instead of a firehose of company-wide announcements.
5. Build communities that connect
ClearBox awarded Interact 4 out of 5 for Community & Engagement, highlighting the “attractive activity feed with powerful AI-based moderation” – but what stood out was our practical approach to community-building: communities can be open, private, or hidden, with detailed reporting for community managers.
The gamification features – where employees give colleagues recognition points that can be redeemed for real rewards – transform peer appreciation from an HR initiative into something people actually use.
6. Keep content fresh and findable
Stale content erodes interest. Even worse, it erodes trust. If employees find outdated policies, they stop trusting the intranet altogether. ClearBox praised Interact’s “comprehensive content lifecycle management,” including the ability for every user to flag content that needs review.
The editorial calendar, enhanced with AI that detects busy days and high-engagement patterns, helps comms teams plan smarter instead of publishing faster.
7. Integrate the tools people already use
The secret sauce to boosting your employees’ productivity and improving their employee experience in one go?
Give. Them. What. They. Want.
Nobody wants another login to remember or a long list of tools and platforms to trudge through. ClearBox noted Interact’s marketplace of widgets that bring content from integrated systems including ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Microsoft 365 directly onto intranet pages. Notifications from external systems like Workday also feed seamlessly into Interact’s notification bell.
The Microsoft Copilot integration particularly impressed: employees can use Copilot’s chat interface and receive responses that include relevant Interact content.
That’s meeting people where they already work and giving them what they want.
The customer perspective
ClearBox ‘s 2026 report didn’t just evaluate software – it surveyed actual customers. The feedback for Interact was “unanimously positive,” with clients highlighting “continuous innovation behind the platform” and a “thoughtful development roadmap that takes the customer experience to heart.”
One customer descried their experience: “Interact consistently keeps pace with digital trends, regularly introducing new and helpful features.”
Our Customer Success Managers received particular praise as “knowledgeable, passionate and approachable” – a valuable reminder that technology alone doesn’t improve employee experience. Our most valuable asset – our people – is what helps you to value yours.
Ready to Transform Your Employee Experience?
Improving employee experience isn’t a single project, it’s an ongoing commitment to putting your people first. The ClearBox 2026 report confirms what we already know: the right platform makes that commitment achievable.
If you’re ready to explore how to improve employee experience with Interact for your organization and embrace the features that earned us “top-tier” recognition, our team are waiting to talk to you today.
Get in touch with our team today or download our ultimate guide to Planning and deploying a successful intranet.
