Almost 1 in 3 users find their company intranet is not useful in relation to daily work, according to the Annual Intranet Research Report by the Irish Computer Society (ICS).

Hardly surprising as most executives don’t give a dam about the intranet and are too stupid to see the potential value of the intranet to the greater organization. These are the same dolts that pay cheap lip service to “investing in employees” and the need to become “an employer of choice” in face of the great talent crunch. The intranet is a cost center, and as long as they continue to view the intranet as a “cost” and not an “investment”, the intranet will continue to suffer from chronic under-funding and deliver little value to the average employee.

This is not the case in some organizations, but the intranet is sub-par in the vast majority of organizations. The numbers in this report, with a sample of over 2000 companies, prove exactly how sub-par the intranet is:

• Half of all users find the Search function on their company intranet ineffective.
• 80% believe navigation and search need improvement.
• 2 out of 3 company intranets fail to provide an accessible or text only version.
• 1 in 3 users find it difficult to access the right information on their company intranet.
• Accessing staff and personal contact details like phone directories represents the most common recurring activity.
• 70% describe their intranet as 'A communication and information resource'.
• Almost half say they don't actually use the company intranet to support their daily work.
• Over 50% say they have remote access to intranet from home or mobile device.

Before you argue and try to convince me that this is only a research report and findings from Ireland only (that is correct), I’ll tell you the findings would almost be identical in North America and most other European countries too. Some in fact would be worse.

Tom Skinner, Managing Director of pTools Software, is kinder in his assessment but you can read between the lines: “Although the trend is towards more sophisticated development, getting the basics right is essential for intranet end-users and that the research showed a healthy level of intranet development but also a recognition of the need for improvement.”

Here’s another telling quote from the report which I could not say better myself: “The ICS 2007 research confirms that getting the simple things right delivers the most powerful results for end-users and getting them wrong causes the most frustration and dissatisfaction.”

View the entire ICS 2007 Intranet Research Report (undertaken by Amarach Consulting and sponsored by pTools Software for CSI).

Read last year’s results and my analysis: Slack employees fail to take advantage of the intranet.

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Your intranet is not a dumping ground. The intranet is not the recycling bin for newswire press releases.

I’ve seen more than a couple intranets that featured news content that was little more than a collection of external press releases reposted as internal news. Sadly, most of these press releases are not even rewritten for employees, and contain the same release formatting including the ubiquitous “for immediate release.” Even worse, I can recall several intranets where these press releases not only make-up the majority of employee news (with the odd United Way event announcement), but are just PDFs of the external press release!

Firstly, employees demand direct communications – not press releases. Ignore them at your peril. The Watson Wyatt 2005/2006 Communication ROI Study 2005/2006 study found evidence that communication effectiveness is a leading indicator of financial performance AND for improving HR and employee engagement and retention.Among the findings:

·         Companies that communicate effectively have a 19.4 percent higher market premium than companies that do not.

·         Shareholder returns for organizations with the most effective communication were over 57 percent higher over the last five years (2000-2004) than were returns for firms with less effective communication.

·         Firms that communicate effectively are 4.5 times more likely to report high levels of employee engagement versus firms that communicate less effectively.

There’s far too many resources on “writing for the web” and many, many articles and books. But just review very quickly:

·         Be succinct: text should be limited to 50% of the words you would write in print

·         Writing should follow the ‘inverted pyramid format’ with the most important content at the beginning

·         Use simple sentences and limit the use of metaphors

·         Use humor with caution

·         Correct spelling and grammar is a must

·         Plain English/French must be used when creating links, headings, site names, and forms

·         Task or scenario-based content should be used instead of organization jargon. (e.g. "Order a computer" instead of “CompuDesk”)

·         Avoid jargon

Read Writing for the Web for a more complete overview.

For those writing press releases, you need to do a better job too, but you’re turning out a lot of crap. But not to worry, so are most.

Read Reinventing the press releaseto learn about writing a better press release.

Finally, The Corporate Marketing E-Business team is looking to hire a User Experience Manager at Russell Investments in the Tacoma, WA area. This position serves as a Russell-wide consultant for user interface (UI) and usability issues to ensure that Russell's Web sites, intranets, and Web applications map to user needs and deliver a compelling user experience.

If you’re interested email Melanie <mlopez@russell.com> or visit Russell.com.

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