The intranet is a curious beast. It is a medium whose greatest strength is also its greatest weakness – its ability to spawn content. The original concept of web communication, the ability of a widespread group of people to share knowledge and information, has been undermined by those who use the medium as a repository of “stuff that nobody wants or cares about but we have to put somewhere.”

 

We should not be surprised. Top down, functional silos of information too often reflect our own organisational structures. The intranet holds a mirror up to our organisation, reflecting in its architecture the way the organisation sees and structures itself.

 

The history of the intranet has seen the medium grow haphazardly. Many intranets were originally department-led, created to serve a specific need and then merged together. This often results in a lack of cohesion, no common experience, a mixture of content type and style. Where corporate standards have been applied this has been done from a top-down perspective, using the intranet primarily as a broadcast medium.

 

As a result, the intranet is often perceived as an enclosed channel, with no account taken of how it fits into the overall communication, knowledge management and employee transaction strategy.

 

 

“So what”, you might say – I’ve got other things to worry about. Well, your intranet could be costing you money. A recent report by the Nielsen Norman Group, founded by usability guru Jacob Nielsen, estimates that average sized companies with poor intranets force employees to spend twice as long in getting information and completing tasks as best practice companies – in dollar terms, the cost of using the intranet at the worst companies is over $3,000 per year as compared to $1,500 at the best. At a company with 10,000 employees, this is a cost differential of $15,000,000 per year.

 

Have I got your attention now? This number is pure productivity loss, it doesn’t take into account other elements, such as the cost of lost opportunities caused by lack of knowledge sharing.

 

 

No doubt this is a situation that many of us recognise; the question is what to do about it? Perhaps the most fundamental and significant thing you can do is to change your philosophy about what the intranet is there to do. Like mediaeval astronomers, too many of us have been working to an inappropriate model of how the intranet universe works – assuming that the sun revolves around the earth. In this universe everything revolves around the user’s needs and capabilities.  

 

 

Key to understanding how this works, is the concept of User Experience.

 

User Experience is the overall perception an employee, or a user, or a customer has with a product, a service or a company that is the result of all interactions [across many different channels] that the person has with the item in question.

 

It’s a vital term to bear in mind, because it forces you to go beyond any single dimension of interaction, and consider the total experience.

 

Think of a bookshop your User Experience is the sum total of your experience with the bookshop:

J      “It was easy to get to.”

J      “The shop looked great — really inviting.”

J      “They have a great selection of books.”

J      “The layout is always changing.”

J      “I wish they had a coffee shop.”

J      “The staff really know about books.”

J      “They send me e-mails about books I might like.”

 

Now consider your intranet, the same principles apply

J     “The site was easy to find — linked from the homepage.”

J      “I really like the look of it.”

J      “There is a lot of good information here.”

J      “I can never find what I want.”

J      “Why can’t I fill in this form on line?”

J      “I never know when there is anything new on the site.”

J      “The site is really slow.”

J      “There is no way to tell anyone that the site is incorrect.”

 

 

Well, ex General Electric CEO Jack Welsh always said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”, and the same applies to intranets. Start by auditing your intranet, to understand what the Employee User Experience is like. By ensuring that your focus is on the overall User Experience, you can avoid the temptation to over-optimise an area that may not need it.

 

There are a number of techniques for auditing what’s in place. Perhaps most useful, however, are two techniques for evaluating the User Experience:

 

User Experience audit – a quick, low cost review of your site by a usability expert – this will quickly provide you with an outline on where your site needs to improve.

 

Usability testing - invite in 4 to 8 users and record their progress through a series of predefined scenarios.

 

Through simple and cost effective measures like these, you can pinpoint the areas that will provide the greatest payback if you change them and begin to regain control over this powerful communication tool.