A global intranet survey of 101 companies by France-based intranet strategy consultant Jane McConnell has revealed what many of us have suspected – only 13% said their senior management perceived the intranet as "business critical".

I’ve long said that the vast majority of senior executives think of the intranet as just another ‘cost center’. Jane’s survey findings certainly reinforce this notion. The final report and findings are not yet ready but Jane has shared some of the initial findings:

• The most important factor of organisational complexity is the high number of offices & locations. Language barriers came next to last on the list.
• 55% said their employees would be disturbed in their work if the intranet "went down" for 1 to 2 hours.
• The main obstacle preventing the intranet from achieving its potential is that it is "too communication" and lacks integrated applications. (cited 58 times out of 95 respondents.)
• A factor that slows down strategic decision making is "lack of awareness of the potential role of the intranet" - cited 71 times out of 98 respondents.
• 47 out of 99 expect their intranet budgets to increase over the next 2 years. (good for us!)
• Only 26% are required to measure ROI to justify new or current investments.
• Out of 101 participants, 28 have implemented internal blogs and/or external blogs and/or wikis.
• 18 have implemented internal blogs, 21 more plan to do so soon.
• Out of 68 respondents, 32 have a general taxonomy across the organisation, 34 have specific, detailed taxonomies for some business and functions, 11 have taxonomies for specific, temporary project teams. (multiple answers possible.)
• Bottom up and horizontal information flows are much weaker than top down flows. (I have different stats per region and size of organisation.)
• Only 13% said their senior management perceived the intranet as "business critical".

Survey sample:

• 101 organisations: 87 private companies, 6 world organisations, 5 public service and 3 other.
• Regions: Headquarters based in Europe (58%), North America (29%) or Asia Pacific (12%).
• Size of organisation: Under 5000 employees (20%), from 5 to 15,000 (29%), from 15 to 50,000 (25%) and over 50,000 (25%).
• Organisational structure: De-centralised (29%), Integrated (21%), Matrix (47%), Other (4%)
• Over 57% of the organisations operate in over 20 countries.
• Over one third have from 2 to 4 official languages.
• 27% of the organisations have three-quarters knowledge workers.
• 21% said that about half of their employees do not have individual access to the intranet.

A new webinar I’ll be hosting for Ragan next Wednesday, September 13, 2006 (12:30pm CST):

Intranets can deliver a lot of value to any organization—if done properly. However, winning intranets require a lot of time and focus on the big five (engagement, governance, planning, measurement and content). In this strategy-packed, one-hour webinar, your host, Toby Ward, will layout the tactics the best intranet managers use to plan, govern and measure a better site—while they build and maintain internal support from management and users.
 
You’ll understand how to build a plan that incorporates:

Engagement: Engage business owners and your users; ask them what they
want and need, and incorporate your findings into your intranet plan.
Governance: Strong executive support mandatory—accompanied by a well-defined ownership model.
Planning: The intranet is infinitely more complex than a Web site and needs a this orough blueprint. Ward will show you the best out there.
Measurement: Successful intranets have pre-determined Critical Success Indicators that deliver measured value—including ROI. Learn how to use these CSIs to measure your program.
Content: Content is still ‘king’ and ultimately what every users seeks. Learn the royal must-haves and must-avoids.

I know people love screenshots so here's a sneak preview of one (the Microsoft intranet):

Reserve your spot now: Top-five traits of a winning intranet: How to get them on yours

Radio Shack has hit a new low in employee communications and relations firing 400 employees by e-mail. What a fabulous organization.

Employees at RS’s Fort Worth headquarters got the following e-mail message last Tuesday:

"The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."

Spokeswoman Kay Jackson says however that employees were invited to ask questions regarding the layoffs via a company intranet site – prior to getting the official e-mail. You see Radio Shack drew on all its integrity and compassion by letting people know in advance that layoffs were in the works and that they would get an e-mail notification. If employees had any questions, go to the intranet.

Jackson said the electronic notification was "quicker and allowed more privacy" than using more tradiional methods such as using managers who could open their jaws and emote language. More from the Silicon Valley Reporter…

"It was important to notify people as quickly as possible," she (Jackson) said. "They had 30 minutes to collect their thoughts, make phone calls and say goodbye to employees before they went to meet with senior leaders."

At coffee bar areas on each floor, the company provided boxes and plastic bags for employees to pack their personal belongings.

"Things went very smoothly. Everyone left very graciously and very professionally," Jackson said.

Derrick D'Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never heard of such a large number of terminated employees being notified electronically. He said it could be seen as dehumanizing to employees.

"If I put myself in their shoes, I'd say, 'Didn't they have a few minutes to tell me?'" D'Souza said.

Shares of RadioShack rose 29 cents, or 1.6 percent, to close at $18.21 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Awfully kind of RS to give people 30 minutes – and plastic bags (they’re cheaper then most containers) – to get the hell out.

Why even employ people in communications? You could just automate all employee communications via e-mail engines and intranet postings. In fact, who needs e-mail?!?? That’s just a drain on servers. Just publish the layoff notice on the intranet with all of the names of affected employees. Individuals can search for their own name on the list and also instantly know the hatchet fates of their other fellow employees.

Better yet still, since layoffs are all about arbitrary savings and driving stock prices, just post the layoff notice on the intranet and fire the first 400 people who read the notice ‘cause we all know that if you’re surfing at work you’re not really doing your job – you’re just lazy and hence the firing is now for cause and you get to save all of those pesky buy-out packages!

Gob bless corporate America!

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ON A PERSONAL NOTE: Just got back from my one month vacation/paternity leave. Good thing too because with one of us getting up 4 or 5 times a night with the baby it's not necessarily low-stress keeping up a day job such as mine. But she got a new tooth!

I replaced one deck at the cottage, added to a second deck down at the lake, and managed to sneak in a couple of waterskis. I finished a couple of books (Mao: The Untold Story, and the third in a trilogy on Julius Caesar called Emporer: Death of Kings, and a whack of magazines). Other than that it was mostly parenting and catching snakes, frogs, crickets, etc. with my eldest daughter. Oh yeah, we also had a great visit with our friends the Goodmans from New York who visited for three days.

It was nice to be at the lake, though much cooler this year. It is in fact much warmer here in Vancouver (30 C today) so it's ironic having to come back west to warm-up.

So did I miss anyting interesting?

By the way, a welcome to our new client BC Hydro and a returning client HSBC!