Intranets2011: Intranet features that staff love

Intranets 2011

Intranet features that staff loveAndrew Wright

Who is Malcolm Gladwell?

Author of the best selling books: The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers

In Outliers, he talks about the 10,000 hour rule & ‘deliberate practice’

What is the Worldwide Intranet Challenge?

It’s a web basedsurvey...

that asks intranet end users what they think...

about their Intranet.

“...enabling leading practices & experts to be identified”

Who has participated?

18,000+ intranet end users (1500 hrs)60 organisations

13 countries

What does it measure?

Overall Value

Look and feel

Finding info

Interactivity

Maintenance

Performance

Content

Delivering an intranet your employees will use

Content quality 1.399

Finding information 1.535

Performance & availability 1.384

Completing work tasks 1.037

Change mgt & maintenance 0.940

Look & feel 0.864

Staff able to contribute 0.856

What do employees want from an intranet?

Upload/download documents 0.53

nstructions for completing work tasks 0.50

Access to business applications 0.39

An understanding of company values & culture 0.40

Access to policies & procedures 0.42

Complete online forms 0.43

Know that the intranet is improving 0.46

News about their organisation & industry 0.46

Find instructions for completing work tasks 0.50

Upload/download documents 0.53

World’s best intranet home page

Tips from leading home pages

Include fun• Photo gallery• Weekly poll• Staff interviews• Bulletin board• Quote of the week• Competitions• Recognition awards• Classifieds

Access to key tasks• Web analytics to determine most popular content• Key forms, procedures & tasks accessible from home page• Top level menu to be meaningful to users

Quality content• Regular publishing schedule• Weekly email summary• Content must be relevant, well written• Analyse news stories constantly• Human interest stories

BT Home Page - #1 IBF intranet

Tips for improving findability

Web analytics• Monitor popular search terms• Identify popular pages• Ensure important information is quickly visible

Easy access to key info• Provide access to popular content from the home page• Conduct usability studies to identify best taxonomy• Provide multiple navigation paths to information

Reduce content amount• Conduct regular content audits• Remove obsolete content• Be ruthless when it comes to maintaining content • Separate the ‘official’ intranet from collaboration sites

Tips for completing work tasks

One location• Provide a single location for all forms, procedures or task descriptions (at least)• Provide other ways to navigate if possible• Ensure procedures are actually documented and up-to-date – assign owners

Develop online forms• Candidates for online forms include the most common tasks• Forms that are easy to implement• Can use simple lists

Identify key tasks• Talk to the business users• Make an effort to understand what they do• Prioritise tasks by frequency and importance• Categorise tasks by who does them

3 top tips from the WIC

“Schedule regular intranet analysis

activities: web analytics and surveys”

“Audit all content. Is it relevant? Does it help

employees perform their work?”

“Organise a regular schedule of meetings with the business and

key stakeholders”

The final word

"Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you

good.” -Malcolm Gladwell

What can happen on the way to 10,000 hours

Contact Details

Worldwide Intranet Challenge Grouphttp://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2289431

Andrew Wright’s profilehttp://au.linkedin.com/in/andrewjwright01

Andrew Wright@roojwright

To participate in the Worldwide Intranet Challengehttp://www.cibasolutions.com.au/Registration.htm

[email protected]: awright.ciba.solutions | Phone: +61 3 9005 7407