Improve the IMPACT of the Intranet

If your Intranet has stagnated and is under used, it is time to work out how to attract staff back, even though creating and maintaining an effective Intranet is daunting.  You need to identify what you want to achieve with your Intranet.  You need to integrate your business goals as well as the needs of each department and its staff.  In addition you need to keep up with the times and with the technology.

Even re-jigging the Intranet seems like a huge task.  Where do I start?

As with any project, it is best to start by organising your team and defining the project.  To start off with you need to answer basic questions such as:

• What is the purpose of the Intranet? 
• Relevant to our internal communications goals, what do we want to achieve?
• Who will use it and how will they use it?
• What will it contain?
• What functionality do we need to achieve this?
Do the big thinking first, and then break up the project into a series of smaller projects.  You are likely to get more ‘buy-in’ and gain more credibility if your staff gain a series of benefits, and can see a series of improvements over time.

Have a clear vision and do your planning

Start by clarifying your communications objectives.  Your objectives should focus on creating value: selling more, saving costs, developing new products/services, attracting and retaining employees, etc.  You may need to carry out some research or conduct focus groups to understand the value that different departments hope to derive from an improved Intranet.

Next, put together your team. Having an effective, company-wide cross-functional team is really important.  It is a good idea to get a balance between representatives from IT, Comms and HR.

Consult with your Intranet team and key stakeholders to define why you are establishing or revamping your Intranet.  Ensure your objectives and strategies align with the business goals.

Then:
• Discuss what needs to be done
• Identify problems and possible improvements
• Drum up interest and buy-in across the business.
• Plan the first steps and decide how you will track and measure progress.

Try these tools

• A desktop staff poll can deliver company wide surveys to assess what’s working and what’s not with the existing Intranet.  It can also gather important information regarding the tools and resources people would like to see included on the revamped Intranet.  Desktop polls pop up on employee computer screens so does not add to email overload.  Built in reminders help drive participation which ensures that all views are represented in the research…including the important but often ‘silent majority’ who perhaps do not have extreme views or agendas and are less motivated to participate.

Staff surveys Poll should also be targeted to specific groups of employees, for example, managers and heads of departments.  Such individuals can be asked questions such as “what specific business value does / could your department derive from an effective Intranet?”, “How might this be quantified?” For example, a sales manager may say it is the number of accurate proposals that sales people are able to produce.  This research will provide an important perspective to help you make the Intranet effective and also help you quantify the value of the revamped Intranet at a later stage.

• In addition to quantitative research, an online staff discussion forum is a good way of enabling staff to engage in online discussions. It allows you to tap in to the likes and dislikes of staff with regard to the Intranet as well as to capture innovative thinking and possible solutions.

Use a staff discussion forum platform that is easy administer, easy to use and cost effective.  An employee discussion forum can provide a way to set up a secure Intranet project team discussion group.  This is especially useful if timetabling meetings is problematic because key team members have busy schedules.  A staff discussion forum allows stakeholders from other centres to be an active part of your team.  Your cross functional project team can ‘meet’ and discuss the status of certain aspects of the project, and share and capture ideas as they crop up.

Use an iterative approach

If your Intranet has started to stagnate, you may be tempted to go for a big fix.  It may be better, however, to identify the key areas that need improvement, and plan for small but effective fixes.  A series of successful, small wins will be much more effective than waiting for the one big, and sometimes elusive, win. 
Don’t let your Intranet grow haphazardly.  Try starting with a small project that has a really visible and beneficial result.  Make sure it is one you can deliver on.  A quick and effective win early on in the project gives you credibility and creates an ‘upward spiral of improvement.’
Measure and report on the progress of each ‘mini project’, tweak your plans if necessary, or even re-evaluate your whole approach if circumstances warrant this.

Try these tools

Communicating incremental changes can sometimes be even more of a challenge than the actual project, because you don’t want to overload users and send out boring updates every time a new feature is added.  However, users need to be kept up-to-date, interested and believing in the iterative Intranet improvement process.

Promote your intranet gently through multiple channels, and monitor readership to make sure you’re hitting the mark.

• Use a staff e-mag that is pushed to employees’ computer screens.  It can consolidate information into a visual, template format that’s dynamic and engaging to read.
An electronic staff magazine offers a unique way of profiling your project without cluttering up either the Intranet or your readers’ email inboxes. Short ‘news’ articles in the staff e-mag can inform readers of new information and the availability of new tools, as well as allowing readers to click directly through to the specific Intranet pages.

• For project ‘wins’ that you want to profile with more impact, try using screensavers.  Screensavers as a staff communications tool can raise awareness of key news and updates by turning employee screensavers into dynamic interactive bill boards.  An image is worth a thousand words.  For example, an image of a deck chair on the beach with relevant text and a click through link is a powerful and engaging way to notify staff that leave forms are now available on the Intranet.

• Targeted scrolling news feed that appears on employees’ computer screens, can provide a short headline and the facility for staff to click through to the specific pages of the Intranet.  Choose a format that does not require users to ‘opt in’ to specific feeds or for the Intranet itself to be RSS enabled.
 
Make it effective and drive usage

“Our Intranet is great for me personally. I spend hours online.”
Sounds great?  But ask yourself whether spending ‘hours online’ is a good measure of your Intranet’s efficiency?  Intranet usage alone is not a measure of success.  You need to find some way of ensuring that time spent on the Intranet equates to saving time, money and resources.  You’re not just building a resource for the individual user’s benefit – it has to be useful for the organisation too.

So how can you make your Intranet effective on a business level and make it great for staff on an individual level?

Start by finding out what would assist staff to work more efficiently, and what would attract them to your Intranet, so that when they visit your Intranet they are spending productive time there.
For example, what about making it easier to do all those regular tasks that staff undertake which often take up more time than necessary?  Think about things like finding contact details, booking meeting rooms, and all the other myriad of tasks that eat up your staff’s time.

Once you have planned and implemented your improvements, use other promotional tools to raise awareness of the new Intranet features, encourage disillusioned users back and to drive the usage and value of the Intranet.  You could consider using screensavers, news feeds, alerts, electronic magazines, quizzes and polls as promotional tools with click through links to relevant Intranet pages (as well as other more traditional mediums).

Try these tools
• A desktop staff quiz can offer an interactive quiz format that pops up on the employee’s computer screen.  It can be a great way of working out what staff like and dislike, know and don’t know about the Intranet.  It is a good way of ensuring staff involvement, as it is persistent and it can be fun.

• Business and product focused quizzes can contain links to the Intranet allowing users to research each question before answering.  A staff quiz can be a real asset if you are aiming to improve overall knowledge, increase Intranet usage, and help staff find the content they need on the Intranet.

• ‘Silent’ staff quizzes and surveys only appears when a link or button is clicked by the user.  This allows users to opt in to participate.  For example, a button can be included on relevant Intranet pages allowing users to ‘rate this content’ or ‘report out of date content’. When the link or button is clicked, the survey appears to capture user feedback.  Ensure results are centralised in the content management system.  This allows the Comms team to view reports at regular intervals in order to review Intranet effectiveness and / or send out update reminders to the Intranet content owners via a desktop alert.

• An online staff helpdesk allows people who are unable to find the information or answers they need on the Intranet to ask a question in an appropriate online ‘helpdesk’.  Moderators can be nominated for each ‘helpdesk’ and receive notifications when new questions are posted.  Moderators can answer questions directly or point the person to the correct part of the Intranet where an answer can be found.  Each specific question is tagged and searchable, meaning that past questions and answers can be easily located in an evolving repository of knowledge.