P.G. Daly's Intranet Talk:

In my last column, I shared with you the key conclusions from my recent Intranet survey. This time, I'd like to address the answers to the important questions of -- What do users want to see? What would encourage them to use the Intranet more often? And, most critical, what recommendations and actions do I have planned to address some of the biggest issues?

In one part of the survey, users were asked to rank the level of importance and satisfaction of attributes pertaining to the Intranet. The "gap" between importance and satisfaction identifies areas where improvement may be required. Users felt that it was very important for the Intranet to be "easy to use" yet they were not satisfied with the current level of "ease of use". They also felt some content was out of date. In addition, they felt that human resource and business specific information (remember my company is very decentralized) was not up to par.

When asked what would make it worthwhile for them to use the Intranet more often, users most often responded with requests for more company-wide information, training on how to use the Intranet, web interfaces to existing databases, and more current and up to date information.

While evaluating the results of the survey, some of the suggestions seemed like such "no-brainer" suggestions that it made me wonder how some of these items have slipped through the cracks. Items such as communication, training, and content being up to date for instance. These issues, however, partially stem from the company culture and the lack of active support by management from each of the businesses to promote and capitalize on the opportunities the Intranet presents to them. As a "shared service" group, since day 1, I have had no authority or political "clout" to "make it happen". Employees essentially take directives directly from their group's leaders. Thus, it is these leaders that must be sold on the value of the Intranet and take up the cause within their group.

I still believe that one of the biggest shortcomings of the way things are done today can be improved by simply stopping the old way of distributing information. Today, information may be available on the Intranet, but it is still distributed via all the old channels as well. If you continue to distribute announcements, press releases, and other information on paper as well as on the Intranet not only do you not drive traffic to the Intranet and change behavior patterns, but you also lose the potential to realize a return on investment from the Intranet. This is one easy and quick way to begin the transformation to an Intranet-centric organization and drive home the importance of publishing and maintaining information there.

As for communication and training, I plan to have a company-wide communication that will help to make employees aware of the Intranet's existence and what it can offer them. In addition, I intend to have user training-aids developed for the Intranet at large as well as several of the key Intranet offerings (for example , discussion boards and conference room scheduling). These will be short, succinct user-guides on how to get around and how to work the key features. There are 2 main stumbling blocks to getting these actions off the ground. 1) The Intranet is in dire need of a redesign, a new "look and feel" and 2) The decentralized authoring process is limping along at best. The easiest of these blocks to surpass is the redesign. I plan to redesign the look and feel and navigation of the site in a very short time frame using only a small focus group to provide a sounding board and sanity check of the new set-up. The most challenging of the stumbling blocks all along has been and continues to be - who manages and publishes the content? Currently it is supposed to be a decentralized effort. However, my author's capabilities (even with formal training) range from capable to clueless and more importantly, they have no time to devote to the Intranet. Why? Because the businesses have not made the Intranet a priority and have not committed sufficient and capable resources to the effort. These authors' actions follow one of the simple commandments of work-life: if its not important to my boss, its not important to me.

So, how do I plan to pull the pieces together into a more cohesive whole? First, I must do some work to redesign the site to make it easier for people to use and for authors to maintain. Then, I have enlisted the support of my boss (who does have the political clout to affect change within upper management) to meet (along with me) with each of the business' presidents to sell them on the benefits, discuss the issues, and obtain active commitment and resources from them to move the Intranet forward.

In theory, it all sounds so easy and logical. But as we all know, in reality, anything goes. So, whether these actions will transform the Intranet into the common daily resource for the entire company is yet to be seen; however, at a bare minimum, I believe with the support of employee feedback and a clear plan to obtain management support and capable resources, the Intranet can become much more effective in its role as a key company resource.

I'll be sure to share with you some of the successes and failures I encounter as I execute the plan. As always, if you have any comments, suggestions, or stories of your own to share, drop me a line at paulag@enter.net.

see part I

The Author