Intranet DASHBOARD : Press Room : Bringing order to the chaos

Due to this lacklustre performance, some organisations have come to expect that staff will make minimal use of their intranet. Staff might log in to look up the phone number of a colleague or to find an annual leave application form, and that’s about it. If that sounds familiar, then your organisation is definitely missing out on the potential of your intranet to help staff to work faster and smarter, strengthen your company culture and let your staff feel engaged with an employer that listens.

In an economic climate where we’re all under pressure to do more with less, and employees are hyperaware that restructures, layoffs and hiring freezes are part of the job landscape, being able to engage directly with your staff isn’t just a nice thing to have – it’s a must.

The challenge is how to get staff to tune in every day. We’ve worked with over 800 companies to help them engage their customers online, so I’ll share a few tricks of the trade with you, as well as pointing you to some of the trends in online communications.

One trend I’ve observed this year has been the huge effort which different companies put into creating internal communications that suit the personality or culture of their particular company. Companies with strong corporate personalities are very easy to spot. Look at the strong culture enjoyed by Richard Branson’s Virgin companies. Talk to their employees and you’ll often hear Branson referred to as ‘Richard’. This is not just due to the admittedly larger than life personality of Richard Branson himself. The company has an ethos of being a fun, young place to work, and crucially, Branson has built a reputation as an approachable member of the team. This in turn has helped Virgin build a reputation as a company which supports corporate communication and makes staff feel valued and supported.

Hopefully your company already has a mechanism like your intranet which encourages employees to make suggestions on how to improve the business (if not, why not?) but again, you need to put some effort into lifting your corporate intranet above being just a phone directory to being a tool which encourages people to engage.

10 tips for a successful intranet

Develop a strategy, have a plan, and define KPI’s for your intranet so you can measure success and continue to improve
Appoint a role or team to oversee the development and ongoing management of the intranet
Take a phased approach for launching your intranet – an intranet is evolutionary and ever changing environment
Ensure it is the main place to access information. Upload all key company documents – ensure all appropriate content is transferred from server or directory on to intranet
Consider the use of role based home pages – this structure provides each member of staff with a more personalised section
Usablity is your key to success and audience usage. Ensure your intranet is engaging – use attractive design, intuitive navigation, clear defined layout
Invite users to offer feedback and suggestions – an effective intranet is constantly developing to suit the needs of its end-users
Ensure Search works! – effective search functionality is integral to building trust and faith in your intranet
Encourage staff to contribute content – staff-generated content encourages employee development and contribution, while features like footy tipping help keep things fun.
Keep the intranet up to date – all information should be current and accurate

Jetstar has made a real effort to ensure its intranet, nicknamed JEN, is seen as the ‘source of truth’ for the company. JEN is the hub for information and communication for Jetstar’s highly dispersed and well travelled team! JEN is accessible via secure extranet access 24/7 allowing staff to have all the information they require when they require it – whether they are in a hotel room, airport terminal or at home. Jetstar staff are kept informed via JEN and late last year, when Jetstar announced that Bruce Buchanan would take over as the new Jetstar CEO, JEN was used to open up the communication channels between Bruce and Jetstar staff. The corporate communications team set up an “Ask the CEO” section on the intranet which lets staff submit questions to Bruce.

A key factor which made “Ask the CEO” work for Jetstar was the fact that it made a top down commitment to give employees a direct line to the CEO. The company understood that to be credible, “Ask the CEO” would need to provide answers to difficult questions, not just easy ones. The corporate communications team put a process in place which lets Bruce answer batches of questions when he has time, and refer more specific questions to the appropriate departmental heads. They also published staff guidelines for the intranet, so staff understand what behavior is expected of them. As a result, Jetstar has succeeded in getting staff from the CEO down, and across the different segments of the business actively involved in conversation in a constructive manner.

Jetstar case study

Jetstar has 3,000 employees spread across the Asia Pacific. Two thirds of its workers, including flight staff, are not office based and constantly mobile. Staff communication was a challenge, compounded by a costly dependence on the IT department. “Even the weekly e-newsletter needed IT involvement,” explained Jeff Martin, IT Project Manager for Jetstar.

In early 2008 Jetstar selected The ADWEB Agency's Intranet DASHBOARD solution, built on Microsoft’s .NET platform. Ease of use was critical, as content administration was being moved to non-technical staff.

Three months after launch, nearly 100% of staff were active intranet users. Significantly for a business with constantly travelling staff, 1500 have already accessed the site remotely. The external access means staff can always be connected with the company, no matter where they are working.

SEEK case study

In July 2008, SEEK recognised its existing intranet couldn’t keep up with the increasing amount of information its customer service staff needed to do their jobs. “As we increased the size and diversity of our product offerings, the range of questions we started to receive increased too,” said Meahan Callaghan, SEEK’s Human Resources Director and the project sponsor.

The company’s existing intranet couldn’t accommodate the growing need for frequent updates. “Even a small change required the involvement of our IT department,” said Callaghan.

SEEK selected Intranet DASHBOARD’s iD solution due to its feature rich, off-the-shelf value proposition, which suited its requirements for a speedy and cost effective solution. “It made sense from a time and cost perspective,” said SEEK’s IT Manager Glen Cameron.

Another key benefit was the business could manage the intranet themselves, rather than relying on IT.

Almost immediately after launching in October 2008, SEEK’s intranet started delivering on its objectives.

“The big benefit has definitely been realised, faster than we thought,” said Callaghan. “The most significant effect for us was the ease of content updating and publishing. You can be a non-technical person and still load content – that’s wonderful.”

Employees are becoming more and more comfortable in accessing and sharing information online. Social networking tools such as instant messaging, Facebook and Wikipedia have taught even casual internet browsers how to search for, share and edit information. Now more than ever intranets can be relied on as the key tool for internal communication and information. It is time to do away with outdated old fashioned printed material and have faith that your audience will embrace an intranet.

In many cases, employees are clamouring to be able to use the fastest, easiest ways to work, share information and work collaboratively. Where you can use internal tools like an intranet to help them work this way, you can ensure that staff communications and sharing of company data stays internal to the company, rather than being hosted online or by third parties out of your control.

We are helping customers adopt a collaborate but maintain control approach, a cautious approach to collaboration via an intranet. With the latest release of our software Intranet DASHBOARD - iD Version 3.0 intranet administrators and employees have the ability to create and edit content, but with a number of tools included in the software to manage, maintain and govern the intranet and its content, including page templates, permission structures and moderation controls.

Through the Global Intranet Benchmarking Survey, we have really seen a maturing of the corporate communications space and how companies use intranets. In particular, the ownership of intranets moving from IT to communications roles. When communications people manage intranets end users are submitting more and more content more regularly. Out-of-the-box, fully featured intranet solutions such as iD, empower users with easy to use tools and applications like polls, feedback forms and forums and so we are seeing an audience become liberated and now integral to the content supply chain of an intranet.

Like any technology, intranets are only as good as the content they provide and the communication they facilitate. Behind any good intranet is a good corporate communications strategy, which considers the information staff need and delivers it in a fast, accurate and easy to use way. A good intranet helps bring order to the chaos by making sure employees have up to date information at their fingertips. Remember to ask staff what they need from the intranet – after all, communication is a two way street.