May 21, 2012 at 8:46 am | Posted in benefit, communication, digital workplace, governance, intranet, mobile, news, SharePoint 2010, standards, strategy, value | 1 Comment
Tags: benefit, communication, digital workplace, governance, intranet, sharepoint 2010, standards, strategy, value
Why is SharePoint 2010 so widely used? I believe it is because it offers for the first time one technical solution that meets many business needs rather than just one.
If you want to improve knowledge sharing you will have many tools to consider. Again if you need to manage your documents you will have a wide choice of vendors. But if your business has more than one need or can see how solving one will create other requirements then a solution like SharePoint 2010 comes become more attractive to consider.
What if your organisation needs employees to use your intranet while away from their place of work? There are huge savings in office costs and increases in productivity if employees can use the intranet to help them with their work while they are mobile.
Before we can consider if SharePoint 2010 can help meet these needs and provide these benefits there are other important steps to take first.
Mobile strategy
Why is your organisation considering mobile access to your intranet? You need to develop a strategy aligned to your overall business strategy that sets out how providing this need will help to improve the performance. Without a clear, agreed, mobile strategy in place there is little chance of creating a successful business case for a solution that can help employees. You need to research which content and tools are most needed while employees are mobile.
Mobile champion
Who should be responsible for sponsoring the implementation of your mobile strategy? You need to find a senior representative who will champion this or, better still, a board or steering group of senior representatives from business functions across your organisation. Make sure the role is clear, and you have the authority to make the decisions needed, supported by funding.
Mobile audience
Who needs to use a mobile device for their work? You need to be clear which employees will benefit from having a mobile device. It probably will not be everyone. Even if it is, you will have to prioritise who has the greatest need. Factors like the number of employees involved, time spent away from their place of work, what contribution they can make, will help decide the greatest need.
Mobile governance
As well as having a champion for the use of mobile devices your governance framework needs to include the standards for owners of content and tools to follow so mobile devices can be used by employees. Roles and responsibilities need to include meeting the needs of mobile users for content and tool owners. The content and tools must not be a complete duplication of what exists already.
Mobile devices
Will you let employees bring their own devices to work or will you provide your own? That decision is critical and will depend on your organisation’s corporate values, type of employees, security (more below on this), funding and speed of adoption. Once that decision is made you can then focus on what devices your organisation provides or you recommend employees have that offer the best experience for what they need to do while mobile.
Mobile security
How can you be sure the right people only are using your intranet? It is vital you have a representative from your Legal team involved as well as from IT. You need to find the right balance of secure but easy access. It is no good if it takes ages to authenticate who you are before employee can access your intranet. But you do need some intelligent software working in the background to ensure you know who is accessing content with a mobile device.
Mobile platform
As I said at the beginning most organisations are either considering using SharePoint 2010 or are in various stages of rolling out to meet their needs. One of these is increasingly the need to provide content and tools that is needed by employees while mobile.
The problem with SharePoint 2010 is the ‘out of the box’ experience can be a bit underwhelming. It is a text only version which most mobile users of internet sites will feel is like going back in time. It may be improved by the next release of SharePoint but can your organisation afford to wait that long?
May 14, 2012 at 8:49 am | Posted in best practice, digital workplace, intranet, mark morrell ltd | 1 Comment
Tags: best practice, digital workplace, Mark Morrell, value
Many of you who follow my blog will know of my interest in the digital workplace. From my first-hand experience transforming BT’s digital workplace and involvement with other organisations it is a very exciting area to work in. So it was great to hear about this book!
Paul Miller’s book ‘The Digital Workplace: How technology is liberating work’ is an absolute must read for anyone interested in finding out how technology is changing the way we work for everyone on the planet.
The way Paul Miller writes it from his own experiences and view of life – working and personal – makes it compelling to read. The examples Paul uses are ones we can all relate too and are real, not made up to fit a theoretical scenario.
I loved the format of the book. If like me you sometimes put a book down and pick it up a little later you won’t lose your thread and have to read back over the last few pages. In fact it is split into sections that are easy to use and refer back to again and again about the digital workplace. I found the ‘top 10 digital workplace benefits, challenges, etc.’ very good for focusing on the key points of each section.
It’s good to see Paul Miller share his expertise and enthusiasm with us in this book. I’m fortunate to know Paul so I realise every word is sincerely meant to help you, the reader.
It’s impossible to get serious about the digital workplace without reading and absorbing the ideas and examples in this book which is available to buy through Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Barnes & Noble.com.
You should also visit the Digital Workplace Forum to find out out more information and how it can help you and your organisation.
May 9, 2012 at 9:17 am | Posted in best practice, collaboration, communication, community, engagement, intranet, social media | 1 Comment
Tags: best practice, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, social media
This is the last post in a series answering the question “Can collaboration tools improve internal communications?” covering the right culture needed within an organisation, the redefining of internal communicators’ role and how collaboration tools and features can help improve internal communications.
I now want to discuss how I believe discussion forums can add to the richness of existing internal communication channels and not be a threat that needs to be closed down. I’m going to illustrate this with three examples.
1. Reacting to discussion forums
The initial reason why most discussion forums first start is because employees want to, or organisations encourage employees to, share problems and solutions on work issues with other employees who can help or need the information. However other topics can be discussed for example what people’s views are on the latest corporate initiative? How does it change how they do things now, etc? This is an opportunity for internal communications to explain how it will affect employees. It helps avoid a vacuum which could be filled by rumours and conflicting information. It also shows the organisation is interested in what employees say and responds with a supportive answer.
2. Leading in discussion forums
Internal communications can take a more pro-active role with discussion forums. When an important corporate message has been announced a question can be asked on the discussion forum to gauge what the reaction has been to it. The important point is not to react badly to critical views. It’s no good responding “you haven’t understood the messages or “you just got it wrong” because that will stop future responses. You need to explain carefully and consistently to their views. Remember many employees will only read the conversations and not contribute. Think about that wider audience.
You may set up a separate thread which is dedicated to internal communications where only views and opinions that cover this area are raised, discussed and responded to. Be clear firstly whether it needs to be separate and how your approach will be before starting it.
3. Senior manager online chats
Consider having regular chats online with senior managers and employees. One way would be to have a different Board Member answer questions sent online for one hour each month. The topic could be on anything but it is probably best to concentrate on their area of responsibility where they will bemore comfortable. All the questions and answers given should be published on the intranet for employees to read through especially if they were not able to take part when the online chat happened.
Another way could be to focus on those senior managers who are the best communicators. Certainly if your CEO is keen and sees it as a good way to give a personal message that is different to what has been sent out through the formal channels it normally causes great interest with employees.
I hope this post along with the previous areas I have covered helps to show you how collaboration tools can help, rather than hinder, internal communications and communicators. How you plan to do this and manage this is critical. I can help you with my internal communications‘ experience and knowledge with:
- a few hours help and guidance
- a day’s training/workshop
- a few days advice and detailed guidance
- a few weeks strategic guidance, project planning and if needed, implementation
May 2, 2012 at 8:30 am | Posted in blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, governance, intranet, plan, social media, value | 4 Comments
Tags: blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, governance, intranet, social media, value
In my last post ‘How to improve communications using collaborative tools‘ I gave my view on the corporate environment needed to encourage internal communications professionals to welcome collaboration tools being used by employees. I also gave examples of collaboration tools that can help improve internal communications. This post covers how blogs can help improve internal communications.
A corporate blogging tool can help employees share ideas and opinions. It’s not just used to comment upon internal communications. Blog posts can also help employees doing similar work or having a similar interest in different business units to save time and effort. Employees can find someone else’s views who they do not know to help them solve a problem or speed up a task.
And blogs are something employees are becoming more familiar with on the internet and expect to see on their intranet. For example in the UK many of the BBC reporters blog what they report on TV and radio. There are also many bloggers who post on subjects of interest to employees, whether work-related or of personal interest.
The main point for internal communicators to understand is blogs are established, accepted, and understood on the internet by the same people, employees, who are the audience within an organisation who receive news. So, I recommend a few points internal communicators consider:
- Be accepting of this changing environment and welcome it as some progressive internal communicators have done successfully.
- Don’t feel threatened and react negatively by asking for posts with different views to be removed.
- Widen your scope to include blogs in your communications planning.
- You communicate the corporate message but it is not the only message that can be communicated.
- Treat employees as people with opinions and views they have a right to express, be listened and responded to constructively.
- Take a wider, more strategic view, of all communications and communicators.
- Engage with bloggers and comment on their posts and explain your point of view.
- Posts on blogs can act as an early warning device of a small problem to be resolved before it becomes a much larger and difficult problem to resolve later.
- Posting and commenting on blogs increases employees’ engagement. If they didn’t care, why would they blog?
- Blog posts should help shape corporate values and future direction.
Contact me to find out how I can help you:
- implement a blogging tool
- have the right terms and conditions of use
- communicate better using collaborative tools
- improve engagement of employees
- measure the benefits to be gained
If you want further help from me please contact me or find out more about me and what I can offer.
My next post in this series will be on discussion forums.
Tags: blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, governance, intranet, social media, value
April 23, 2012 at 9:16 am | Posted in collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, news, research, social media, training, value | 5 Comments
Tags: collaboration, communication, content, engagement, intranet, research, social media, training, value
In my last post ‘Should collaboration tools redefine internal communications’ role?‘ I gave my view on the corporate environment needed to encourage internal communications professionals to welcome collaboration tools being used by employees. But which collaboration tools can you introduce and improve internal communications too?
I recommend researching employees’ needs to find which are most needed and likely to be adopted. Some contact with senior managers to understand the corporate values will help too. Let’s start by increasing employees interaction with existing communication channels before we move on to new collaborative tools.
When a new article is published on the intranet employees normally have no easy opportunity to show how valuable it is, what their views are or the effect it has. Introducing a few features can help to change that.
Rating
Employees are able to rate how useful the information has been. The higher the rating, the more useful it is. It helps show internal communications what is most valued by employees and encourage similar messages to be published. More importantly it shows what is not useful and could be reduced or stopped. This information helps plans for future communications that have the best impact.
Comment
Employees are able to comment on the news item. A comments feature gives freedom to express positive and negative views. It also enables other employees to see these comments and show if they dis/agree with what has been said already. This helps internal communications to understand better how useful, complete, and relevant it has been. It helps internal communications to improve future messages and empowers employees to influence these by expressing their views.
Like
Employees are able to show they like the news item. This helps internal communications understand how valuable and useful the message has been to employees. It is a simpler approach to rating content (see Ratings) and gives a basic indication by the number of employees who how liked the message.
Share
Employees are able to share news items with other employees who have a similar need or interest. This helps spread news more quickly using the channels that employees prefer to use rather than the formal, existing, internal communication channels with other employees.
How I can help
I have several years’ first hand experience improving communications and helping other organisations too. Please contact me if you would like me to help you:
- decide on the right collaboration tools
- communicate better using collaborative tools
- improve internal communications
- research employees needs and attitudes
- train internal communicators
My next blog will cover how blogs can help improve internal communications.
April 17, 2012 at 12:26 pm | Posted in blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, research, social media, strategy, value | 6 Comments
Tags: blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, plan, social media, strategy
In my last post ‘Is your culture right for collaboration tools to improve internal communications?‘ I gave my view on the corporate environment needed to encourage internal communications professionals to welcome collaboration tools being used by employees. Internal communications need to realise they are not the sole people who can communicate using the intranet. Neither are their official channels the only route to communicate with other employees.
To embrace these challenges I suggest redefining the role of internal communications. It is set in a model that is fast changing and risks becoming irrelevant. The days when only managers or CEOs communicated business news and changes to their employees using internal communications will become extinct like dinsoaurs. They need to adapt to the changes and recognise, like some progressive comms people have already done, the need to evolve and move forward and not resist until the bitter end.
I see the role for internal communications changing in this new world where employees want to communicate and collaborate with other employees as liberating and giving greater influence to the organisation. Why?
1. Strategic
Take a step back from the day to day activity of preparing communications, checking channels are operating OK, and which day to send out a corporate message. Think more about the value communications can have on the organisation, how employees perform, the direction it sets.
Encouraging employees to give their views on communications, even setting the agenda and starting communications on the organisation’s performance, ways of working can help encourage employee engagement.
Get more involved in the organisation’s strategy by influencing how communications in general, not just corporate messages, show the pulse of the employee’s attitude and engagement. Work with HR and the intranet team to use the information on blogs, discussion forums and online polls to identify hot spots that are important to employees – what is working well, what could be improved – and help communicate through channels that employees choose to use with helpful information.
This will show the organisation is listening rather than just talking all the time to employees. It also means employees use their time for more productive activities if their concerns have been accepted and acted upon more quickly.
2. Influential
Having a wider view of what is happening across the organisation brings a better insight to how its aims can be achieved from an internal communications perspective. A more accurate and complete picture given will mean other senior leaders taking notice and seriously considering any points or issues raised by internal comms.
It will mean more major business projects and change programmes will want to involve internal communications professionals at the start so the right priority and consideration is given to their views. It enables internal communications to start setting more of the agenda that will improve the organisation and employees’ engagement with it by its understanding of how employees communicate and collaborate to maximum effect.
3. Liberating
The main focus has been on the content of the communication being word-perfect and grammatically correct with the channels working fine for delivering it to the audiences on time. The focus shouldn’t be on just that, important though it is to avoid badly worded, confusing, messages. Instead it should widen to cover the wider impact of any communications.
So if you threw a stone into a pond it wouldn’t just be the size of the splash the stone made but the ripple effect that went as far as the edges of the pond. Instead of success being the perfect execution of the stone being thrown, it is also the number and size of the ripples and how far they spread across the pond.
This can be achieved by starting online polls to ask for employees’ views, raising new topics in a discussion forums, responding with contructive comments to blog posts giving different views. The aim is to explain and educate employees to understand better what has been communicated. It is not to tell them they are wrong and only the internal comms sponsored message is right.
4. How to do this?
All of this is easier to read about than to do. Don’t worry, I have first hand experience for several years of achieving this as well as helping other organisations with advice and detailed information. If you want further help from me please contact me or find out more about me and what I can offer.
My next blog will give more practical examples of how collaboration tools can help improve internal communications.
April 10, 2012 at 8:03 am | Posted in best practice, blog, collaboration, communication, community, engagement, intranet, news, social media, strategy | 7 Comments
Tags: best practice, blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, social media, strategy
I believe many internal communications professionals are not appreciating the benefits that collaboration tools can bring. Instead they are seen as a threat to traditional channels used for communicating corporate messages to employees. In my previous post ‘Can collaboration tools improve internal communications?‘ I disagreed with this attitude.
Changing this approach is not a simple task. Before you can consider using any collaboration tools you need to have the right culture within your organisation. I’m afraid the approach of “I’ll start a blog to change the culture” is doomed to failure. You need to have an environment where employees are:
- comfortable using collaborative tools
- encouraged to share information with other employees
- maybe even incentivised to share knowledge online
- able and willing to offer critical comments
- relaxed about constructive feedback on their own views
To achieve this environment you need to have in place the following:
- company values that should cover openness, honesty, and trust
- endorsement and sponsorship by senior managers of the values
- guidance on how employees should behave online
- HR policies that support employee engagement
That means internal communications realising they are not the only people who can communicate using the intranet. Neither are ‘official’ channels the only route to communicate with other employees. To embrace these challenges could mean a redefining of the role of internal communications. How this can be done will be covered in my next post.
If you want to use my experience or help about this post please contact me.
April 3, 2012 at 8:57 am | Posted in blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, podcast, rss, social media, wiki | 14 Comments
Tags: blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, intranet, rss, social media, wiki
Intranets have developed over recent years from mainly being a channel for a few people to publish news to becoming places where any employee can collaborate and share knowledge with other employees. I find it ironic that it is internal communications who are hesitant, even resistant, to embrace these changes. Ironic because many intranet teams are located within internal communications. Doubly ironic as it is normally intranet teams who are involved with how collaboration tools are used.
Instead of embracing this chance to engage with employees using these new tools and integrate them into an enhanced communications framework, internal communications reaction is more often a knee-jerk one that results in more and more ‘official’ news to try to drown out other voices.
I think that’s very sad when it happens. It’s a bit like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. It has to face reality at some stage. The later internal comms leave it, the bigger the challenge it faces to use these tools to the overall benefit of the organisation, employees and internal communications.
Over the next few posts I want to cover how tools like blogs, video, rating and RSS can be used more effectively. I will also show how I can help you if you need more information and support.
Is this scenario something you are familiar with in your own organisation?
March 26, 2012 at 8:13 am | Posted in career, digital workplace, intranet | 5 Comments
Tags: career path, digital workplace, intranet
I have written before about career paths and future job opportunities for intranet practitioners. I don’t believe the only option is to become intranet consultants like I chose to do after leaving as BT’s intranet manager. If you want to move to another organisation then IntraTeam’s job vacancies in LinkedIn is a good place to start looking.
This post is about career development and progression within your own organisation. It’s about taking advantage by the creation of the digital workplace to extend your experience and skills into wider and more strategic areas of your business. I also owe this post to a certain intranet professional (yes, you know who you are!) who I promised this to sometime ago.
At the moment many intranet practitoners are based in the Communications part of their organisation. For intranets it’s probably been the best place since intranets were created. Typically the first use of intranets was probably to improve communications which then developed into information management, standards, etc. While intranets mainly had that traditional purpose it made good sense to work there.
Being an intranet manager was a unique role, not always fully understood, and led to frustration when you wanted to take the next step on a career path. The question was in which direction and, more importantly, whether your organisation recognise your skills and experience could transfer to another role and business unit. Sadly for many frustrated intranet practitioners this didn’t happen.
The evolution of the digital workplace changes this. The digital workplace covers social intranets – collaboration with wikis, blogs, shared workspaces; applications – training, performance management, ordering services; micro-blogging – Yammer, Twitter along with the focus changing from the IT equipment chosen by the organisation to what an employee wants to continue using for personal and business use and the changing way in which people don’t need to be in one place to do their work and connect with the information and tools they use.
It means the natural base for ownership of the digital workplace is not in Communications. It needs to have broader ownership to reflect the extra functions a digital workplace with stakeholders who can either influence the strategy or be affected by it. Jane McConnell’s recommends a digital board which sounds right to me. After all, it will still need managing to be effective.
Being part of this digital board can raise your profile with more senior managers who have a broad, strategic, view of the organisation and how technology can enhance operations. Instead of being the big fish in an intranet bowl think of becoming a smaller fish in a bigger digital workplace bowl.
The digital workplace gives you new new career path opportunities to:
a) Expand your existing role to be more strategic and wider in its scope
b) Take on a new role connected to your intranet role because your skills and experience are better understood and appreciated
How is the best way to do this? Are there better examples?
March 19, 2012 at 8:55 am | Posted in digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, navigation, standards, usability, web accessibility | 1 Comment
Tags: digital workplace, engagement, governance, navigation, people finder, standards, usability
Thank you to everyone who read my last post ‘What is a digital workplace?‘ and contributed to a great discussion helping to define it. Staying with the digital workplace theme I want to show you the views given in my workshop at IntraTeam 2012 event ‘How to build the right governance model for the digital workplace‘ which produced some great responses.
The workshop covered four areas needed for the right level of governance: Ownership, Consistency, Standards, and Integrity. The outcome was:
Who should be responsible for developing and implementing the digital workplace strategy?
Digital workplace principles need to be put into your own organisational context. A board of representatives from across the organisation is needed to coordinate a digital workplace strategy. This board can have decision or advisory status. Alternatively you could have a central business unit responsible for strategy, processes, planning and implementation. While there was no clear decision on who led the digital board or business unit there was a consensus it was NOT to be anyone from Communications!
What should everyone expect or need when using a digital workplace?
Everyone should gain a better work/life balance from a digital workplace although managers and their team members will have different expectations. The digital workplace should have all the information and tools you need integrated, easy to access and to find. You are able to connect from any device you have.
What standards are needed for a digital workplace?
A governance framework is needed with standards forming a key part with tools to enforce them. Standards are needed for:
- Legal requirements: accessibility, personal information available
- Business needs: usability, design, navigation, findability, ownership, information retention and employee terms and conditions need to encourage the digital workplace
- Security needs: confidential information restricted, permissions model adopted
- Technical support: platform functionality, server support, agreed levels of service.
How do employees gain confidence with the digital workplace?
Anyone who plans to work remotely, especially if they are the first person in that team, wants to have the same or better experience than where they currently work. You gain confidence when the information and tools you need for work are always available to use. You feel confident that your personal information is there for you (and only you) to use still. You don’t feel any discrimination because you are working remotely from your manager, team, customers and other employees.
What is missing?
Please help me and the other intranet professionals at the workshop by commenting on the outcomes.
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