Globally local - locally global

Communicating with employees who are not connected to the intranet

Glen contributed some real data to the discussion about "Spam from corporate communication" and the follow-up post: "Effective internal communication benchmarks"

"Our read rate or click rate is around 6%-10% depending on the subject. Articles about human interest get the most hits. Articles about security and technology are much lower. We employee about 130,000 employees. We publish about 6 articles a day and publish them to the homepage of our intranet."

It is great to see some real figures. Thank you Glen.
6 articles a day is a lot. I wonder how many companies manage to produce several articles in a week?

I did a case study on La Poste (French postal services) for my web site over 6 years ago, and learned about their dedicated team of internal journalists whose only job was producing articles on subjects related to the activities of La Poste.

They also produced short summaries that could be printed on large sheets of paper and posted in the distribution offices around France, letting the employees "on the road" see the news in the morning when they came in to pick up their mail bags. There were new news posters every day. The HQ-based team made it a rule to provide regular content, at daily intervals.

Technology has advanced since then, and companies are doing things ranging from employee radio (a large bank in France is experimenting with this), videos in places where people collect, external web sites (Arcelormittal's webTV is an example), screen-savers for office-based people and same content short messages on TVs around the factories, and so on.

Of course, many organisations now let employees access the intranet from outside the enterprise,  from home for example, so the number of "non-connected" employees is becoming more difficult to assess.
However, how many people will come home after work, and turn on their computers to see the news from their company? Not many I bet. Unless of course they need it for something else, such as work instructions for the next day (airline personnel, bus-drivers, etc.).

Making the intranet the primary tool for distribution of news only makes sense if practically everyone can access the intranet. Otherwise, there must be parallel methods. Sounds obvious, but not all enterprises practice this approach. Print publications are usually glossier and less frquent. Then tend to serve to communicate more in-depth information / stories.

How many organisation have daily communication of company news to employees who do not have easy access to the intranet? And what are the methods?

Effective internal communication benchmarks?

My previous note on "Spam from Corporate Communications" triggered some comments and questions from around the world.

Rachel McAlpine picked up on it and I put a comment on her blog "Content that makes people happy" saying that 90% of the time people want local news. That's what they find relevant. But that the trick is getting the other 10 % right.

Of course, the percentage varies, and also depends on what you consider "common" and what you consider "local" or "specific". Those are words full of meaning to most people, and can set off long discussions!

I received an email from a senior content manager who said he was struggling with the issues I raised and says " I find it difficult to measure the effectiveness of our communications and channels. While we have internal benchmarks, I would like to measure our effectiveness against external companies. I am curious if you have, or are aware of any bench mark studies. I would be interested in click rates, effectiveness of the communication and contribution to our strategic priorities."

I was also recently asked by an intranet manager in a global company if I had any idea what "click rate" or "watch rate!" to expect when a new corporate video is published. In their case, the videos are published both on the web site and the intranet, as well as being project from screens in the lobby and around the organisation. Good strategy, but that makes it nearly impossible to know how many employees have actually seen it.

The short answer is No, I don't have any benchmark studies and would love to know if anyone out there does. Please share them with us here or send me an email.

However, I do have some suggestions as to how to keep employees informed and feeling involved:

1. Be sure to include at least one question about your intranet in your annual employee "climate" survey. This lets you build from a baseline.
2. Consider doing a short online survey to find out whether or not people know the strategic orientations of the company, and where they get that information. See if it is from internal sources (managers, newsletters, intranets, colleagues, etc.) or external (press clippings, TV, ..)
3. Do regular quick polls on your intranet to assess user opinions about different subjects including strategy.
4. Do not forget to include employee usage of your web site (in addition to the intranet itself) when you consider how employees get corporate information and messages.

If you are really brave, do "candid camera" or "live news" style interviews one day in the canteen, by walking around with a mike and a video camera asking people to tell you what the company strategy is in their opinion. Then publish it on the intranet.
I'm half joking. You might get some really interesting answers, or you might get fired!

Spam from corporate communications?

One of the speakers today at IntraTeam event in Copenhagen told us that a group of users in his company had complained to him about the spam they got on their company emails. He asked them what kind of spam it was so that he could try to adjust the filters, and they said it's from Corporate Communications.

This is the second firsthand anecdote I have heard recently where intranet users have complained about "spam from corporate communications". In the first case, a few months ago, it was an IT person who told me that the number of "deleted without being read emails" from corporate communications to employees was in the high 80-90%. A figure like this should make people stop and think about what their "all" email policies are.

It should also make us all think about how blogs with RSS feeds can ease this situation for users. People can then subscribe to what interests them. Of course, then the problem is that maybe people won't subscribe to the feeds from corporate...!

That then raises a more fundamental issue of what type of news really does interest everyone in an organisation? In most cases, at least in large global companies, there is very little news that really speaks to "all employees". Which of course brings us around to how to customise, and what is the right balance between mandatory and optional news items on a portal page.

What is common and who decides....two basic open questions for many companies.

These questions are subject to much debate - sometimes quite emotional, and touch on organisational politics, fundamental beliefs about the nature of human beings, and even philosophical views on the value of individual freedom versus what is good for the larger group.

Intranet innovation awards 2008 launched today from Copenhagen, IntraTeam event

The 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards were officially launched on stage today by James Robertson, Step Two Designs, creator of the awards. I have the privilege of being one of the judges this year, and of being in the audience today in Copenhagen.

What is unique about these awards is that they recognise individual improvements to intranets and do not attempt to do the impossible: say that one intranet is better than another overall.

Facebook filling a gap in company intranets

I wrote a note following the JMC Breakfast at UNESCO with Florence Devouard and Stephen Roberts (UNESCO):
Questions from intranet managers where I published 6 questions raised by the intranet managers during the breakfast.
I invited responses from readers, and heard from one - thanks Samuel for your contributions (bottom of page).

I will respond to these questions one per post and include Samuel's response to each question. I've separated them out into 6 posts because each one is a subject on its own. Please join the discussion and tell us what you think.

Previous questions: (1) Wikis versus the intranet or wikis plus the intranet? (2) Extreme personalisation - how far? (3) Intranet on cell phones.

Question 4 out of 6. Facebook

Question from the intranet manager: How should a company position Facebook vis a vis the company intranet?

Samuel's response:

Good question! Andrew McAfee has some interesting posts on this topic. I like the idea of Facebook being an Intranet. It’s really user focused. But where do you leave the corporate news and Whoiswho in Facebook? Or don’t we need them then?

My response:

I know several large, global companies that have created networks on Facebook. These networks are open only to employees of the company. Other companies have apparently let their employees create official groups on Facebook that anyone can join. The cases I know have done it using the company name and logo, but they let anyone in. Another company I know created a group on Facebook, but you must get approved by the administrator of the group before you can join.

My personal opinion is that in many of these cases (in all the ones I refer to above and know personally) Facebook is being used because the intranets of the companies are too rigid, only designated people can publish content, there is no easy way to locate people in the company if you do not already know their names. In other words, the intranet/portal landscape is weak and Facebook is filling the gap.

A number of companies are including "my site" or "my page" concepts in their intranets where individual users are free to present themselves, put their favorite links, build networks, etc. much like Facebook. This can definitely help build communities and let people find other people in groups that are geographically dispersed.

Risks to be managed

However, the questions that need to be answered for both corporate "my page" projects and closed groups on Facebook are:

1. What types of content can be put on these pages? Can people publish documents and other content they've produced, start discussions on professional or related topics? If so, how can this knowledge be made available to others if it is dispersed out on individuals' pages?
I would not count on the search engine in most cases.

2. In the case of open networks that anyone can join, is there a risk of subjects being talked about that present confidentiality risks?

3. If there is content on these pages that is relevant to the company, what happens when/if the person leaves, or simply closes down his/her page?

My recommendations:

1. Build the capacity of letting people have individual pages within your intranet.

2. Develop guidelines as to what the role of these pages is. It's more a question of saying that the scope should not include certain types of information, such as project-related than to actually prescribe what should be there. Leave a lot of space for creativity!

3. If you do not have this capacity internally, start a group on Facebook but limit it to members of your company (people with your domain's email).

4. Or, create a network that would let you include partners and other "outsiders", but make it a requirement to go through the administrator of the group.

One thing for sure: if people cannot do this internally, they will eventually do it through an external tool. If this has already happened, get involved, participate in or at least observe the group, but above all don't ignore it and hope it will go away.

If you haven't yet written your "e-behaviour" guidelines or business conduct and communication policies, you need to do it. And if you have them but they don't yet deal with employee activities online (internally on the intranet, email, etc.) and externally on the web and in social networking sites, now is the time to add this dimension.