Do You Treat Confluence Like an HR Knowledge Base, an Intranet, or Something Else?

[Sweetlana Portnaya_Seibert]

I’ve learned that many teams who use Confluence in very different ways: a strict documentation hub, a lightweight intranet, or a communication platform. Even in my own exploration of it as a content manager, Confluence is flexible enough that no two organizations use it in exactly the same way.

Some teams, like HR and people, treat it as the single source of truth for policies, onboarding guides, and FAQs. Others adopt Confluence as a central communication space where announcements, updates, and team stories live. And plenty use it as a hybrid: part wiki, part intranet, part collaboration space.

But this same flexibility also introduces an interesting challenge: structure is optional, and that means teams must intentionally decide how they want employees to experience their HR content.

So I’m curious:

How does your HR or People team use Confluence today?
And what do you think makes that approach successful (or challenging)?

Why these question matter

HR content is unique… It’s high-impact, frequently updated, and touches every employee. Yet it often struggles with visibility, consistency, and engagement. I’ve noticed that the way teams use Confluence shapes the kinds of issues they run into.

Here are a few common patterns I’ve seen:

1. The “Knowledge Base” Approach

Great for storing official policies, forms, templates, and onboarding materials.

Strengths:

• Reliable single source of truth
• Easy to maintain with structured content
• Works well with search

Challenges:

• Employees often struggle to find the right information
• Pages can feel dry or static
• Navigation becomes cluttered as content grows

This is the setup where findability gaps become the biggest pain point — even when the content is solid.

2. The “Lightweight Intranet” Approach

Confluence becomes a hub for updates, announcements, and employee-facing communication.

Strengths:

• Central place to share what’s happening
• Good for recognition, storytelling, and engagement
• Helps build transparency

Challenges:

• Hard to maintain consistent branding without templates
• Updates can get buried or go unread
• Employees may not treat it like a “destination”

3. The “Communication + Knowledge Hybrid”

The most common model — part documentation, part communication center.

Strengths:

• Flexible and scalable
• Lets HR serve multiple needs (policies + updates + culture)
• Adaptable for different teams or regions

Challenges:

• Requires an intentional information architecture
• Risk of duplicate or conflicting content
• Harder to keep everything fresh and consistent

This hybrid approach is powerful, but without processes for governance and content reviews, outdated information and style inconsistencies creep in quickly.

Where things typically break down

Across all three approaches, I’ve seen repeating issues emerge:

• Employees can’t find what they need even when it’s clearly documented
• HR announcements go unread amid the noise of other workplace tools
• Branding and tone drift when multiple authors create content
• Pages become outdated because reviews aren’t scheduled or workflows aren’t clear
• Communication feels one-way instead of interactive or engaging

These aren’t Confluence limitations. They’re the natural growing pains of any organization trying to scale internal communication without an intentional structure.

So… How are you using Confluence today?

I’d really love to hear from others in the Community:

Do you treat Confluence primarily as an HR knowledge base, an intranet, or something in between?

What’s worked well in your setup?

What challenges around navigation, engagement, governance, or consistency have you run into?

I recently wrote a deeper dive on the top internal communication challenges HR teams face and how different approaches can strengthen your overall strategy. If you'd like to explore those themes further, you’re welcome to read it here: “The Top 5 Internal Communication Challenges HR Teams Face — and How Seibert Can Help Solve Them.”