(Chicago, IL – Conference Board, Improving Employee Benefits conference) Despite the power and value of the intranet, the ultimate communications tool remains face-to-face communications. Employees want and demand face-to-face time. The intranet however is a powerful runner-up.

 

At the heart of your intranet is the employee – your target audience and most important stakeholder. Organizations that have effective employee communications reap the rewards with better…

 

·         morale

·         collaboration

·         organization loyalty

·         faith in management

·         productivity

 

Effective communications requires two-way, synchronous communications – not just messages pushed on a one-way street from the top floor executive offices.

 

 

Atomic Energy of Canada engages employees on their intranet home page by using a daily (or weekly) quick poll and via an interactive question box to company executives. Executive Online allows any employee to submit a question or comment to any senior executive via a home page input box with a drop down list of all the company’s executives.

 

Four principal types of information communications are captured and delivered via the intranet:

 

•         Those required by law

-   Health safety, regulation, …

•         HR Related

-    Benefits, compensation, career, social, …

•         Business Related

-   News, competitive arena, knowledge-share, …

•         Informal

-   Watercooler, coffee break, “grapevine”, ….

 

Effectively communicating this information (including tacit knowledge) requires a number key elements. Successful employee communications is…

 

•         Straightforward

•         Succinct

•         Targeted

•         Personalized

•         Memorable

•         Realistic

•         Integrated

•         Measurable

 

But what do employees really want to know? Information priorities include (source: Hewitt):

 

•         Company goals

•         Company financial results

•         Company news

•         Products and services

•         The competition

•         Industry trends and news

•         Employee recognition, rewards & benefits

•         How I can help the company reach its goals

 

Segmenting and organizing content by type and employee demographic should be a goal of any intranet, as illustrated on the Manulife Financial employee portal home page.

 

 

Prior to accessing the intranet, employees choose their preferred content language and their corporate position and geographic location via a self-select preference selector (menu). Content is served-up based on those employee preferences.

 

For the intranet, there are three key points worth reinforcing for employee communications:

 

  1. Planning – the essential requisite
  2. Leadership sets the tone
  3. Engaging employees

Successful intranets have a well-defined plan that accounts for employee needs and preferences and engages the target audience. As well, successful intranets are championed by senior management such as Cisco President John Chambers who has his own intranet home page with information on the corporate vision and his own blog-like entries called “on my mind.”

 

To establish an effective intranet plan, I recommend Prescient Digital Media’s intranet

 methodology; a project methodology built and refined after years of practice and work with dozens of clients including many Fortune 500 corporations:

 

 

The risk of failure remains high for those organizations that don’t follow an effective methodology in developing a thorough intranet plan. Gartner estimates that many IT projects exceed budgets and schedules by significant amounts: one third of projects exceed budgets and schedules by almost 100% in small to mid-size companies. Many, many other projects exceed budgets by 25-75% or more. Is a 50% cost overrun acceptable to your organization?

 

Death is often slow, but not without extracting significant time, money and jobs. One prominent financial services company purchased an intranet platform, a content management system, for $1.5M. The solution limited the number of publishers, the number of pages published, and couldn’t support same-day publishing. Worst of all, the company that supported the product went bankrupt, leaving the client with no support. One year after implementation, a $1.5M solution was scrapped. The company failed to do the proper assessment and plan.

 

A thorough assessment will eliminate a great deal of uncertainty and risk while securing buy-in from multiple stakeholders. The assessment fulfills three primary goals:

 

1.      identify the needs and requirements of users

2.     identify business stakeholder needs and requirements (and addresses the issue of ‘politics’ by engaging everyone who has a stake)

3.   identify industry best practices

 

Finally, Web 2.0 is redefining how we executive employee communications and the use of the intranet. Web 2.0 applications that have enjoyed success on the Internet are now delivering value on the intranet including:

 

•         Blogs

•         Wikis

•         Podcasts

•         RSS

•         Social bookmarking

 

For more on Web 2.0 tools see:

 

Blogging the intranet

Wiki the intranet    

Social bookmarking on the intranet

Podcasting the intranet at IBM

 

Develop and deliver content and tools that engage employees and meet their expectations while meeting the needs and requirements of the business as a whole – particularly the big three stakeholders in HR, Communications and IT. Mix in some best practices and you’ll have a winning communications program and a high-octane intranet that delivers measurable value and satisfied employees.

 

RELATED READING:

Top 5 killer intranet mistakes

Five Winning Intranet Characteristics

Nexus of Intranet Success

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: I always enjoy my trips to Chicago. It's such a great city that is one of the very best in the world for how it uses and designs its public spaces -- particularly the lakefront which is really spectacular (Toronto and New York could learn a thing or two). Many thanks to Lee Hornick for the fine meal at Maggiano's and for the fine company from Robin Hicks from AON Consulting in North Carolina. A *wave* to the new friends and colleagues (and old ones two) that I met at the conference. Oh by the way, I had lunch with my client and friend Sharon McIntosh from Pepsi at Blackbird. Sharon knows how to pick a winner. What a great restaurant -- voted in the Top 50 best restaurants in America -- and very reasonably priced.

On another note I'm very glad to see Ghana advancing to the second round in the World Cup -- what a talented and fun team to watch. Brazil is definitely the team to beat (with big kudos to Spain, Argentina and Germany) but I'd be wary of the talented group of footies from the African horn.

Finally, a special welcome to some of Prescient's new clients including the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (and long-time IABC colleage Jennifer Fergusion), the Canadian Institute for Health Information (Susan Anderson) and Vancouver Coastal Health (Ron Nielsen). Yes, it appears Prescient is doing a lot of work for healthcare clients!! 

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media