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Companies are rife with rumor when there's hint of drastic change or organizational instability. These rumors -- usually taking on the ghostly form of various characters from Dante's Inferno -- put a tremendous amount of strain on a company's staff. It can lead to employee fear, frustration, or apathy. This will eventually affect employees' output and productivity, not to mention their own mental well-being.

This is bad news for intranet owners because intranets are so much more than a collection of technologies, tools, and content. Intranets are made up of people who put their knowledge and expertise into the system. And when they're mentally and emotionally taxed, it will carry over to the system. An unhealthy and inefficient intranet team always translates to an unhealthy and inefficient intranet.

Strong and positive employee morale is vital to ensuring intranet content quality, employee collaboration, overall job satisfaction, and ultimately, employee retention. Unfortunately, these tough economic times are forcing companies to cut budgets, put R&D initiatives on hold, and downsize its staff.

There are many little things that can be done to ease the tensions -- warranted or not -- of a worried staff, but these three are crucial:

Don't keep employees in the dark

Nothing will stir up your staff more than the uneasy anticipation of some impending doom. It's that perceived calm before the storm where senior managers are constantly in closed-door meetings, walking with a bit more urgency in their step, talking in hushed voices, and seemingly avoiding direct contact with their staff.

Rather than treating employees like adults and informing them of the organization's goings-on -- real or imagined -- they keep employees in the dark for fear of riling them up and causing widespread panic. Silence, however, can be much more dangerous than the truth. The unknown allows the imagination to run wild and conjure up all sorts of ominous situations. But, more often than not, the truth doesn't meet the expectations of gloom and doom aroused by secrecy.

Uncertainty during tough economic times is a part of business life, but keeping employees completely in the dark magnifies the situation. Employees will begin feeling like they're passengers on a runaway train that they have no control over. And seeing as no one is telling them otherwise, employees will hunker down at their desks waiting for the sky to open up and strike them where they sit.

Instead of hiding behind a veil of secrecy, managers should treat employees like professionals and let them know what's happening. It's a manager's job to help their employees separate what's real from what's rumor. Discussing the current state of the intranet or the organization as a whole -- even if it's simply to dispel rumors -- will help eliminate the tension that can keep employees from doing their jobs properly. Take fear of the unknown out of the equation. Even if the truth is tough to swallow, at least employees will be working with hard facts, not the specter of conjecture which can sometimes do more harm. Managers must make themselves available

Whenever there's a climate of unrest and uncertainty, employees will naturally seek an outlet for their concerns and frustrations. They do this primarily when there's little-to-no reliable source of information. So, rather than having an educated discussion, they vent, they gossip, they curse, and they eventually draw their own conclusions.

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