What is the difference between a digital workplace and an intranet?

In my last post, I defined what exactly a digital workplace is.  But it can be easy to confuse an intranet with a digital workplace.  With advanced, hybrid, intranets there is a path that you can take to transform from one to another.

An intranet has a more limited role that a digital workplace.  Typically an intranet contains corporate news and documents e.g. policies. Publishing will probably use content and document management systems for accredited content.  A digital workplace will also have collaborative content and use:

• Collaboration tools e.g. blogs, wikis, podcasts
• Micro blogging tools e.g. Yammer, Twitter
• Knowledge sharing/building e.g. team wikis and share workspaces
• Applications/tools e.g. HR tools, online training, sales performance
• Processes e.g. approving decisions, compliance checks

The organisation’s culture will encourage and see the benefits of a digital workplace.  It won’t succeed if that is not happening.  It is likely that people can access a digitalworkplace wherever they happen to be and whenever they need to.

It is also far more likely people can use different devices to access what they need AND the content or apps will display in a usable way because mobile devices are considered critical business tools by the organisation.

Advanced, hybrid, intranets will be somewhere between a traditional intranet with news and policies but not have an integrated digital workplace.

A good test is to see what the strategy and governance framework says and does.  The aims and scope as well as the user experience indicate how far down the journey you are.