April 15, 2013 at 9:04 am | Posted in collaboration, community, engagement, intranet, social media, wiki | 5 Comments
Tags: collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, intranet, social media, users, wiki
An organisation’s purpose involves how to manage how their people behave by encouraging, sometimes even mandating, how work tasks need to be carried out and by whom. In my last post I asked ‘Why not use a wiki to develop policies?’. How would using a wiki to develop work in practice? Here are four ways to consider:
- You need to have the right culture which will encourage people to contribute and feel comfortable challenging what exists and being constructively critical.
- You need ground rules, or terms and conditions, or guidelines which set out clearly what the expected level of behaviour is for anyone using the wiki.
- Make sure the wiki is easy to create and edit as well as to read. Anyone who has used Wikipedia will know it is a very different experience if you want to create/edit an article compared with reading it!
- I recommend the person responsible for the policy adds a draft – something which makes sense but its structure and content is loose enough to encourage people to edit – and asks anyone interested to contribute. It is much easier to comment upon what exists than to start with a blank screen.
It is best to start with a policy that affects most or all people working in the organisation. Choosing a Human Resources policy best fits that aim. A policy on employee’s terms and conditions; holiday – how much and when it is taken; flexible working hours – shift patterns; and grading and pay rates. All of these are policies people will have a view on what they believe is appropriate and will help build up a policy that is accepted by most other people.
Why should your organisation take such a risk?
My answer is “Why not?” I believe there is very little to be risked if you pick your first policy to be one that has widespread interest and is not seen as being contentious.
One way to encourage stronger engagement with people within your organisation is to ask for their views and listen and act upon them. Giving people the opportunity to shape a policy which affects them means there is a stronger chance of buy-in to the final version and the impact it has.
When organisations treat their people as adults with a chance to express a view you will generally find it is taken seriously and the outcome is very good. This applies to blogging, micro blogging, feedback, and discussions that are moderated by the members of the group.
Here are three benefits to consider:
- It is probable that a better thought through policy will be developed that takes account of many more concerns and points than an expert or small project team could expect to include.
- It is likely to be completed in less time with less effort. And if it doesn’t work an organisation should be honest and explain why e.g. too few comments, too negative, and pledge to learn from the experience.
- Less time, effort, and costs will be spent policing the policy in future if everyone has had the opportunity to influence its development.
So, go on, why not use a wiki to develop a policy in your organisation?
April 10, 2013 at 8:24 am | Posted in collaboration, communication, community, engagement, publishing, social media | 4 Comments
Tags: collaboration, communication, engagement, publishing, social media, users, wiki
Ever since organisations have existed there has been a need to manage how their people behave by encouraging, sometimes even mandating, how work tasks need to be carried out and by whom.
There can be various reasons for policies: business, regulatory, and legal are the most common. The way that policies are created, updated, and developed has changed very little in my experience working in or with organisations. There will normally be an owner, champion, or stakeholder who will have overall responsibility for creating and managing the policy throughout its life cycle.
When a policy is created or needs to be reviewed it will normally be the owner who will start some form of a consultation exercise. This may simply be an email to a few people across the organisation who are most affected by or can influence the policy asking if there are any changes they need to be made existing policies or what needs to be included to new policies.
It may involve a more robust approach being taken:
- maybe a focus group
- a request to a wider audience who have an interest in the area of the policy
- or a project team who work through the detail and check back with their business function or stakeholder for guidance on the progress being made.
The variety of approaches used by organisations when creating new policies or reviewing and updating existing policies hasn’t changed much in recent years.
But the ways that organisations can now engage their people to create or update policies are changing. There are new approaches being used which help encourage people to be more involved in what their organisation’s purpose, aims, values, and culture – amongst many others – should be.
Adapting social media tools used successfully on the internet include:
- people using blogs to give their views and opinions
- feedback any questions to news articles
- share information through discussion groups about a wide range of work related activities.
I believe a corporate wiki that any person in the organisation can use is a great way to create a new policy or to update an existing policy. It gives the chance for any person with an interest in the policy – maybe they are affected by it and want to improve it – to give their views.
Have you tried this in your organisation?
January 23, 2013 at 12:09 pm | Posted in application, benefit, collaboration, community, digital workplace, intranet, mobile, research, usability, value | 3 Comments
Tags: applications, collaboration, content, digital workplace, intranet applications, money, people finder, research, social media, users, value
OK, so you now have a digital workplace strategy showing the direction you need to move in; a governance framwework to show who is responsible for what with standards, etc, to give you a fantastic online experience; policies and values that encourage you to use a digital workplace and benefit from them.
Now I will show how you can be more productive using a digital workplace:
Usability
It is critical that the time you use in a digital workplace is not wasted. That means having clearly labeled information, direct route to the information, able to use the information whatever device (laptop, tablet, smartphone) you have, and be able to edit the information as well as read it.
And it’s not just information, you need to find people who can help you or you want to share some knowledge with. Having an easy to use people finder helps as well as finding collaborative content in discussion groups with other people with similar needs or interest.
Finally if you are mobile your time is limited. You need fast access to apps and services you need to use e.g. booking travel, hotel room, invites for meetings, hire care. The list is long but you need to get to each task in a short time and complete each task quickly.
IT capability
You need to have the right tools and access to gain the full benefits from a digital workplace. Your organisation needs to fund and provide laptops, smartphones, tablets as well as an internet connection and monitor screens for homeworking. Having the right choice of devices means you can always use the digital workplace whenever you need to – checking people finder, completing tasks, sharing information. This means you can be more productive and aim for a better work/life balance. No more waiting to get to an office before you can do your work. And with the right device you can do your work better, maybe faster too.
You need reliable access to your digital workplace when you need it. If your organisation gets it wrong then you probably won’t use the digital workplace so much. Your IT network needs to be reliable for speed and availability. If it is frequently down for a hour or so you won’t trust it and become reluctant to use it. If it is slow then you will vote with your feet and stay in a physical office where you can contact people and work better.
Security
You must be confident you have secure access to your digital workplace. Your organisation needs to be confident it will not be abused by anyone away from their physical workplaces. For example if you want to check your pay record online you want 100% confidence only you can do this. Likewise if you need to access sensitive information online the organisation also needs 100% reassurance only those with the right permissions, like you, can use it.
To be fully productive you need to use these services with confidence about how secure they are in a digital workplace.
Involvement
Your organisation needs to develop and have available the things you need to do your work. Research will be needed before your digital workplace can be used. You should be involved and asked questions like:
- What is the information you need?
- What applications do you need for your work?
- What collaborative tools do you to share?
- Will any device work in your digital workplace?
All of these need to be addressed before you need them. It may take your organisation time, effort, and money to research fully what is needed. However it will be seen as an investment in the months afterwards when you start using your digital workplace because it helps you to be more productive.
Please contact me if you need my help or leave a comment on this post. My next post will cover how the weather can help your digital workplace.
January 16, 2013 at 11:08 am | Posted in benefit, best practice, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, intranet | 4 Comments
Tags: best practice, collaboration, communication, digital workplace, engagement, social media, users
In my last two posts on the digital workplace I talked about how you need a strategy with a governance framework to help you create a great digital workplace. In this post I want to cover how a digital workplace can help the engagement of people working in your organisation.
Encourage
It is vital your Human Resources policies encourage and make it easier for you to work in a digital workplace. You need a culture where the values include sharing of knowledge, openness, and trust.
You need policies that help encourage you achieve your own, your team and overall business goals. You need to show how the digital workplace helps engage everyone more to the business. This can include:
- Allowing access to social network tools like Facebook and Twitter. Common sense policies balance the risks with the rewards of engaging and sharing knowledge and help with people in your organisation and with other organisations with a similar interest or problem.
- Having a new ideas scheme to encourage your suggestions to improve your business and recognising and rewarding you for successful ideas.
- Building a more informal, less hierarchical structure, and management style so you feel you can approach any person (no matter what their seniority or role is) to ask for help or offer helpful information and advice.
- Encouraging feedback. You should feel confident you can raise contentious but relevant issues and get a helpful response that takes your views seriously.
- Treating you as a responsible adult and trusting you will behave online accordingly,
Recognise and reward
What’s in it for me? That’s a typical response to any policy decision made especially when it is an HR policy affects you. You need to see how digital working benefits you. This can be achieved by:
- Recognising positively your move to a digital workplace e.g. making sure team meetings become team calls with you staying at home
- Incentivising your knowledge sharing using digital workplace tools e.g gamification, measuring your activity with blogs, wikis, discussion group comments
- Performance framework rewarding your output not your time spent working in a physical or digital workplace e.g quality of work not just quantity
- Having simple guidelines saying what you can say (nothing slanderous, etc) and encourage the right behaviours through a common sense approach e.g. gentle reminders not formal disciplinary action.
Working styles
You should be encouraged to work in a digital workplace. This can include:
- Paying for your equipment (desk, chair, etc.) and your phone/broadband service from home.
- Making sure you have a laptop and/or tablet and/or smartphone so you can connect to your digital workplace when you need to.
- Training managers to manage employees remotely. Just because you are out of sight doesn’t mean you are not working effectively! A facilitating rather than directing management style helps.
- Flexible working hours to fit a sustainable work/life balance e.g. not 09:00 – 17:00 but maybe split to fit yours and your organisation’s needs.
- Having confidence your personal information is secure and always available whenever you need it with the right permissions.
Please contact me if you need my help or leave a comment on this post. My next post will cover how your digital workplace can make you more productive in your organisation.
January 8, 2013 at 9:46 am | Posted in collaboration, digital workplace, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, usability | 5 Comments
Tags: collaboration, content, digital workplace, governance, publishing, standards, usability standards, users
In my last post on the digital workplace I talked about how you need a strategy to help you create a great digital workplace. Remember you’re not just doing this for the sake of it! Your aim is to demonstrate how it will support your organisation’s strategy and key priorities.
Once you have your strategy agreed you need to build a governance framework to help you to implement and manage your digital workplace. It is important all your digital workplace is managed to give the maximum benefit to your organisation, individuals and collectively, everyone. The right level of governance needed will balance the rewards to be gained while avoiding any risks. That doesn’t come naturally but through you establishing a good governance model.
The aim is to create a great online user experience that encourages people to feel comfortable shifting their how and where they work to a digital workplace. To do that you need a governance framework that includes:
Ownership
You need to have a governance hierarchy that starts at the top with who is responsible for the digital workplace and flows through to who uses the it to publish, collaborate, complete tasks or just view content.
Who is responsible for developing the strategy, implementing the digital workplace and managing it? It is difficult for one person to have the knowledge, experience, and authority needed for so many key roles and activities. Neither is it best for it to be one person.
The best solution is to have a steering group with senior managers from key parts of the business most affected by or have most influence on your digital workplace. These senior managers should have decision-making authority not someone who has to refer back to his/her line manager and delay matters.
There may be dedicated roles for people responsible for collaboration, ways of working, etc., but they should ultimately report in to the steering group. You need to avoid competing groups of people implementing conflicting standards, designs, and ways to use the digital workplace. That gives a confusing and poor experience for anyone using it.
Consistency
You really need a consistent level of governance across your digital workplace. By consistent I don’t mean the same but what everyone should expect.
People who publish in the digital workplace accredited types of content (policies, news, etc.) need a more rigorous approach is needed than for collaborative content where opinions and views change and require a lighter touch of governance.
People using the digital workplace to view content, complete tasks or share knowledge with each other, expect its look and feel to be similar. Tools can have minimal branding without great costs or customising. Features need to encourage you to use them more such as help links, contact points, with easily laid out and functional designs.
Integrating the different parts of the digital workplace is needed so they are seen as being connected and encourage you to use it more and feel comfortable.
Standards
One way to gain consistency is to have standards based on the needs of the organisation, regulation, legal and users. These can be applied appropriately across the digital workplace depending on their use. For accredited content (policies and procedures) you will apply all or most standards. For applications e.g. HR processes, it’s probable that most will apply too. But for collaborative content e.g. opinions, you will apply a lighter touch.
Alternatively you can create standards that only apply to certain information and applications to meet the purpose people need to use it for.
The aim has to be about getting the balance right. You don’t have to be too restrictive and stifle innovation and collaboration. But you can’t to be too loose and inconsistent and risk sensitive information leaking out. It’s not easy but the right balance is critical.
Integrity
For me, this is the critical goal to aim for. Are you confident using the information and tools in your digital workplace? Does it encourage you to use the digital workplace more?
The answer has to be ‘YES!’ to these questions. Having the right governance framework with standards consistently applied and clear roles and responsibilities are vital to a successful digital workplace.
Please contact me if you need my help or leave a comment on this post. My next post will cover how your digital workplace can engage people more with your organisation.
September 3, 2012 at 8:15 am | Posted in best practice, content management, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, usability | 3 Comments
Tags: best practice, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, usability, usability standards, users
Has your intranet got content littered all over it which isn’t very useful to people needing to use it?
By litter I mean no or little thought has been given by the owner on how people need to have this information presented so it is easy to use. Examples can include:
- Links to documents instead of content on an intranet page
- Poorly worded content that doesn’t make sense
- Poorly constructed content that is hard to follow
- Poorly presented content with the wrong balance of images, text, and video
I wonder how many intranet professionals are nodding their heads as they recognise some of these examples being on their own intranets! Yes, it is irritating and creates a poor user experience.
So, how can you make your intranet look neat and tidy? I recommend you consider these:
- Usability standard that sets out what the user experience should be
- Feedback button so people can report back on bad examples
- Document library for content that has to be shown in its original format (legal document)
- Training for publishers on tone of voice
- Training for publishers on how to ‘write for the web’
- Guidance on use of different media with best practice examples
- Audit content and encourage/persuade/force publishers to publish it following best practice
And you can always contact me if you need more help and advice.
July 17, 2012 at 8:42 am | Posted in governance, homepage, intranet, navigation, SharePoint 2010, standards, usability | 3 Comments
Tags: governance, intranet, navigation, sharepoint 2010, usability, usability standards, users
SharePoint 2010 gives you the opportunity to upgrade your technology to meet the current and future needs of its businesses. It also enables other changes to improve business effectiveness to be made at the same time. This helps to justify the cost to the business from investing in SharePoint 2010 and not just keep everything the same as before. There are many features that SharePoint 2010 offers which will help maximise the benefits.
Your business must aim to give users of your intranet a much improved experience from day 1 with continuing improvements made at regular stages afterwards as part of an ongoing intranet strategy. Here is part 1 of my tips to get your business ready to use SharePoint 2010:
User experience
- ‘Mega menu’ at the top of every intranet page with functional titles that can expand to show the most popular and/or important content as a shortcut.
- Site menu on the left hand side of every page in the site to navigation menu of the site’s contents.
- Breadcrumb trail below the mega menu on every page to help people navigate easily back to a previous page on their journey.
- Title of each page to show in the header and footer of every page.
- Homepage and any other key intranet sites to have common principles of navigation, functionality, and look and feel with the option of having distinct branding. The type of content and its position can vary for each homepage.
- Content pages to have an owner, review and last updated date shown consistently at the bottom of each page. The owner can link to their My Profile for contact details.
- Content sections will clearly show what they contain. People will be able to collapse sections within the main page or expand them to show all the links and content within them. Some sections can be forced to stay open; other sections can have the option to add more links and content if people choose.
- My Profile will provide information about an individual to help people searching for someone realise this is the right person to help them. The details can include contact details, location, manager and place in the business’ hierarchy, whereabouts and relevant information, experience and interests.
In my next post I will cover how to get your business ready for SharePoint 2010 – the publisher experience.
July 27, 2011 at 8:52 am | Posted in application, benefit, best practice, collaboration, digital workplace, governance, intranet, mark morrell ltd, news, plan, standards, strategy, value, web accessibility | 2 Comments
Tags: benefit, best practice, digital workplace, governance, intranet, Mark Morrell, publishing, standards, strategy, usability, users, value
In my last four posts on the digital workplace I have covered ‘Must have digital workplace principles’, ‘5 steps to a great digital workplace strategy’, 7 ways to engage people in a digital workplace and lastly ‘Create a brilliant digital workplace with me’.
To have a successful digital workplace (my definition is ‘work is what you do, not where you go to’) organisations must have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully. It becomes the natural way of working so everyone is more productive and your organisation more efficient with:
- people work from any location as well as their office workstation
- IT infrastructure for the same or similar experience
- everyone can read news, collaborate, search and complete tasks
- individuals choosing tools – RSS, mobile, etc. – that help them
- organisations measure benefits and encourages digital workplace
Follow these ‘must have’ principles including strategy, engagement, governance, HR policies and IT infrastructure and you will have a great digital workplace.
Governance
It is important the whole of the digital workplace is managed so that it brings benefits to the organisation, individuals and collectively, everyone. It should mean the feeling that ‘things are better’ permeates through to everyone and encourages even greater use of the digital workplace.
It means the level of governance balances the rewards to be gained while avoiding any risks. That doesn’t come naturally but through good governance of the digital workplace including:
Ownership
Who is responsible for developing the strategy, implementing the digital workplace and ongoing management of it? It is difficult for one person to have overall responsibility for so many key roles and activities. Neither is it best for it to be one person.
The best solution is to have a steering group made up of stakeholders from key parts of the business most affected by the digital workplace. These stakeholders should be senior people with decision making authority not someone who has to refer back to his/her line manager and delay matters.
There may be dedicated roles for people responsible for collaboration, ways of working, etc, but they should ultimately report in to the steering group.
The worse solution is to have competing groups of people each implementing conflicting standards, designs and ways to use the digital workplace. That will be a disaster and must be avoided!
Consistency
You really need a consistent level of governance across your digital workplace. By consistent I don’t mean the same. I mean it is what everyone using the digital workplace would expect or need.
For publishers/site owners who are publishing in the digital workplace accredited types of content (policies, factual stuff) the expectation is for a more rigorous approach than for collaborative content where opinions and views require a lighter touch.
For people using the digital workplace to view information and news, use workflow applications or collaborate with each other, they expect the look and feel of the digital workplace to be similar. Tools needs to be branded in line with the business’ colours and designs. Features need to encourages everyone to use them more such as help links, contact points, easily laid out and functional designs.
All the different parts of the digital workplace need to be integrated so they are seen as one whole entity not a different set of silos, resources with some electronic sticking plaster added to make them look as if they are connected when they don’t give that impression to anyone using them.
Standards
One approach is to have a set of standards based on the needs of the organisation (information retention), regulation (who has permission to see what), legal (web accessibility) and technical (DNS policy). These can be applied appropriately across the digital workplace for each activity. So for formal type content (policies and procedures) it’s most likely all the standards will apply. For applications (HR processes) it’s probable that most will apply too. But for collaboration you will apply a lighter touch.
Alternatively you can create standards that only apply to certain information and applications to meet the purpose people need to use it for.
It is about getting the balance right again. You don’t need to be too restrictive and stifle innovation and collaboration. But you don’t want it to be too loose so that the business and individuals risk non-compliance with a legal or regulatory requirements. It’s not easy but getting it right is critical and benefits everyone and the business.
Integrity
This is the real litmus test, the crunch point for me. Do people have confidence in the information and tools they are using in the digital workplace? Does everyone feel encouraged to use the digital workplace more after each time?
The answer has to be ‘YES!’ to these questions. That is the outcome your strategy and plans should aim for.
However you do this it must balance the needs of the business with those of people working well in a digital workplace.
My next post will cover the HR policies which enable digital working.
April 20, 2011 at 11:42 am | Posted in collaboration, engagement, intranet, publishing, SharePoint 2010, standards, value | 3 Comments
Tags: collaboration, content, engagement, governance, publishing, sharepoint 2010, standards, users
In my last post ‘It’s how you use SharePoint 2010 that decides the value it brings 2’ I covered how vital it is to set the right level of permissions for people using the information published.
In this post I will show how people can distinguish different types of content in SP2010. The value to be gained by your organisation can vary tremendously depending on how you achieve this.
You can break SP2010 published content in to two types:
Accredited
Accredited content is official, authoritative, reliable & up to date. People will able to trust it, use it with confidence, knowing it is current and relevant. It is usually information that has a large audience. A limited number of people can edit the information, with access controlled by permissions. Usually one person will have clear ownership.
Collaborative
Collaborative content can be owned by everyone, an individual or community. It can be open to anyone to contribute or comment upon the information. It can be an opinion expressed on a blog posting or a wiki article for others to contribute to and improve further.
Branding
The best way is to brand the content types differently.
SP2010 ‘out of the box’ functionality is good enough for most people publishing and viewing content. So, you can use this for your collaborative content.
Customising the SP2010 masterpages with your corporate branding for accredited content will show clearly the difference from what is ‘out of the box’.
To keep costs down design the branding so that it is minimal – enough to make a difference so people spot it when they use the content – but easy to maintain the masterpages.
With SP2010 you can have a page published with both types of content shown on it. This is because you have different webparts – sections of the page – that can be inserted by the publisher.
You need to consider very carefully if you need to extend the customising to each webpart. The costs and maintainability will increase greatly. It is best to test out with a sample of people what is needed, if anything, so they can distinguish accredited from collaborative content in each webpart.
As with any planned changes, test as early as you can with a sample of people, act on their feedback, be flexible in what the final versions could look like.
That will give you the greatest chance of success of maximising the value your organisation can gain from using SharePoint 2010.
April 13, 2011 at 12:37 pm | Posted in benefit, best practice, content management, governance, intranet, publishing, SharePoint 2010, social media, value | 6 Comments
Tags: best practice, bt intranet, governance, publishing, sharepoint 2010, social media, users, value
In my last post ‘It’s how you use SharePoint 2010 that decides the value it brings’ I covered how setting the right level of permissions when you publish with SP2010 is critical to the value it can bring to your organisation.
In this post I will cover how vital it is to set the right level of permissions for people using the information published. The value to be gained by your organisation can vary tremendously depending on how effective this is done.
Factors to consider for people using SP2010 content are:
1. Mobility
It is vital that people can use SP2010 wherever they need to be for their work. This may not be in their normal place of work. People are more mobile and need to use it from their mobile device, laptop or even other people’s equipment.
You need to get the balance right so there is no or minimal risk to security and maximum benefit through time saved not having to go back to your workplace or contacting colleagues for the information you need (and stopping them from productive work).
The information needs to be presented in the best format and SP2010 isn’t very good with that. For mobile devices it is WAP, text only, format which is poor compared with what other publishing tools are capable of. C’mon Microsoft – improve it!
2. Security
It is important that people can use the information they find. It’s critical that it is the correct information they find too. By this I mean they don’t stumble across some sensitive content.
It may be your organisation is regulated and you need to set different permission levels for people in one part of your organisation from another.
So, make sure when SP2010 is set up, the correct permissions are allocated for everyone depending on their employment status, which part of the organisation they belong in and the grade and role of individuals.
If you get this right it will again minimise the risk of a breach in security while making sure people can use the information they need for their work.
3. Accessibility
What do you want people to do with the information they find? While most people only want to view it, other people may want to contribute and build on to what exists.
So you need to set the correct permissions so only the right people can change it while others can read it but need to ask the owner before they can update it.
It is important to remember the different types of content published in SP2010.
Accredited content will most likely be owned and managed by one person. Only they should change what is published.
Collaborative content can be owned by one person, group or be everyone. It is important permissions are correct so the information can be updated and increase in value with each contribution. Remember:
IT IS HOW YOUR ORGANISATION USES SP2010 THAT WILL DECIDE WHAT VALUE IT BRINGS.
More on how people can distinguish different types of content in SP2010 in my next post.
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