Tag Archives: communication

How can new publishers comply with your intranet standards?

Posted on June 15, 2015 | 1 comment

Implementing publishing standards that meet your organisation’s requirements helps create a consistently good experience for people accessing your intranet.

They are critical to you implementing a successful governance framework. The publishing standards will support your intranet strategy, publishing model, roles and responsibilities.

All your content owners and editors need to comply with the publishing standards. Knowing this, people will access your intranet and use it more, confident in the integrity of the content and applications and aware that you ensure publishers comply with each standard.

And that can be the weakest link in your governance framework! How do you continue to provide that consistently good user experience with new publishers?

I am talking about publishing accredited – news articles, company policies, etc. – content, not collaborative – blogs, discussion groups, etc. – in this post.

Your governance framework must cover how you manage new content owners and editors. This is the best way to sustain the baseline you have established for best practice. Without it, people will inevitably see a decline when they access your intranet. Their productivity and effectiveness risks declining and affecting their overall work performance.

There are five actions that you need to consider taking so new publishers are good publishers:

Induction training on how to use the publishing tool. This is not just about what to use it for. It includes how to use the publishing templates. It needs to covers features like global navigation bar, content owner, review and last updated dates. By explaining why this is important it helps encourage best practice.
Have good communications channels so new publishers can keep up to date with the latest news that affects them. Publishers should be able to ask other publishers for help and get answers. New publishers should feel they are fully informed about how they use the intranet.
Offer clear online guidance and best practice tips on how to publish on the intranet. Reinforce this when you contact content owners and editors e.g. email, discussion group, conference call or webinar.
Invite all new publishers to join a discussion group covering publishing topics to help develop a broader understanding. It is much easier (and cheaper) to have peer-to-peer conversations where practical tips are shared quickly with each other.
Have one set of publishing templates that you manage. Keep publishing simple and easy to encourage best practice. One publishing process will save content owners and editors’ time. It avoids the temptation to try alternative methods or create more templates.

Find out more information on how to manage your publishing community and intranet from my new book ‘Digital success or digital disaster?‘. Read the introductory chapter to find out more. A license to share the ebook with publishers across your organisation is also available.

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Posted in benefit, best practice, collaboration, communication, community, digital success or digital disaster, digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, training

Tagged benefit, best practice, collaboration, communication, community, content, Digital success or digital disaster, digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, training

I wrote a book about governance: ‘Digital success or digital disaster?’

Posted on May 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

When an intranet loses its usefulness over time, and people become disengaged and end up working around it rather than through it, I often find that the strategy and governance have been neglected.

Even a strong and appropriate strategy will founder if the governance isn’t in place to execute it.

I see governance as the foundation of a great intranet, and by ‘great’ I mean an intranet that is useful, useable, and supports the organisation’s goals and people’s needs.

I often blog about intranet governance, but my brand new book offers a lot more than I could ever drip-feed via short posts. Writing a book has helped crystallise my thinking around governance, and delve deep into my past experience as an intranet manager, and as a consultant.

Take a look at my book now – it’s called ‘Digital success or digital disaster?’ and I mean for it to be relevant to intranets, collaboration, digital workplace and mobile workspace governance, while focussing on intranets.

I’m so pleased to have it published through Intranätverk, it’s been great to work with Kristian Norling and his team. Seeing the final book on my tablet has made the months of writing all worth the effort. I’m thrilled to be able to offer you my experience, guidance, and tips and hope you’ll consider my book a toolkit to better governance and a better intranet.

Please take a look at what the book offers you and your organisation – this is a ‘business book’ that should help organisations of every size, but I also hope it’s of interest to individual practitioners and ‘lone intranet managers’. I think this book can support you.

* Digital success or digital disaster? – Book available now.

* Follow me on – let me know what you think!

It’s time for a change

Posted on November 17, 2014 | Leave a comment

I have been fortunate to work with and view many sites, intranets, digital workplaces, mobile and collaborative spaces since 1996. Many technology features and fads aimed at helping people have a good experience have come and gone. However, throughout this time, having a clear strategy with good governance to support your intranet, has consistently been shown to help meet your organisation’s key priorities and add measurable value.

Your strategy sets the direction you need to move in with a clear scope and set of aims to be achieved, aligned with other related strategies and overall strategy for your organisation.

Your governance framework helps your strategy continue in the right direction. It will show how you manage everything and how everyone can work together. It will cover scope, purpose, roles and responsibilities, publishing standards and support, and resources needed.

The main reason for a strategy and governance framework is the benefits to be gained from applying it well. The time and effort are the same but the impact can vary so you don’t always achieve a consistently good experience.

Measuring all the benefits and showing the value to your organisation of a critical business tool will improve your credibility and help to justify future investment.

With that in mind I have re-designed my site to focus on Strategy; Governance; and Measuring Value.

Please contact me if you want to find out more.

10 free guides to help you create intranet content

Posted on January 22, 2014 | 2 comments

It is not often that I recommend on my blog information to read that I believe is helpful and easy to read. Today is an exception (not just because I played a very small part in its creation)!

ClearBox Consulting with Kilobox Communiqué noticed that while on the top level of intranet sites there is good quality content, as you get into the lower levels standards start to drop. Often people have been trained on the publishing tool but had little guidance on how to get the most from an intranet as a channel e.g. how to write headlines, how to phrase links, etc.

They have created an excellent set of 10 FREE guidelines, each 1-2 pages long, covering the following topics in plain English:

Effective headlines: help people choose what to read
Images: attracting interest and conveying meaning
Links: how to link to pages and files
Layout: how to structure articles for scanability
How to help people search for, and find, your content
Content: write for your audience, not for your boss
Documents vs pages: when to use PDF, Word, and other formats
Engage: writing to start a conversation
Channels: how to reach the right audiences with your content
Mobile content

I recommend you read and share these with your publishers to help improve the overall experience people have with your intranet.

Thanks Sam and Wedge!

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Posted in best practice, communication, content management, engagement, help, intranet, mobile, publishing

Tagged best practice, communication, content, engagement, help, intranet, mobile, publishing

Strengthen employee engagement while working remotely

Posted on January 13, 2014 | 2 comments

Happy New Year to you! I hope you had a relaxing break and have recharged your batteries for 2014.

I was recently asked by Simply Communicate to follow up my 2014 predictions with one for internal communications. Here it is:

Organisations increasingly face the challenge of how to strengthen employee engagement while their workforce increasingly work from remote locations or while mobile. There is a great opportunity for internal communications to take a leading role with developing a plan that addresses these challenges with greater use of communications channels.

What is different now from previous years is the range of tools and know-how which can be used to successfully have engaged and mobile employees. The key to this will be the rich experience employees will have online as they are able to read communications when they need to, where they need to, and be able to share, feedback, rate the value of the messages with other people who share a similar interest.

An example of this could be combining collaboration tools with traditional online communication channels will help provide that rich experience so a key company announcement video, CEO blog post and detailed background information available is strengthened by a discussion forum managed by internal comms to continue the conversation with quick polls on the awareness and understanding of key messages.

It is how it is implemented and how it is managed within a wider governance framework will help decide how successful it will be. Good luck with whatever you do in 2014!

Read about more 2014 internal communication predictions from simple communicate.

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Posted in blog, collaboration, communication, community, engagement, mobile, podcast, social media, value, wiki

Tagged blog, collaboration, communication, engagement, mobile, social media, value, wiki

My 2014 predictions

Posted on December 16, 2013 | 3 comments

I reviewed my predictions for 2013 and believe they are happening more as we move towards 2014. So what has 2014 got in store for us? Here are my five predictions:

Cloud

Organisations will more seriously consider what approach will best meet their requirements. Factors that will need to be considered before a final decision is made are:

How much will it save compared with the costs of keeping it within the firewall?
Will you have better business resilience? Will it remove the single point of failure problem?
What will be the levels of service?
Who do you trust with your data?
Will your content be secure?

Mobile

I know a lot has been said about mobile and how it is driving the transformation of intranets towards digital workplaces. But how many employees still only use their smartphones for emails and texts? Organisations need to get serious about realising the benefits and consider:

Increased productivity by people able to find information, complete tasks, share problems and knowledge when they need to without delay
Save accommodation costs and reduced dedicated workspace so people share as and when they need it
Support new ways of working with distributed teams and managers enabling and facilitating rather than controlling or limiting activity
Fear of the unknown is not a good business reason to stop employees using mobiles for their work
Bring your own device is a solvable problem when everyone wants to reach agreement over intellectual property, security and building trust and behaving sensibly

Collaboration

I am starting to see real examples of collaboration which showing through on business’ bottom line and getting the attention of senior manager. This will bring benefits as it is taking more seriously and investment decisions are easier but the pressure to continue delivering larger savings will also increase. Examples include:

Project teams sharing and creating online documentation without having to meet face to face or email each other
Solving problems more quickly using tools to find people with similar skills and experience
Sharing knowledge that helps others to solve problem and the organisation’s culture increasingly supporting this way of working

governance

Organisations are realising, especially if they are implementing SharePoint, that all the areas where content is published need to be managed. The problems of gaps in information managed and risks it can create are being recognised more. More robust frameworks are being developed and used. Examples include:

Different types of content such as accredited e.g. policies, news articles, and collaborative e.g. comment in discussion group, blog post are being accepted
All the different areas for content are being joined up e.g. content management, document management, project spaces, and news.
A hierarchy which sets out roles and responsibilities help identify overlaps and gaps in managing information
Publishing standards are being applied in smarter ways taking less time and effort with digital workplace teams

Value

As intranets are transforming from their original purpose as communications tools towards digital workplaces that are critical business tools that people in that organisation increasingly need to rely on for their work, so their value is increasing and the need to measure that value. Examples are:

Productivity savings are accepted in principle now even if the amount is not agreed by everyone
The impact on property usage and type is becoming more linked to new ways of working
The value an organisation places on a person’s digital assets e.g. knowledge in documents is starting to match that of any physical assets e.g. computer
Business resilience is critical to organisations and along with plans to use the cloud are plans to benefit from a more distributed workforce that no longer has to be in just one location

This is my last post of 2013. I hope anyone reading this has had a great 2013, will have a relaxing break over the Christmas period, and be hoping for more success in 2014!

3 Comments

Posted in collaboration, communication, content management, digital workplace, governance, intranet, mobile, news, SharePoint, standards, value

Tagged blog, bt intranet, collaboration, communication, content, digital workplace, governance, intranet, mobile, publishing, sharepoint, standards, value

The digital workplace is for everyone (not just office-based workers)

Posted on November 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

In my last post ‘BT field-based workers use the digital workplace‘ I talked about the benefits and drawbacks of people who work remotely adjusting to huge changes in the way they work.

It made me think of when I have discussed with clients or people at workshops or after presentations who had the view the digital workplace only affected people in offices or more specifically ‘knowledge workers’. They were surprised this wasn’t the case.

So, let me say now very clearly (big drum roll please) the digital workplace is for all employees. In fact it can extend to their customers, suppliers, and other third parties who they share a working relationship with.

A digital workplace’s prime aim is to help and support employees whether office, mobile or home-based, to be more effective. That will mean being more productive – no delays finding what you need, completing tasks when you need, sharing knowledge online with other people – and effective so your organisation benefits too.

Examples of how other employees, not office workers, can benefit from using a digital workplace are:

Retail staff using tablets to stock-take on products and order more.
Retail staff at check-outs having latest news shown on equipment they also use for payment of products.
Mining of minerals using vehicles and tools operated from remote locations away from the mining area.
Meter readings for customers’ use of utilities e.g. gas, electricity, and water uploaded in real-time for bills to be created and issued while the person is still continuing to visit other customers.
Parcel deliveries tracked using GPS by customer service to monitor and send updates to the delivery person’s mobile device.
Field engineers able to use mobile devices to receive customer information before visiting and update with the outcome before moving on to their next customer.

These are just a few examples to illustrate the point I am making here. The digital workplace affects all employees. The level of impact will be different depending on the work but it is hard to think of work that is NOT influenced in some way by a digital workplace with news, collaboration, online tasks and processes.

What examples can you think of?

Tag Archives: communication

How can new publishers comply with your intranet standards?

It’s time for a change

10 free guides to help you create intranet content

My 2014 predictions

Cloud

Mobile

Collaboration

governance

Value

The digital workplace is for everyone (not just office-based workers)

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