If employees spend more time on the intranet, does this mean it's more valuable?

       

If employees spend more time on the intranet, is it a good or bad thing?

An argument can be made for both sides of the fence. For example, more time spent on the intranet may mean people can't find what they want and spend a lot of time browsing around or searching. Or perhaps the system is so slow it takes forever to log-on and download a document. (Jonathan Philips, from the team at Intranetizen, gives a nice description of this dilemma in his article, It’s not about the outputs, it’s about the outcomes).

 

Are intranets a waste of time?

Well known intranet thought leader, Gerry McGovern also notes in his article, How to measure the success of your intranet, "I've been working with intranets since 1997. I have observed behaviour and seen feedback from thousands of employees from all over the world. The number one complaint, by a huge margin, that employees have of their intranets is: "It's a WASTE OF TIME!".  

Gerry then goes on to say, "Focus on your employees' time. Be relentless in seeking to save it. If you do you will create a great intranet. It's as simple and as difficult as that." 

Based on these statements, it's tempting to think that getting your employees to spend even MORE time on the intranet may not be the most effective strategy.

 

On the other hand...

On the other hand, logic would seem to say that if people are spending time using a particular tool, there must be something of value there.

So what do the intranet end users from the 100 organisations who have completed the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) web based benchmark say?

The following scatter chart shows the relationship between the two WIC survey questions "How much time in total do you spend on the intranet each day on average?" and  "I would rate the value of the intranet as?".

The number of minutes end users spend per day on the intranet is shown on the vertical axis and a score between 0 (low) to 4 (highest) for the value of the intranet is shown on the horizontal axis. The trend line and the R-Squared value provide an estimation of the strength of the relationship (where 0= no relationship 1=perfect relationship) between the two lists.

As can be seen from the trend line, there is clearly a relationship that shows that:

"The more valuable an intranet, the more time employees will spend using it"

So what intranet services can be provided to encourage employees to spend more time on the intranet? The following diagram shows the relationship between the questions:

"How much time in total would you spend on the intranet each day on average?" and questions about using the intranet for interactive tasks such as completing on-line forms, participating in discussion forums and collaborating on-line.

The relationship between time spent and intranet interactivity is even stronger than the previous diagram.

"To encourage staff to use the intranet more, help facilitate more on-line interaction"

 

Below are the relationships between other variables that could possibly affect the amount of time spent on the intranet.

Finding information

It seems there is virtually no relationship between the amount of time staff spend on the intranet and the quality of the search and navigation.

 

Page loading speed

Similarly page loading speed has virtually no impact on how much time end users spend on the intranet.

 

Based on the data above, a suggested strategy to deliver a more valuable intranet would be to provide services (and training), such as online forms and collaboration tools, that will encourage your employees to visit the intranet more often and stay longer.

What is your experience? If employees are spending more time on the intranet, does this make it more valuable?

 

See also:

• State of the Intranets 2012: How Does Your Intranet Measure Up?
• 5 Steps to Build a 'How To' Intranet
• Do smaller organisations really have better intranets?

 

 

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Comments

[James Robertson]

Interesting data!

We've always said: staff will use the intranet if it's useful. Or to put it another way: make the intranet more useful, and staff will use it more.

This seems to be borne out in your stats. In terms of our "five purposes of an intranet", content and communication don't drive usage (and value). Instead, value comes more directly from "activity", the intranet as a place for doing things, rather than just reading things.

PS. in terms of this debate, this blog post triggered a lot of discussion at the time, and lead to an on-stage mock "fight" between Gerry and myself:

http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/25-reasons-why-saving-time-on-your-intranet-is-a-bad-metric/

[DigitalJonathan]

Andrew, thank you for the name check in the article and for a wave of nostalgia for my high school statistics! r2 tests, how I've *missed* you.

This is a great question and a great set of data to help dive deeper. Time spent on an intranet is an interesting statistic, but as we noted on our article, it can be splendidly misleading.

Time on Intranet v. Value: you draw the tempting conclusion that "The more time employees spend on the intranet, the more likely it will be perceived as being more valuable", but, equally, couldn't you conclude that *because* an intranet is seen as valuable, people spend more time on it? Maybe semantics, but I think there's a subtle and important difference between these statements.

Delighted to see that though low r values, we can dispel the tempting myth that time spent on an intranet is related to the page load times or to the quality of search and navigation.

I conclude that people spend time on an intranet because the the content and the collaboration opportunities are compelling and/or, the longer they stay, the more the value becomes apparent.

Great article.

[Andrew Wright]

You are right Jonathan with your comment that correlation doesn't = causation. In fact the conclusion from the data in the article probably makes more sense the other way around:

"the more valuable the intranet, the more time staff spend on it".

So the emphasis should be, as James points out, to provide a more valuable intranet by delivering an intranet as a place for doing things, rather than just reading things.

[Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD]

As you know, Andrew, I'm a big fan of your work. A few thoughts from me:

1. Especially today, "intranet" has multiple practical definitions due to factors like age, design, intent, and the degree of social and 2.0 features and functions. I would love to see if a more refined analysis that differentiates based on intranet generation would produce even stronger results.

2. I've taken to referring to the latest generation of intranets as "social intranets and digital work spaces" to highlight the fact that these are portals and platforms where work gets done. I specifically emphasize how they can enhance efficiency and effectiveness and minimize the aggravations that come with trying to communicate - and especially collaborate - using email and shared drives.

3. Though not directly addressed in your post and the comments, user understanding and behavior change are critical to intranet effectiveness. As long as users can stay inside their comfort zones and choose the path of least resistance - which for many of them these days is email and hard drives - they won't invest the time necessary to learn how to use the intranet as a work tool, which can in turn impact their perceptions of its value. A combined carrot-and-stick approach, at least initially, can help them make the switch to more technologically sophisticated ways of working.

Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD
Founder and Community Manager
Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs)

[NarrativityHV]

Courtney, Excellent questions. You are so right in wanting to see a drill down based on platform. More corporations and organizations are moving the bulk of their functional parts of their business (e.g. IT, procurement, HR, Salesforce mgmt,etc)to portals to reduce expenses and provide better data capture. These are workspaces, not social intranets, but hold great value for their organizations. I also agree wholeheartedly with the carrot and stick approach. Too many institutions significantly underinvest in the change management needed to drive social intranet adoption.
Richard D'Ambrosio

[NarrativityHV]

One final thought. As communicators (both enterprise level and working for specific departments) look at social intranets and workspaces, the main purpose and measure of success of course needs to be "what business goal am I trying to achieve?"

If, for example, IT is trying to increase employee software/hardware usage/satisfaction while reducing inbound help desk calls, then everything the portal designers do needs to plan for and be measured against these goals.

Trying to simply drive employees to the organization portal, or improve their overall satisfaction with it, should never be more than an indirect objective.