Dear executives, A sad reality is that most of the hundreds
of intranets I have seen are a neglected waste of money that hinder productivity and don't
help organizations or employees.
The issues they have, though, can be prevented with focused, executive leadership;
by people like you.
Here are the ten things you should know about your intranet.
Number 1, the intranet should not be a second-class citizen to the public-facing website.
It can be a perfect tool for communication, collaboration, productivity, and even motivation.
Invest in it.
Number 2, the intranet needs a manager; a "the buck stops here" person who has the final say.
Choose wisely, this person should be a very good listener and skilled at corralling people
from all over the organization.
Number 3, there's no such thing as an "out-of-box intranet solution."
Sharepoint and everything else must be customized to meet organizational needs.
This means: hiring consultants and experts in that technology, or training your own current
staff to become experts.
If you do use whatever comes out of a box, it will not work for your employees.
Number 4, responsive design does not mean one design.
It means one code base; which is positive and represents cost-savings.
However, the team will still need to have enough resources to design the interface as it is
seen on desktop, phones, and maybe even tablets.
Number 5, ease of use means cost-effective spending, and is critical for intranets.
When we watch employees performing many tasks on intranets, we find that sometimes they
can't even complete some tasks, and they waste time.
The amount of time varies depending on ease of use.
When we convert time spent struggling with the intranet to money, we see that annual
cost at a company with 10,000 employees is between 8 and 13.5 million dollars.
Better user experience can not only reduce that amount, but can also eliminate issues:
like finding multiple versions of the same policy and risking legal or other negative
ramifications that result from an employee consulting the wrong information.
Difficult intranets reflect badly on management and the whole organization.
Don't give your employees a critical tool that's hard to use.
They'll hate it, and it might even cause higher turnover.
Number 6, allow non-business -- what you may think are fluffy -- features to appear on
your intranet; the soccer team schedule, selling your old lawn furniture, or getting reminded
about your favorite lunch offered in the cafeteria, are important to some of your employees.
Enabling this information on the corporate intranet shows you respect your employees
as human beings, and it helps them forge better working relationships with one another.
Number 7, recognize and put an end to in-fighting.
Natural tension between teams is going to happen, and can even be positive, because
it means each team knows what they want and cares about doing the things in a way they
feel is best; but squabbling prevents unity and making decisions that benefit employees.
Beware: the teams that have the biggest difficult sharing intranet ownership are usually:
HR, IT, and corporate communications -- the very teams you need to get an intranet done well.
Number 8, banish the egos.
The intranet is not supposed to appease stakeholders.
Nobody's information needs to be on the intranet's home page to be seen, found, or considered important.
In fact, more on the home page can mean more clutter, and that hardly anything is findable.
Number 9, you and all managers should communicate your goal or problem you want to fix,
not the design solution.
UX designers are good at promoting features and content, but they need to know your goals.
Tell them, but when you sketch something on a napkin, designers may think you want exactly that.
Regardless of your corporate culture, it's difficult for a designer to say no to any executive;
even if their experience tells them a design would be a catastrophe.
Your experienced designers can think of a better solution if you communicate what you want
to achieve: "more inclusive of all employees," "more modern-looking," "make sure everyone
checks out the Twitter feed regularly."
These are requests your UX designers can understand and act on.
"Do this thing Amazon does," is not.
Finally, number 10, shore up your intranet team with UX designers.
Since 2009, our contest awarding the 10 best intranets of the year, the average intranet
team size for these great intranets was at least 14 people.
And we recommend one UX person for every 9 other people developing the intranet.
I'll end with this.
One thing I learned in business school is that it can be difficult to motivate employees,
but it's very easy to demotivate employees.
Know that executive support can help a team transform a subpar intranet
into an outstanding motivational tool.