Hi Professor
Firstly, I enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work. My question is around news. I am a senior executive at my organisation and it seems that our intranet could be so much more useful. At the moment it is mainly used as an online newsletter and staff directory. I just wonder how valuable news is to people on a daily basis. Can you tell me, what is the point of news on an intranet? What value does it add? What should the intranet be used for, if not news? How can we make our news - and our intranet - more useful?
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More important things to do than read irrelevant news
Hi 'more important things to do'
You are not alone in questioning the value of news on the intranet. In a recent blog post - For an Effective Intranet: Throw Out the Corporate Home Page - by John Brunswick - he makes the observation that:
"In a world where projects are justified through ROI analysis it is odd that most of today's corporate intranet "Home Pages" consistently supply users with an exceptionally high noise to signal ratio. Instead of acting as enablers, they pour an overwhelming maze of information onto users - with questionable relevancy."
He goes on to say "Corporate identity and general news are undeniably part of an intranet solution, but should not be the focus."
Another recent post - The secret second reason why your intranet news goes unread - has a similar theme. The post notes that "We know the number one reason people find your intranet superfluous to requirements; irrelevant information.... The number two reason why people don’t use your intranet or read any of your news is that they are not allowed to. Their managers, and even their Directors, forbid them to waste time learning about company matters when they could be working harder."
It's very true that many intranets these days do have a heavy focus on news (especially the home page). Take a look at Stephen Schillerwein's Intranet Case Studies web page and you will see that many intranets devote a large proportion of the home page to news.
Intranets need to be more than just news
You are right, today's intranets should be more than just news. They should be about helping staff get their work done more quickly and efficiently through helping people complete their work tasks, sharing of information and connecting people. The Worldwide Intranet Challenge identifies what qualities of an intranet end users value the most. The following list identifies the top 7 qualities (from a list of 44) that correlate most highly to intranet value. 1 is the highest possible value.
- Find instructions for completing work tasks - 0.472
- Upload or download documents - 0.472
- News about our organisation/industry - 0.468
- Complete online foms - 0.421
- Information on the intranet is easy to read - 0.421
- Policies and procedures - 0.402
- Staff details - 0.389
As can be seen from this list, those tasks that help staff do their work, rate the highest. You can view all the ratings for all the qualities on the Worldwide Intranet Challenge presentation.
So what is the purpose of news?
It's a mistake to classify all news as being the same. It seems to be stating the obvious, but the quality of news stories is perhaps the biggest variable on whether news adds value or not. For example, lets say a news story explains a new sales approach that can improve the chances of closing a deal by 35%. It includes an interview with the top sales person who provides valuable tips and tricks. That is story that is going to be read and will add value to your bottom line.
News can also help improve employee engagement. Employee engagement has been getting a lot of air time lately, and for good reason. Studies have shown that highly engaged staff can be up to 28% more productive that their disengaged counterparts. Some drivers of employee engagement that can be addressed to some extent by intranet news include:
- Pride about the company - stories promoting the organisation's success and benefits
- Career growth opportunities - stories of promotions and opportunities
- Employee development - training and personal growth opportunities
- Trust & integrity - stories demonstrating these qualities
The blog post 8 good business reasons for having an intranet suggests that intranets can also play a role in helping with organisational change management.
How can you increase the value of your news?
Here is what your organisation needs to do to get value from news - begin categorising your news items and measuring how popular the types of news items are. Make sure you experiment with different kinds of news items - personal stories, success stories, job opportunities, promotions, productivity tips and tricks, procedural changes, strategic company news, etc - and keep a track of the results. After a while it will become apparent which news story types are most valuable to your staff.
For an example of this approach, read Peter Richard's article, 5 Tips To Create a Successful Intranet Part Three - Front Page News. In this article, he says:
"My evaluation of our news readership however demonstrated that items about company performance, executive appointments, project milestones, marketing media releases and the like are interesting to a very limited number of staff. The bulk of my users who check the news are interested in information that provides them personally with opportunities and items on issues that affect them directly."
The post - 6 ways to measure effectiveness of news on your intranet - suggests some ideas for measuring the value of your news - readership, readability, engagement, satisfaction, relevancy, and bouncing.
Brunswick also makes some good suggestions in his blog post for making the home page more relevant including cutting the home page into thirds (corporate, team & personal), delivering targeted information to uses, department level management of content and providing personal actionable information.
Summary
While intranet news is often seen as irrelevant and annoying to many staff, there is scope for well written and informative news stories to add real value to an organisation. These stories can add value if they:
- Are categorised into meaningful and easy-to-find topics
- Are measured for effectiveness and relevancy
- Are personally relevant to the majority of staff
- Do not dominate the home page
- Are targetted towards specific user goups
- Are written in an engaging and interesting style
- Help staff to be more productive
- Help improve employee engagement
- Help manage organisational change management
