In this webinar our partner Wizdom and Sam Marshall from ClearBox consulting will take a broad look at what it means to scale up a simple intranet in Office 365 into something enterprise-wide. Well look at the implications for going from a legacy single site intranet to a geographic or business-unit multi-site approach, often involving multiple languages and regulations too.

Well then consider how to deepen your intranet by expending it to frontline workers and external partners, concluding with a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the Office 365 feature set.

What well cover:

Reach: How to scale to a global organization, considering challenges such as languages, regulatory differences, geographic distributed permissions, performance etc.
Depth: Adoption, and Expanding to frontline workers and, external collaborators with the out-of-the-box speed but with adoption to frontline unique needs.
Features: How do you create the same standard/adapted features from a current solution into a PaaS model with no control over the underlying platform.
O365: What it does really well, where add-on products are needed and how do you adapt it for scale and global performance.

Register for the webinar

If you cant attend on the day, register now and well send you a copy of the webinar recording.
(Both ClearBox and Wizdom will email you soon after the webinar with the video recording. You can easily unsubscribe at any time.)

Sam Marshall

Sam Marshall is the owner of ClearBox Consulting and has specialised in intranets and the digital workplace for over 18 years, working with companies such as AstraZeneca, AkzoNobel, TUI Travel, Sony and SABMiller. His current activities focus on intranet and digital workplace strategy, the business side of SharePoint, and the use of enterprise social tools.

Sam was responsible for Unilevers global portal implementation, leading the roll-out of over 700 online communities to 90,000 people and consolidating several thousand intranets into one.

Flemming Goldbach

Flemming Goldbach has worked with portals, digitalisation of work, and collaboration processes since 1999, focusing on helping organisations implement and take advantage of Microsofts SharePoint and Office 365 technology in order to obtain better collaboration, knowledge sharing, and greater productivity.
As VP of Product at Wizdom he is responsible for Wizdom product development and processes, and leads the idea and feedback collection and the roadmap prioritisation process.

Register for the webinar

How do intranets engage employees?

Posted on 8 March 201829 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

A truly engaged workforce is a common goal of business leaders, Internal Communications functions and HR departments. The theory is that this brings a series of benefits for organisations including reduced turnover of employees, increased productivity and attracting new talent.

Employee engagement is a source of much debate particularly about its effective measurement, the level of organisational benefits that really do arise and the strict definition of the term. But stepping aside from some of the arguments about the topic, it is obvious that having an engaged workforce is a positive step. An individual wants to feel like they are working for an organisation they want to work for with an arrangement that suits their needs, and in turn organisations and their leaders want to have employees who are happy working for them.

Do intranets support employee engagement?

One of the rationales of intranets is that they do indeed support employee engagement. Of course, an intranet is just one of the channels and tools that support engagements, but what is surprising is the number of different ways that an intranet really can help. Were already covered how an intranet can contribute to a great employee experience, but what about the related area of employee engagement?

At this stage its worth noting that employee engagement reflects how employees feel. Ultimately, it is not something which any internal communications or HR function can control, although they can influence it. To a certain extent, engagement is an output or consequence of how organisations, management and other employees behave and work. The intranet therefore is one of those channels which can help influence engagement in a positive way.

A popular model of employee engagement is provided by Aon, a global professional services firm. Aon defines engagement as the psychological state and behavioural outcomes that lead to better performance. Aons engagement model lists six engagement drivers which illustrate the complicated mix of elements which contribute to engagement:

Company practices (Communication, Diversity and inclusion etc.)
The basics (Benefits, job security, work-life balance etc.)
Brand (Reputation, Corporate responsibility etc.)
Leadership (Both at a senior and business unit level)
Performance (Rewards and recognition, career opportunities etc.)
The Work (Collaboration, Empowerment / autonomy, Work tasks etc.)

Arguably, a good intranet makes a positive contribution across all six of these engagement drivers. Lets look at each in turn.

Company practices

Company practices refers to some of the fundamental ways companies operate covering elements such as communication, the enabling infrastructure and talent and staffing.

The intranet is a core communication channel within any organisation, but its also part of the enabling infrastructure, usually as the point of entry into the digital workplace or the place to search for critical information.

A poor intranet can be infuriating and frustrating a barrier for carrying out basic work practices such as being able to find the contact details of a colleague. A great intranet which allows smooth and open communication, helps encourage transparency and provides an easy gateway into different systems and applications, can really help an individuals day go far more smoothly.

The basics

Aon lists Work-life balance within the basics driver, along with factors such as pay and job security. Work-life balance is important for many of us. A modern intranet makes a positive contribution to this by supporting remote working – allowing employees to access critical information and content, collaborate with colleagues and complete tasks often, from any device.

For example, the intranet can help support an employee working from home when they need to, something which is very important for anybody with a young family, for example.

Brand

Employees should be proud of the organisation they work for. The company brand, its values and how a company behaves are important. reflected in activity such as Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. Recently focus has also been on the concept of purpose why does an organisation exist and who does it serve and whether it gives back something to the wider community, rather than just focus on profit for shareholders.

The humble intranet is an excellent channel for reflecting and enhancing an organisations reputation and brand with employees. This is not just by providing information on purpose and values, but also by proving that the company and its employees are living by these. News about how employees are volunteering in the community or stories about individuals providing excellent customer service might not change the world, but collectively they can help support engagement and how an employee feels about their employer.

Leadership

The contribution of leadership to employee engagement is easy to see. Leadership, both at the organisational and at the divisional or departmental level, influences everything from operational processes to deeper organisational culture to how employees relate to company strategy and purpose.

Leadership communications to employees are very important and the intranet is one of the key communication channels. Leaders can use traditional news, video or blogging to get important messages across, as well as use social tools to interact with employees. When the intranet is used as a channel for dialogue between senior management and employees it is at its most powerful employees see management in a different light, while leaders get a real sense of how employees are feeling. The presence of that two-way conversation can contribute to employee engagement itself.

Performance

Aons performance driver covers elements such as Career opportunities, People management and Performance management. The two areas highlighted by Aon where intranets have most impact are Learning and development and Rewards and recognition.

Intranets can provide access to learning and training materials (for example, Wizdoms intranet has a very good course management feature) but they also help with social learning. The 70-20-10 model suggests that at least one fifth of learning comes from interactions with others, and intranet community sites and identification of experts helps with those interactions.

Intranets are also a good way to recognise employee achievements. Intranet people-related news might report inspiring examples of work carried out or celebrate employee milestones such as years of service reached. Peer to peer recognition where employees thank fellow colleagues for doing something exceptional with these shout outs listed on the intranet can be a powerful form of employee recognition.

The work

Aon list everyday work as another key driver for employee engagement, highlighting Collaboration, Empowerment / autonomy and Work tasks as critical. Intranets are designed to help employees carry out their work and by providing information and tools, intranets can help employees be more autonomous and less reliant on others to carry out their roles.

Probably the biggest contribution to employee engagement in this area is the intranets contribution to collaboration. An intranet can:

provide the ability for an employee to ask a question across the whole company and get answers within hours
locate a specialist or expert for their team
house a discussion group for a community of professionals around a theme or specialism
provide secure spaces for teams to collaborate and communicate
in some cases, also act as an extranet to collaborate externally.

One of the most exciting elements of working in an organisation is being able to collaborate with colleagues, perhaps from the other side of the world, and intranets provide excellent support for this which can help develop close working partnerships and even friendships.

Intranets and employee engagement

Intranets influence employee engagement, but not just because of their role around delivering communications. They enable staff to work remotely, collaborate with colleagues, get recognition and more. All these factors can influence employee engagement.

Overall an intranets contribution to employee engagement is varied in some areas obvious and in other areas, subtler. If you want to engage your employees, then investing in a great intranet is an investment worth making.

The foundations of intranet adoption – It’s not just about the numbers

Posted on 1 March 201829 June 2022 by Steve Bynghall

Healthy adoption continues to be a massive focus for intranet, collaboration and digital workplace teams. It is regarded as a key measure of success, a focus for team efforts and an expectation of senior stakeholders. If you cant get your employees to use your intranet, then whats the point of having an intranet?

Adoption is critical, but some intranet teams tend to have too narrow a definition of adoption. They regard it simply as the proportion of users who are using and visiting the intranet or related collaboration tools. An over-simplified definition of adoption means that teams focus on increasing the headline numbers such as unique users, number of page visits, number of registrations or proportion of users making contributions. This is their number one priority. Thats not to say those numbers arent important, but it does mean other critical areas of value can get missed.

To use an analogy, its a bit like just focusing on the bums on seats when launching a new movie as your criteria for success. On the surface of it that might be the most important thing when the film is launched but significant revenue may also come from merchandise, licensing, DVD sales and other spin-offs. The critical reaction to the film is also key. If your focus is only on driving up the audience numbers, then youre missing a trick.

What does good adoption mean to you?

Intranet and digital workplace teams need to take a more nuanced and three-dimensional view of adoption which is more aligned to the strategic aims of their intranet. They need to work out what good adoption means for their organisation and what value it will drive.

In addition to the proportion of people using your collaboration site or visiting your intranet, adoption needs to cover the how and the who.

The how means thinking about what successful use of your tools means. For example, are you trying to drive adoption of collaboration tools to cover specific types of work such as managing projects? Do you want your employees to using a workspace for more than just a place to dump documents? Successful adoption needs to account for working practices and use cases which lead to positive outcomes for employees and the organisations they work for.

The who also takes in which different groups who might be using your tools and visiting your intranet, but for different purposes. For example, are you aiming for your managers to use your intranet? Do you want more frontline employees to visit? A more three-dimensional view of adoption may cover different groups and how you want them to use your intranet.

The foundations of adoption

When intranet teams think about driving adoption they need to consider all the different ingredients which can influence it. There is no single ingredient X which drives it, but instead multiple, over-lapping factors which lay the foundations for good adoption:

Value: Employees find things, complete tasks and stay informed, ensuring the intranet is helping employees in their everyday work.
Awareness: Employees are aware of features and benefits, so they are knowledgeable about what it does and how to use it.
Proximity: Barriers to successful use are removed so that issues such as poor performance, difficult authentication or lack of access do not impact adoption.
Governance: Structures, roles, rules and processes are in place to ensure the intranet continues to work efficiently, content is up to date and standards are maintainted.
Improvement: The intranet continually improves to meet user needs so it stays relevant and aligned to staff and organisational needs
Trust: Users trust the intranet, its content and the team behind it for all the reasons above.

You cant control adoption

One of the problems of driving adoption is that it is an output or a consequence of your intranet and the way it is run. Therefore, it is something that you cannot ultimately control or guarantee. However, the good news is that it is something that you can influence.

Considering the different foundations of adoption, there are several ways that teams can influence it. Adoption strategies need to consider all these factors, not just an engaging launch and getting your CEO to support it:

Intranet features, capabilities and design: how useful, relevant and engaging your intranet is will depend on what it can do and to a lesser extranet what it looks like
Getting users to design, shape and influence: getting direct feedback and involving users to ensure the intranet is user-centred but also helping to create advocates and ambassadors
A governance framework for a sustainable intranet: this has a direct influence on how up to date content is and all the processes that need to make it work to ensure visitors keep returning
Senior management endorsement and involvement: visible support from your CEO helps spreads awareness, legitimises use and encourages other managers to promote it
Champions, site owner and publisher networks: leveraging the enthusiasm and energy of communities of champions, publishers and site or community managers to promote the intranet, produce content and manage sites
Content management and related governance: all the standards, processes and roles to ensure content is relevant, up] to date, accurate, findable, on brand and engaging
Engaging launch and communications: spreading awareness of the intranet as well as the benefits of using it
Measurement to deliver insights for improvement: using a data-driven approach to continually improve the intranet
Targeted support and training to drive best use: making sure the right groups are using the intranet and its tools in the right way
A post launch roadmap of features and improvements: additional content and capabilities to keep on drawing people to the intranet and engage users

Taking a more holistic view of adoption

Taking a more holistic, 360-degree view of how to influence adoption means that intranet teams can develop a more cohesive, coordinated and long-term strategy for evolving it. For example, instinctively a governance framework might not feel like it will immediately drive adoption. Perhaps it wont, but it will help to maintain great content and engage the people responsible for it and that is critical for good use of your intranet.

Adoption needs to be more than just being about chasing the numbers. Its also about successful usage and targeting different groups to use it in different ways. Teams need to consider a range of approaches which will drive intranet adoption, so it is sustainable. They can then factor their efforts into the way they regularly operate. That should drive up the headline numbers but also ensure your intranet is used in successful ways which are valuable for all.

Video – Dan Hawtrey gives some tips on driving intranet and digital workplace adoption

Posted on 22 February 201829 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

Wizdom Conference Save the Date May 16th-17th 2018

Posted on 15 February 201829 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

Our partner Wizdom holds an annual two day Conference conference focused on delivering premium insights into the Digital Workplace and our Wizdom solution for digital professionals at all levels around the world. Discover all about the Digital Workplace and what value it offers your business.

Set in renowned Tivoli Gardens in the heart of springtime Copenhagen, this international conference offers defining keynotes from industry and thought leaders within the Digital Workplace backed by Wizdom enterprise cases relating real world challenges and solutions.

The latest trends, technology advances and Wizdom solution news within the Digital Workplace serve as icing on the cake adding to the key takeaways from this Must-attend Wizdom conference.

More information on the Wizdom Conference website

Video – John Scott talks about integrating Microsoft Teams with SharePoint and Wizdom at the Intra.Net Reloaded 2017

Posted on 9 February 201829 June 2022 by John Scott

Video transcript:

Im going to tell to you about a recent project we ran with a customer, but Id like to start with a storyâ€¦

Its late at night and a policeman is doing his rounds walking along a quiet street next to the park. Up ahead he can see a streetlamp, and as he approaches he can see there is a man directly under it, scrabbling around on the floor.

Good evening, Sir he says as he approaches

Is something the matter?

Yes, I lost my house keys and I cant find them says the man, frantically, as he continues to scan the pavement

Feeling a sense of duty, the policeman joins the hunt, but after a few minutes – when there is still no sign of the keys he asks, Are you sure that you lost them here, Sir?

No, I dropped them somewhere in the park, says the man

Then, why are we looking for them here?

Because the light is much better here, he explains, pointing at the streetlamp

That streetlamp is your intranet search. Theres a huge area containing all your business knowledge, but your intranet allows you to search in only a small part of it.

And to be honest, your intranet search is probably less like a streetlamp and more like a candle.

And, unlike the man in our story, your users often dont know that they are searching in a little defined area. They expect to be able to find anything. And they get frustrated.

One of these dark areas where your intranet search cant look is email lots of knowledge lives there and is only visible to those people in copy or in the chain. But, there are new tools emerging that have a similar problem. One of these tools that is becoming popular at the moment is Microsoft Teams.

Teams

Basically, Teams is an Office 365 app that allows you to be a part of different groups or teams, where each team has different members, a feed for conversations, an area for shared documents, and options to add other shared elements like notes, or plans.

Now actually Teams is a rather neat app. Personally, I love it and in our company we use it every day. Its a great tool, but it has some limitations. However, these limitations can be overcome by clever integration with a Wizdom intranet.

To illustrate what I mean by that, Id like to tell to you about a recent project we delivered for a customer

Innovation agency

Our customer is an agency that helps other companies to innovate. They work with a lot of large companies and often have a lot of active projects for each client. With different teams of people working on different projects.

So, if they work in their little silos – theres a high chance that they will be re-inventing the wheel all over the place.

They recently moved to Office 365, and they quickly adopted MS Teams as their collaboration platform of choice

And its great. When they are working on projects, everyone gets visibility of whats going on they can access files from anywhere and so on. But, on these projects they are creating knowledge and assets that could be re-used or re-purposed for other similar projects. Maybe for other clients.

They are carrying out research, creating templates and even designing whole programmes of work.

And a lot of people who would benefit from this stuff dont see it. Theyd have to be a member of every Team that exists. And that would be overwhelming.
And thats where the intranet comes in. They need to give their people the helicopter view, and allow them to drill down and access those re-usable insights, templates, or programmes of work.

They use Wizdom as their intranet making use of many of the great features that Dan mentioned.

But also, we built them a custom Wizdom module for Teams integration that does a few things:

1. Firstly

The homepage of the intranet is the default page whenever I open by web browser. And the intranet knows who I am, and shows me a personalised list containing the Teams that I am a member of. So, I can quickly click into any of these.

2. Secondly

Theres a list of clients on the intranet, and if I click on a client I get a page that contains details about the client including the active projects.
Each project is basically a team within Microsoft Teams.

So, I can click an active project. If Im a member of the Team then it opens up. If not, Im prompted to request access to this Team.

3. Thirdly

Next to active teams, if I have the necessary permissions, I can see a decommission button.

If the project has finished and the Team is no longer active, then I just need to click this and I am taken to the decommission form.

I add a few details about the project here – and then I hit the OK button.

What then happens, behind the scenes, is this:

The Team files are stored in SharePoint and tagged with the information I added on the form
The Team is removed from MS Teams
The Team is moved to the archived projects list on the client page
A new page for the project is created in the Wizdom intranet

And this is the new interface for that project in the client area

4. And finallyâ€¦

Not only do we have the files from the project neatly stored on a project page, within the client area, but also we have some other search tools in the intranet that allow us to find useful content across all the archived projects

One example is the biz dev assets search: This is a tool for people working on business development writing proposals and running pitches to win new clients. It allows them to quickly find assets from previous projects that they can re-use or re-purpose. Saving them a lot of time and making their pitches more compelling and well-informed.

What made all this possible?

Wizdom comes with over 50 features or modules, but it also supports the creation of your own custom modules. These can interact directly with existing Wizdom or Office 365 features, like Teams.

You can use the out-of-the-box features to meet 90% of your requirements and then add custom modules to meet the remaining 10%. And if you have an inhouse development team you could create these modules yourself. If you dont have one then we can help, of course!

So, thats how we made the intranet search more powerful. Shining a light on knowledge that was previously left in the dark.

And I encourage to you all to think about how you can do the same on your intranet.

Why frequent releases are a clear sign of vendor maturity

Posted on 7 February 201829 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

“At Wizdom we focus a lot on telling potential customers, independent analysts and other stakeholders, how we regularly and frequently release new versions of Wizdom. The reason we do this is that we believe that regular and frequent releases directly illustrate maturity of the vendor.”

Over the past 18 months a lot of new Intranet software vendors have surfaced. This is great and illustrates the need for these types of products in a market where Wizdom has been present for more than 6 years. However, the majority of discussions and analysis by organizations looking to implement an Intranet product and vendor, is centered around looking at product features the How can our product help you because these are easy to see and evaluate.

But the maturity of a vendor is much harder to see, and maturity is even more important than features. This is because the customer is trusting the vendor with their future solution, not just now, but also in the future. They are trusting the vendor to make sure that the product and thus the customers solution is continually evolving to meet new demands from the customers users as the world and the organization moves forward. And if the vendor does not have the maturity to make it in the tough competitive market space, the customer is left with a dead solution, which they cannot maintain themselves and the vendor cannot or will not either.

So ok, vendor maturity is really important, but why do we believe that frequent releases are clear sign of vendor maturity?

Firstly, every new release indicates a reflection by the vendor based on customer feedback and market trends. So frequent releases mean that not only does the vendor reflect, learn and adjust rapidly, but the vendor is also committed to listening, analyzing and learning from their customers feedback and the market trends.

Secondly, it takes time and effort to adjust a product and to package and support a new release. So, making regular frequent releases is basically the vendor putting their money where their mouth is or as we in Wizdom would say The proof is in the pudding. Reversely an immature vendor can fairly easily patch together a product that looks good on the surface and provides relevant features, but will be hard pressed to come up with the frequent releases that make sure that the value is also obtained when the product meets real world scenarios and needs of customers.

And finally, former President of the Microsoft Windows Division, Steven Sinofsky named his blog Learning by Shipping. This is an extremely apt concept and another reason why every software release increases maturity. You learn a little from building new features in a release. You learn a lot every time you ship the release. So, a vendor that does frequent releases is learning more and faster than a vendor that does not.

by: Flemming Goldbach, Director of Product at Wizdom

The original article was published here.

How intranets help employees and organisations to be more productive

Posted on 2 February 201816 November 2023 by Dan Hawtrey

A good intranet focuses on helping employees get things done and save time. This in turn drives efficiency across different activities, helping drive employees own individual productivity, and ultimately that of organisations.

Productivity is all about producing output in more efficient and effective ways. Intranets contribute to productivity in different ways, including:

Improving the efficiency of processes
Saving time so employees can make better use of their working day
Equipping employees and teams with knowledge to be more productive
Facilitating collaboration between employees
Reducing use of inefficient email.

Although it is difficult to measure and even harder to prove, eventually a good intranet should pay for itself in terms of the benefits it provides. Lets look in more details at some of the ways intranets can help increase productivity.

Help employees find things

Over the years original research from IDC has been used by McKinsey and others to show that some employees can spend as much as a fifth of their working time searching for information. Much of those wasted hours are spent trawling through emails, browsing sprawling file directories or asking time-pressured colleagues questions.

By centralising the key information and documents that employees really need, for example in a centralised policy library or within different communities, an intranet can save employees so much time. A powerful search and user-centred navigation will also help employees find what they need. Employees can also have the confidence that they are looking at the latest version of a document and that there is one source of truth, again cutting down search time.

Drive employee self-service

Employee self-service means that employees can carry out tasks, complete simple transactions, answer questions or solve problems themselves without having to ask another individual to help. This approach takes enormous pressure off HR functions, IT departments and other support functions, and can drive productivity by allowing these specialists to focus their time on more value-add activities. Self-service also means individual employees also learn to do things in the most efficient way.

Intranets drive employee self-service by allowing employees to:

carry out transactions themselves through integration with other systems, for example booking annual leave
linking to different systems (e.g. travel booking) in an easy, straightforward way
including key how to information and FAQs to allow employees to work through processes and issues themselves.

Connect employees and drive collaboration

Intranets are fantastic at reducing silos in organisations, creating connections, facilitating communities and driving collaboration between individuals and teams. Connecting people allows individuals to:

get answers to questions from experts
assemble the right teams
reduces the chance of duplication of effort
communicate more quickly in a more efficient way than email
effectively co-ordinate processes
and act in many other ways which increase productivity and efficiency!

Improve specific processes

There are usually a whole set of specific apps and tools on the intranet which can really help improve specific process including employee onboarding, managing projects, managing events, supporting the IT helpdesk, completing forms with workflow and so on. Wizdoms intranet is particularly strong this area as it is packed with apps, tools and cool features which help employees be more productive.

Engage employees and make them more productive

We know that intranets help to engage employees. Arguably happier employees are more productive and some analysis has suggested that this is the case, although more research is needed to firmly establish the link between engagement and productivity.

Bringing the right content together

Intranets are excellent at bringing disparate content, data and knowledge from different systems or different teams together in ways which can help teams be more productive. For example, you may need to know all about a key client having all the salient information in one place not only saves time on gathering the information but also gives you a 360-degree view on that client, helping to determine more efficient and effective decision-making.

Drive flexible working

A great intranet, especially if it is cloud-based and optimised for mobile devices, should be available anywhere and at any time. This helps support flexible working and choice for employees, and allows for a better balance between work and life.

It can also mean far greater productivity for individuals who prefer to work from home with less interruptions or even for an entire office when bad weather disrupts the journey to work. The ability to work remotely and its impact is sometimes a contentious issue. However, for some types of work, and in some circumstances, it can absolutely help people get more work done.

Establish the digital workplace

Intranets act as the standard point of entry into numerous systems and applications – the front door to the digital workplace. This helps drive productivity, not only because its efficient and convenient for employees to access everything in one place, but it also drives awareness and use of the very tools which drive efficiency. In a SharePoint-based intranet like Wizdom, which can be tightly integrated with Office 365 , the ability to also drive use of tools like Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business through the intranet has enormous value.

Drive digital literacy and mindset

Both enabling flexible working and establishing the digital workplace also encourages employees to get used to new ways of working. Not only do they get acquainted with how to use new digital tools but they are usually more open to using them in the future. That increase in digital literacy and the associated mindset can increase your organisations ability to drive adoption of future digital tools, in turn helping to increase productivity and further digital transformation.

Gather ideas

Employee ideas and input are a fantastic source of knowledge for improving productivity. For example, frontline workers can often give highly practical insights into how to service customers better. One small genius idea can have a massive impact. Your intranet and related tools can be used to help gather ideas and related input on employee insights.

Extend digital services to all

An overlooked aspect of intranets is that they are usually available for all employees. This means that many of the above approaches which do help to drive efficiency are amplified because more employees can carry them out. For example, the more employees carry out transactions via self-service, the more productivity gains are achieved.

Intranets drive efficiency and productivity

Intranets contribute to productivity in multiple ways and its always worth being aware of the potential contribution they can make. You can use this articles list of ways they help as an argument for an intranet business case, as a basis for your measurement for success or as a checklist to prioritise future actions. Whatever you do make sure your intranet is really helping employees become more productive.

How your intranet can support a great employee experience

Posted on 31 January 201829 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

In recent years several well-known companies including GE and Airbnb have appointed Chief Employee Experience Officers or Heads of Employee Experience. While some of these are a rebranding of traditional HR roles, they also indicate the rise in interest in the concept of the employee experience.

Compared to more traditional HR, employee experience takes a far more holistic view of how employees experience their working day and their overall time spent at a company. An employees experience of work can include:

physical workspace and working conditions
the digital workplace with systems and tools and other touchpoints
work-life balance
pay and benefits
personal development opportunities and learning
organisational culture, brand and purpose
line manager and immediate colleagues
much, much more!

In the same way that companies focus on the overall experience of customers, organisations focusing on employee experience hope to improve talent retention, attract new employees, and even drive efficiency and improve productivity.

Surveys suggest that while improving employee experience is a priority for many organisations, there is still a long way to go to make it happen. According to Deloittes annual Global Human Capital Trends survey, 80% of executives rate employee experience as important or very important, but 59% feel they are either not ready or somewhat ready to address the associated challenges.

How do intranets contribute to the employee experience?

While there are many ingredients and factors which influence the employee experience, intranets can play a part in supporting a positive working day. Here are eight ways in which intranets contribute to employee experience.

Communicating purpose and values

Surveys from LinkedIn and others have shown that company purpose a sense that the work employees carry out matters and makes a difference in the world beyond commercial factors is regarded as important by many employees. Intranets support messaging from senior leaders which can communicate a sense of purpose to staff as well as related values. News updates can also provide proof that the company really is doing what it believes in and living its own values.

Supporting learning and development

The ability to learn and develop benefits both individual employees and the companies they work for. Many organisations now base their learning and development programmes on the 70-20-10 model where training is derived from on-the-job experience (70%), interaction with others (20%) and formal courses and education (10%).

Intranets help with interaction by providing a space for teams and communities to collaborate and communicate. Intranets also help with formal learning, for example allowing employees to view courses and related material, as well as book themselves onto a course. (At Wizdom, were particularly proud of our Course & Event Management module.)

Facilitating connection and community

A core strength of intranets is to connect employees with each other, usually via the employee directory and other social tools. Its possible for an employee to get know their colleagues a little better, even if they are located on the other side of the world!

Intranets also support specific communities not only those that are work-related but also social communities such as sports, hobbies and other interests. Working closely with your colleagues, getting to know new people and feeling a greater sense of community, all contribute to a positive employee experience.

Supporting flexible working patterns

A key part of a valued employee experience is the ability to balance life inside and outside work. This can be particularly key for families with younger children or those caring for elderly parents where the ability to work from home or flexible hours can make all the difference. Intranets support remote working by providing access to essential information and to collaboration tools often from multiple devices, so employees can work seamlessly from wherever they want and whenever they want.

Experiencing the digital workplace

Theres nothing more frustrating than an inefficient, slow and outdated digital workplace. Employees spend so much time using technology at work, a poor user experience can really impact the working day.

A high-quality intranet like Wizdom acts as a gateway to the wider digital workplace, either by integrating with or linking to a wide range of digital tools that help employees get things done and carry out their role. A good intranet helps employees to effortlessly experience the digital workplace, removing frustration and increasing productivity.

Helping employees find things more easily

A good intranet also saves employees time by helping them find the things they need. Research has suggested that employees can waste a significant number of hours per week just on searching for information and documents. Not only is this highly inefficient its also very annoying! A good intranet helps users find what they need through search, information architecture and other approaches.

Helping new employees

Research has shown that the first 90 days of an employees experience of work are critical in shaping an employees relationship with their company. Intranets can play a significant role in new employee onboarding by providing easily-digestible information about the company, connecting new hires to colleagues, providing tasks and checklists of what needs to be done, providing access to learning and just helping a new starter feel welcome! If on your first day you get a friendly video from the CEO, join a community where everybody says hello and have a clear list of everything you need to do by the end of the week, then youre off to a good start.

Giving employees a voice

Intranets give employees a voice in several different ways they can comment on news and blogs, express opinions via polls, post discussions within specific communities and even create their own content. When employees have an effective voice, everybody wins. Employees feel more engaged and taken more seriously, a significant factor in helping to drive a strong employee experience. Senior leaders and managers get important feedback about how employees are feeling and receive valuable input into ideas and initiatives.

What can intranet teams do to support the employee experience?

Is your intranet helping to support the employee experience in your organisation? Here are seven tips for intranet teams.

1. Lead the conversation

If nobodys talking about employee experience in your organisation its time to start the conversation. Intranet teams are well-networked and digitally-savvy. They can play a role in getting the topic on the agenda by speaking to the right stakeholders and leading the debate.

2. Get a consensus on employee experience

It helps enormously to have a consensus among key stakeholders about what employee experience is and what to do about it. If youre leading the debate, consider getting a group together and leading a workshop on the topic to define what needs to be done next.

3. Work with HR

Are you working with your colleagues in HR to advance the employee experience? If not go and speak to them to work out ways you can use the intranet to support their employee experience agenda.

4. Work out the gaps

Use this article as a starting point to work out a checklist of potential ways your intranet can help to support the employee experience. Are there additional things you could (and should) be doing? Identify some of the gaps.

5. Conduct user research

Are there additional ways you can improve the employee experience you havent thought about? Get feedback from your users, find out about their pain points, conduct a survey or observe what they are doing. This will give you some excellent material to help you work out how to improve your intranet to drive a better employee experience.

6. Make any necessary improvements

Make any necessary improvements to your intranet to plug identified gaps, meet employee needs or satisfy stakeholders. There will almost certainly be some quick wins to be had which are relatively straightforward.

7. Dont stop there

Improving employee experience is a journey. Keep on going!

Its all about the experience

Employee experience is a powerful concept which helps both employees and organisations. Making the necessary improvements really is worth the effort. Intranets play their part in everything from communications to providing learning opportunities to helping employees complete tasks. Intranet teams can really make a contribution and even lead the conversation. Good luck on your employee experience journey!

The original article was published here.

Content Formulas favourite intranet, SharePoint and Office 365 blog posts from 2017

Posted on 13 December 201716 November 2023 by Dan Hawtrey

Its nearly 2018, and as well as looking forward with our predictions for the coming year, weve been looking back over the past 12 months. Its been another exciting year for Content Formula, with our flourishing partnership with Wizdom Intranet, our continuing client work and our attendance at numerous conferences and events.

During 2017 weve also written a lot of articles for our blog covering intranets, SharePoint, Office 365, the digital workplace and more! Some of these posts are relevant to those starting out with an intranet project, while some will resonate more with those who already have a mature platform. So there’s something for everyone. Heres a selection of our most popular posts. Happy reading!

15 ways you can integrate Office 365 functionality into your intranet

Many organisations are basing their intranet on SharePoint Online and Office 365. This provides an excellent opportunity to integrate some of the powerful tools from the Office 365 suite right into the intranet experience, allowing you to drive adoption and improve efficiency. In this post our UX Director John Scott lists 15 of the most powerful ways to integrate Office 365 and your intranet. Get ready for lots of screenshots!

We need a new intranet. Where do I start?

Occasionally we stumble across a company which still doesnt have an intranet, or has grown rapidly to the point where it really need one. This article looks at the broad steps teams need to follow to get a new intranet from starting an internal conversation to building a strategy and business case all the way through to implementing that intranet project.

Define your intranet strategy before you buy your intranet

Were always surprised by the number of organisations who have no intranet strategy but are still going full steam ahead with buying intranet software and starting a project. In this thoughtful post Dan Hawtrey explains what an intranet strategy is and outlines seven key reasons for developing one. He also reiterates the importance of research and understanding your users to deliver a successful intranet.

How to be an intranet video star

So far video had a bit of a bumpy ride inside the enterprise compared to the consumer world. The meteoric rise of YouTube hasnt exactly been matched by the success of internal video sharing platforms. In this video (about video!) John Scott explores how you can move forward with video on your intranet. Its based on a well-received presentation John gave at the IntraTeam conference in Copenhagen in the Spring.

Making the business case for your intranet

How do you go about making a business case for your intranet? What should you include in it and what type of evidence do you need to argue your case? And how should you present it? This very practical checklist is full of tips and advice and a great starting point for preparing an argument to present to your stakeholders.

Stay close to your users to deliver a great intranet

Here at Content Formula we know how important it is to listen to and actively involve your users in an intranet project. Staying close to your users helps you to carry out the effective user research needed to build a great intranet as well as test and validate the design. It also supports your change management efforts as you build advocacy through involvement. This post explores the contribution users make and how to involve them throughout your project.

Microsoft unveils whole host of Office 365, SharePoint and OneDrive updates at #MSIgnite

OK, we admit we are a bit geeky here at Content Formula, especially when it comes to Office 365 and SharePoint. Naturally we always are excited by what Microsoft will reveal in its announcements at the annual Ignite conference. Here our Technical Director Joe Perry lists some of the major changes on the horizon from new hub sites to improvements to Teams to a whole new SharePoint admin centre.

Got Office 365? Why opting for a non-SharePoint intranet is madness!

This post was partly inspired by a conversation we had with a potential client about whether it was right to go with a non-SharePoint intranet when they had Office 365. In our view it doesnt make much sense at all! This article covers how a SharePoint intranet allows you to fully leverage your investment in Office 365 by integrating with the wider suite of tools, helping to drive adoption and creating a gateway to your digital workplace. It also reduces costs, avoids user confusion and means youre future-proofed!

Running an intranet RFP an agency view

We often get asked to participate in RFPs to win new work. If youve never run an RFP process before it can prove to be time-consuming and require a lot of effort. Here Dan Hawtrey gives his thoughts on how to manage an intranet-related RFP and provides some tips for success that will help you to choose the best digital partner for your company.

Buy or build your intranet? Off-the-shelf versus custom build (webinar)

Back in April we held a webinar led by Dan Hawtrey and John Scott which examined how intranets have shifted over the last couple of years from being mainly custom-built for each individual organisation to where purchasing an off-the-shelf intranet now makes more sense. In this recording we take a deep dive into the buy or build question and rate the two approaches across different criteria such as cost, access, scope, speed and relevance.

And lots of information about Wizdom features!

Way back in January we announced our partnership with Wizdom, the leading SharePoint-in-a-box product. Wizdom comes packed with features and capabilities, some of which weve covered throughout the year.

So if you want to read about Wizdoms excellent Learning Management System, its highly useful policy library feature, the instant intranet Accelerate module which revolutionises deployment or its great approach to news (mixing more formal corporate news and informal noticeboard items), then youve come to the right blog!

Keep on reading!

Were going to be carrying on writing post and articles in 2018 covering practical advice and tips, the latest developments in the SharePoint and Office 365 world, our thoughts and more. Let us know if theres something youd like to cover. See you next year!