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Intranets Foster Teamwork, Communication
By Pamela Babcock, October 2008
Corporate intranets are evolving into an interactive communication tool that can help employees work smarter and network with colleagues around the world.
Intranets were first launched in the early to mid-1990s. A June 2008 Online HR Tools Study by Buck Consultants found that of 74 organizations who responded, 87 percent said that their organizations had an employee intranet; of that figure, 78 percent reported that their intranets were "frequently used."
"That's fairly significant, because even a few years ago we were down around 50 percent availability," says Randy Tyson, director of global HR technology & administration for Buck Consultants in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Society for Human Resource Management's Technology & HR Management Special Expertise Panel.
But intranets shouldn't replace other forms of employee communication such as e-mail, meetings, payroll stuffers and supervisor conversations. Instead, experts say, a strategic communication plan includes all of these things.
Alison Davis, CEO of Davis & Co., an HR communications firm in Glen Rock, N.J., says most companies use other forms of communication, such as newsletters and e-mail, to highlight company programs and then invite those who want "the full story" to check it out on the intranet.
"That seems to work well because you don't want your employees sitting at their desks trolling the intranet all day," Davis explains. "You don't want to overload people with all the details in the 'push' communication," she says, but instead give them highlights that will draw them to your intranet.
But the ease with which information can be uploaded makes it tempting to use an intranet as the default for reaching employees rather than "just one tool in the shed," says Jon Goldberg, a New York City-based Porter Novelli partner who counsels executives on strategic communications and employee engagement.
The need to communicate about a particular topic or program is often an afterthought, and it forces companies to rely on the most expedient way to communicate rather than the most effective.
"Effectively changing what employees believe or how they behave requires connecting with them at a much more personal level than a typical intranet will ever be capable of," Goldberg says.
Truly connecting with employees requires reaching them when, where and how they wish to be communicated with, he says.
Unique Benefits
Davis says intranets are the perfect tool for HR to maximize its effectiveness and reach. That's because intranets - more than any other HR communication tool-can allow communication in both directions with feedback buttons, wikis and blogs.
"It's the perfect medium," says David Young, a principal with Mercer in Boston. "You can embed video, audio and Flash, as well as facilitate interactive two-way dialogue between either the employee and the company or employee to employee via survey mechanisms, chat functionality and threaded discussion forums."
Some companies encourage employees to help make sites more fun and dynamic. Petro-Canada Oil Sands, a division of Calgary-based oil and gas company Petro-Canada, encourages employees to submit videos depicting "a day in the life" of their department or area. The best are posted on its intranet, Davis says. "The nice thing about an intranet is you control the experience."
The Rise of Social Media
In 2007, Deloitte launched "D Street," a social networking tool similar to Facebook. More than a company directory, D Street is designed to strengthen connections among employees and "is proof that social networking has legitimate value from a business perspective," said Patricia Romeo, who leads the project in Cincinnati.
D Street helps attract and retain a younger workforce, makes a large company feel smaller, and creates a sense of community among people scattered across the globe, Romeo said. It facilitates networking and has enabled the company to more rapidly deploy teams and tackle business challenges.
"We're a very project-based organization, and D Street gives us a common platform on which to share ideas and thoughts and to ask questions," Romeo says. For example, during the recent upheaval in the capital markets, Deloitte saw a spike in the number of employees searching for colleagues with related experience to help them understand what was happening and how these events might impact clients in the financial services sector.
"It's about the need to be efficient, and in these volatile market times, efficiency over the next 18 months to two years will be key to an organization making it through," Romeo says. "Whether you're a small business or a large, publicly traded company, your ability to maximize the people you have in your organization is going to be a key success factor."
In addition, D Street connects employees with mentors, new teams and opportunities. The company encourages employees to include personal interests, photos and blogs in profiles. More than 14,500 of the company's 44,375 employees have personalized their profiles.
But Romeo says younger employees aren't the only ones using D Street. "We've seen many partners, who are generally in their 40s or 50s, adopt it as readily as younger employees."
Sean Fox, a senior manager in Deloitte's knowledge management department in Washington, D.C., uses D Street when he kicks off projects, which usually include U.S.- and India-based professionals who have never met each other.
"It's nice to see who I'm working with, plus we get to begin getting to know each other," Fox says. "As we rely more and more on virtual teaming, I make D Street my 'go to' spot to 'meet' my colleagues."
Measuring Effectiveness
Goldberg says many organizations rely on simplistic measures like visits and page views to measure intranet effectiveness.
"The real measure of whether messages are reaching their intended targets and having the desired effect is whether employees are actually adopting new attitudes and behaviors in response to the information they receive," he says.
If you push out an amazing new program and think everyone is going to check it out but intranet log files show they're not, you can then "take measures to drive them to that place using e-mails, posters [and] news features on the intranet itself", Young says.
Organizations can embed survey polls or feedback buttons on the site, e-mail formal user surveys to employees or hold focus groups to learn more about employee experiences with the intranet.
Experts offer the following tips to ensure that an intranet is effective:
If the answer to every communication need is "let's put it on the intranet," think again. "What managers frequently forget," Goldberg says, "is that merely providing access to information does not constitute communication."
Pamela Babcock is a freelance writer based in the New York City area.
Related Articles:
Improving Intranet Usefulness, HR Magazine, April 2008
Building a Better Intranet, HR Magazine, November 2005
Intranet Fuels Internal Mobility, Employment Management Today, Spring 2004
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Reprinted with the permission of HR Technology Focus Area published by the Society for Human Resource Management, Alexandria, VA