Tailor your intranet to keep staff connected

Jun 13 2008 By Greig Cameron

Web tools can engage teams and deliver cultural change

Keeping staff properly informed can be difficult depending on the size and type of organisation.

With more remote working, multiple offices or sites and a workforce which may always be moving, making sure everyone knows the latest developments is more complicated than calling a meeting.

The use of intranets is one way to ensure consistency and maintain standards in communications across a business but they are increasingly being put to other uses.

Edinburgh-based web design agency Realise says intranets are now also being used as tools to bring about cultural change in a business.

Forums and shared information platforms can help embed corporate values and vision in an effective way and also encourage more collaboration between departments.

Fiona Proudler, creative services director for Realise, believes making an intranet useful to staff is the best way to succeed.

She said: "An intranet can serve as a powerful communication tool within an organisation - corporate knowledge can be given a home, with every employee given access to the same information.

"But this is not something that should be built around the corporate structure.

"The typical intranet is built to help serve staff - to put the information and tools they need to do their job effectively at their fingertips.

"Phone books, document templates, latest news and guidelines that relate to all should be easily found by everyone, not hidden in the IT or HR pages, buried alongside documents that are relevant only to that department.

"The best intranets, therefore, tend to involve the staff from an early stage in the development and ultimately work for the staff."

However, providing information must still be one of the key functions.

One of Realise's most recent projects was creating an intranet for law firm Pagan Osborne following on from a redesign of the main internet site.

They initially canvassed staff and created a working group to gather opinion before carrying out a survey to come up with a name for the intranet.

Staff wanted a user friendly environment which gave them access to key tools.

The final site, named Signpost, also makes use of forums, events calendars, image galleries and feedback forms to connect all members of staff.

The enthusiastic response from workers meant the company came up with new features it plans to add in the coming months.

Proudler said: "Intranets can also play an important role in bridging the gap between external and internal marketing.

"The staff need to know and understand a company's values before they can consistently deliver these to their clients and intranets can be designed to actively support this element of the business.

"At times of mergers or management change, the intranet can become integral to providing the glue that binds people together. A clear approach will deliver a meaningful and ultimately useful intranet."

'It can bridge gap between external and internal marketing'