Intranet Blog

Too many executives are screwing your employees

Toby Ward — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:25:31 -0800

(PARIS) Only one in five organizations have senior executives that think the intranet is mission-critical, according to Jane McConnell’s annual Global Intranet Trends Report. While this is embarrassingly low, and quite frankly shameful, this is up 5% from last year. Frankly, however, it’s far too little and most likely too late for far too many organizations.

At this rate a majority of corporations will treat their intranet with the importance it deserves sometime in the next decade. The remainder will follow in their footsteps sometime over the next millennia. I am wholely embarrassed for these executives who probably would rate their customer-facing website as mission-critical, but openly neglect and screw-over those employees whose job it is to serve those customers!

Some other disturbing trends:

Only 20% of study participants ‘absolutely’ agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to facilitate collaboration
Only 22% absolutely agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to facilitate productivity
60% absolutely agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to distribute information
“Help generate business opportunities” is not seen yet as an important purpose of the intranet

I guess the intranet is nothing more than a newsletter with a phone directory for most. It is sad, but true. Of course, this won’t change unless you (both intranet managers and consultants) learn to put on your sales hats and begin promoting the potential of the intranet by actively showcasing leading examples (many of which have been highlighted here on IntranetBlog.com (see the Intranet Case Studies) because these narrow-minded, old-school, windbag executives won’t learn any other way. So it is incumbent on you to ‘sell’ the intranet.

Nor surprisingly the top 3 “serious obstacles” according 40% of respondent organisations:

Intranet not seen as a priority
Lack of awareness of the potential role of the intranet
Lack of ownership at a senior level

My rant notwithstanding, and not to undermine the quality of this superlative report, Jane’s report is a very good read chalked full of excellent statistics and findings. Here are some more findings from Jane (see Highlights from the 2007 Global Intranet Survey Reports - just published) of the study of 178 company intranets (medium to large organizations with 5,000 to 100,000 employees:

The intranet already is “the way of working” or will be in 1 or 2 years for over half the organisations in the survey population. Half say that today employees would be disturbed in their work if the intranet “went down” for 1 to 2 hours, with the figure reaching 3 out of 4 if it “went down” for 24 hours.
3 out of 5 organisations are “not really satisfied” or “not satisfied at all” with their intranet search.
Well over half respondents have “less than one person” who works on supporting and optimising search. Very few have taxonomies, and not nearly enough do analysis on the search logs.
Intranet 2.0 tools and technologies are being tested by a majority of organisations and visibly integrated into the intranet by many.
Organisations where the intranet already is or will soon become “the way of working” are more involved in 2.0 than the others. 4 out of 5 compared to 3 out of 5 in the full survey population).
1 out of 3 of these organisations have established an official 2.0 strategy.

The Global Intranet Trends Report is a very worthwhile report and should be used as a frequent reference for building your intranet business case. You can purchase it for $525 – or even better, purchase the enhanced he Global Intranet Analysis Report at $1175.

PS - If you would love to tell off your executives about their lack of support for the intranet but are afraid of the consequences then feel free to quote me directly... or send them an "anonymous" link to this page... maybe they'll feel that slap in the face and decide to do something about it by giving you a little more money to do your job -- a most valuable job indeed. I'm happy to put them in their place -- or tactfully and diplomatically advise them -- on what your organization needs to be successful.

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1 in 3 find intranet “not useful”

Toby Ward — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:20:17 -0800

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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The same old intranet crap

Toby Ward — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:51:00 -0800

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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Intranet change management

Toby Ward — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:35:14 -0700

For many organizations, an intranet makes a fundamental change in organizational communications, and also, business process. A change management communications program is a requisite for any intranet launch.

“Even for logical change, many people will be offside,” adds Harris, the author of Change Leadership: Inform, Involve, Ignite! “Don’t underestimate the normalcy of “resistance” and find ways to integrate that resistance into change efforts.”

In short, intranet change management becomes an exercise in “selling” or communicating not only the reason and purpose for the change, but especially anticipating and directly addressing the spoken AND unspoken fears (or apathy) of employees.

Read my complete article: Intranet change management

Intranet community at MyRagan.com

Toby Ward — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:44:09 -0700

The new social media is really impressive. Not just blogs and wikis, but the whole cultural dynamic of people collaboration. I'm astounded by how fast it is growing. It's not growing as fast on the corporate intranet, of course, but it's growing.

From my post on the Content Matters blog:

Firstly, before I end this unpaid advertisement for the *free* membership in MyRagan.com, let me say how impressed I am by how easy it is to sign-up, and how easy it is to use. Some people know me as an ‘intranet guy’ (and that’s how my wife knows me, my children too, friends, the kids across the street, that dog down the block… I do Internet too, I swear!) so I went into the Internal Communications discussion forum (click on “Forums” and then choose “Internal Communications”) to have a look. I noticed Anne in Regina needed some advice on building a business case for an intranet. So I gave her my thoughts and offered to send her my white paper on Intranet ROI. Bang! She got help. And many others are finding help and similar advice, or if you’re Steve Crescenzo, whining about some kind-of-something, too-many-martinis, and a fall off an airplane…

Continue reading "MyRagan is living proof of the new revolution" »

Intranets do not replace face-to-face communications

Toby Ward — Mon, 14 May 2007 20:02:15 -0700

According to a Harvard Business Review study of Project Management Best Practices in Global 500 Enterprises face-to-face meetings and interaction in the work place is declining rapidly – and instead many teams are working virtually. Among the results from the study:

fewer than 4% of teams ever meet physically as a whole
fewer than 17% even have individual team members meet in person
more than 66% of teams include members from at least three time zones
57% are cross-functional
48% extend beyond company walls to include outside contractors, agencies, counsel, outsourcers and other third parties

“The implications of this study are clear: the notion of collaboration as something that happens around a conference room table is quaint and outdated,” says Chris Cummings in his articleWhy Document Management and Portal Implementations Fall Short ... “While the physical project space has become a thing of the past, the need for a unifying collaborative environment remains no less critical. This role must now be played by software: to provide a virtual project space that can serve as the primary platform for work team productivity.”

This of course is garbage. The physical space has not become “a thing of the past” and “the role” must NOT be played by software. We are all people and the intranet and all of its supporting software and interconnected applications are supporting and enabling technology – not replacements.

Technology and supporting software are important to effective communications. In fact, they’re critical components. But they will NEVER replace face-to-face communications.

Many studies support the notion that communications has less to do with what you actually say than how you say it (including tone of voice and non-verbal expression and gestures). We hear this all the time during an election campaign and the post-analysis of candidate debates. This is just as true with employee communications.

Here’s a test: ask different workers about the quality of their relationship with their boss and the quality of the direction and guidance they receive from their manager. Now ask them how much time they spend face-to-face with their boss. I guarantee you will see the corollary. Generally speaking those employees with higher job satisfaction have a better relationship with their immediate manager than those that don’t have a satisfactory (or less than satisfactory) relationship with their manager. Without a prior one-on-one relationship it is very hard to have a good relationship with someone without face-to-face time.

“Despite the rise of emails and intranets, employers still value face-to-face sessions the most when it comes to keeping staff up-to-date, according to a British survey,” states a report from Management-Issues (see You can't beat face-to-face communication). “The study by specialist journal IRS Employment Review found that, while organisations do now use an extensive range of communication methods, including online systems, handbooks, newsletters and memos, team briefings, executive briefing sessions and road shows tended to work best.”

And effective communications is critical to any organization. It’s not just about staffing, project management and supporting technology.

The Watson Wyatt 2005/2006 Communication ROI Study 2005/2006 study found evidence that communication effectiveness is a leading indicator of financial performance. 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.

Don’t think for a second that because you have a great intranet and other supporting technologies that face-to-face communications don’t matter – or matter less. If anything, a great intranet can distract management and communicators from the need and importance of face-to-face communications.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: I love Microsoft Windows XP!! What a difference! What quickness and performance! (But what a brutally painful experience getting back to it).

I’m sorry I haven’t written much as of late but the whole Vista experience has completely dominated by time not spent on critical business and management needs. (And though they were very polite and watch what they said the HP technical support staff have been swamped with complaints and requests for help). Nonetheless I’m back on XP and almost at 100% productivity once again.

Congratulations to Manchester United fans for winning the EPL title (note the Bombers did not beat Arsenal this year and lost to them at Old Trafford). Congratulations to Dallas Maverick fans on Dirk Nowitzki winning the MVP. I’m not sure I agree but congratulations! (Compare the records of the Suns without Nash and the Mavericks without Nowitzki and you’ll no what I mean).

Intranet usage: what is considered ‘good’ traffic?

Toby Ward — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:08:52 -0700

“How many visits a day/month should we get to our intranet?” It’s a common question I hear often (but for some reason I haven’t explicitly written about until now).

There is no rule of thumb because every organization is different and usage depends on a number of things including:

Corporate culture (value of communications)
Employee access (% with direct access to intranet)
Web competency (ability and comfort level using the intranet by employees)
Intranet value (is the intranet any good? Does it inspire use?)

If however the organization has a healthy culture and places a high value on communications where employees want to the use the intranet (and have access) because the intranet is of value then a large majority of your employees should be accessing it every week.

Here are some examples by some leading companies with great intranets:

Nordea: 70-80% of the employees visit the portal every day
HP: 95% of employees use the intranet on a monthly basis
British Airways: 94% of all employees access the intranet every month
IBM: 80% of all employees access the intranet daily
DaimlerChrysler: 70% of all users in Germany — including 120,000 blue-collar workers — log in at least once per month
Microsoft: 60% employees visit MSW once a day or more, and an additional 25% use MSW at least a few times per week

If traffic or usage of your corporate intranet or portal is less than the examples above (factoring in access and competency) then your intranet is likely underperforming. In other words, the intranet isn’t very good and is not living up to the potential.

Usage and employee traffic will only be as good as the intranet and (the access to it) with mitigating factors for culture and competency.

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Nokia protest heats-up despite best communications efforts

Toby Ward — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:32:58 -0800

Persistent and innovative communications by Nokia has failed to lessen the damage of a poor business decision.

In the wake of employee howls of injustice and protest, Finish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reports that Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has decided to give up his personal bonus for the second half of 2006 (see Nokia employees walked out). Kallasvuo announced his decision in a blog entry on the company intranet on the heals of employee outcries over a cancelled bonus program.

Despite reporting record profit and revenue in January, Nokia announced that it would not be paying out special employee bonuses because the company failed to meet the board's goals (see Nokia's bad business is good communications). Employees were not to be paid, but under the plan executives were still to reap handsome bonuses. The outrage was predictable.

Read more of my article Nokia protest heats-up despite best communications efforts on Communitelligence.com.

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For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

How to talk to IT

Toby Ward — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:34:09 -0800

Communications folks see the world a tad differently from IT. And if men are from Mars and Women from Venus, then IT is from Pluto and Human Resources from Mercury. All very, very different individuals with greatly differing jobs. Yet all are expected to work together on the intranet and do so with effectiveness. Yeah right...

I know a lot of communicators and IT read this column, but probably a few more communicators than techies. And if you communicators want to redesign the intranet or build a better tool or get things done faster, then you need to learn how to talk the talk.

So in the spirit of cooperation and team building here are some of Catherine Elder’s recommendations for working with and talking with IT:

Put yourself in their shoes
Set project goals and communicate them
Involve IT in your project
Respect. Ask. Listen
Be prepared and do your homework
Become friends, or at least friendly, with your IT staff
Build a business case
Adjust expectations
Keep informed and share what you know
Appreciate

Good advice.

Read Catherine’s full article How to talk to IT staff.

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