Digital Workplace and Intranet Employee Benchmarking

by Andrew Wright

The term 'intranet user adoption' has the potential to cause confusion to senior management and other intranet stakeholders. This is because the words 'intranet', 'user' and 'adoption' are all wide open to interpretation. This makes it difficult to determine success. This article provides a more detailed description of what is meant exactly by intranet user adoption and suggests an alternative approach to measuring adoption success.

A couple of years ago, Deloitte published a report about the value of social software in the workplace - Social Software for Business Performance. When talking about the success of social software in the workplace, the report said:

“Focussing on adoption as a success metric will likely lead to failure because it engenders resistance…. As long as adoption is the primary measure of success, resistance, at all levels, can block successful social software deployment”

This is interesting because it flies in the face of what many people believe - adoption is the key to the success of social software in the workplace (ie. social intranets). For example, Michael Sampson in his book, User Adoption Strategies, says:

“There is growing agreement among multiple groups of people involved with collaboration technology - the vendors, the consultants, the internal evangelists, the end-user organisations - that an intentional focus on user adoption is essential. I’d go as far as saying that many are coming to the view that this is the main game”

And the following articles are just a small sample of the many that talk about the importance of user adoption:

3 Steps to Sustainable SharePoint User Adoption Success - Dux Raymond Sy
Low Intranet User Adoption: Address It Once and For All - Alexis Rodrigo
Loving the intranet: re-thinking employee adoption - Sam Marshall

So what are Deloittes on about?

So how can Deloittes say that focussing on adoption as a success metric will lead to failure when many other people believe the opposite? Well also in the report is their definition of ‘adoption’. It goes like this:

“The number of users who have accessed social software… Adoption does not measure frequency or sustained use”.

In my view, this definition of adoption is not widely recognised among intranet and digital workplace professionals. Adoption should include frequency and sustained use as well.

However, what the article highlights is the need for a clear definition of what exactly is meant by ‘intranet user adoption’.

Without this clear definition we cannot define success. If we want users to adopt the intranet we must know what is meant by ‘adoption’, what is meant by ‘intranet’ and what is meant by ‘user’. Using these terms in broad and ambiguous ways is confusing and makes it difficult to determine whether adoption is desirable and whether it’s actually happening.

What is user adoption?

Everett Rogers in his famous 1962 book, Diffusion of innovations talks extensively about adoption and how this applies to innovations (in this case we can think of intranets + new social tools as innovations). An innovation is ‘adopted’ when a decision is made to make full use of the innovation as the best course of action available.

In the book he categorises people into 5 groups using terms that have become mainstream today: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. He assigns a percentage of the target population to a bell curve that belong to each group (as shown below). Different strategies can be used for encouraging each different type of adopter.

An innovation must be widely adopted before it becomes self-sustaining. At this point the innovation has passed a tipping point and reached critical mass ie. it’s adopted. A tipping point occurs when there is a rapid increase in the rate of adoption of a particular innovation. In Rogers’ diagram, this typically occurs after 15-20% of the target population have adopted the innovation (the innovators and early adopters). A self-sustaining innovation is one where an increased rate of adoption means that little or no further intervention is required to ensure the innovation continues.

What is an intranet?

One of the difficulties of using the term ‘intranet user adoption’ is that the term ‘intranet’ means different things to different people and may encompass various digital tools. A clear agreed definition of an intranet is highly debatable.

For example, is instant messaging considered to part of the intranet? How about video calls? Or a document management system? File servers? Team sites or project sites? What about Yammer or Skype? Are these considered to be part of the intranet or are they stand alone applications? Even email? What about enterprise social networks, the digital workplace, social intranets or enterprise 2.0? What do these all mean? Are the same thing or different? And does it matter?

Despite many attempts, there is no clear demarcation of what functions comprise an intranet and what functions are part of a larger digital workplace or something else. One organisation may have an integrated chat feature as part of the intranet while a different organisation may have a stand alone chat application.

This confusion in defining an intranet has also led to a myriad of discussions and articles about whether the intranet is dead or not.

What is an intranet end user?

It’s also crucial when talking about intranet user adoption not to confuse different types of end user activity. For example, measuring how many people view the intranet home page is a completely different level of adoption to measuring how many people publish articles each week.

In fact it can be helpful to identify the following three broad intranet user types (and within each of these types, it’s possible to include Rogers’ five types of adopters as well. So a total of 15 possible categories of intranet end users):

Passive - an employee that ‘lurks’, someone that simply views content and doesn’t contribute.
Active - a contributor of content
Administrative - a power user, someone that sets up and maintains the intranet structure and architecture

The third user type is really a specialist role. For the purposes of this article, we’ll exclude administrative type people from the general target population.

The important point to note here is the importance of the Active user in relation to the Passive user (sometimes known as a lurker).

To deliver a valuable intranet, it is imperative to increase the percentage of active contributors and the level of content contribution.

Why are ‘active’ intranet users important?

Research from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) has shown that the more people interact with the intranet - ie. publish content, upload/download documents, contribute to discussion forums, provide status updates, use project spaces and team sites - the more valuable they perceive it to be.

Whether this perceived value translates into business value is a complicated question and one that cannot be easily answered. However, if we make the assumption that most employees are adults who use tools and technologies that will help them to be as productive as possible, then a good case can be made that there is a correlation between the use of a technology and value to the organisation. Especially if the intranet is designed to support one or more of the three compelling business reasons for having an intranet.

A different way of looking at intranet user adoption

As I mentioned earlier, part of the difficulty in defining and measuring intranet user adoption is the broad array of functions that can potentially fall under the banner of ‘intranet’.

So perhaps rather than talking about ‘intranet adoption’, we may be better off looking at each of the following functions independently and then assessing the degree of adoption for each function and user type.

Content - procedures, news, documents, reports/dashboards, video, bookmarks, online training, staff profiles, blogs, lists (customers, products, services), ‘Likes’, tagging
Document management - version control, collaborative authoring, collecting feedback, reviews, approvals, archiving
Collaboration spaces - project spaces, team spaces, calendars, tasks/schedule
Discussion forums - questions and answers, online communities, subscriptions
Online processes - online forms, workflows, approvals
Advanced communication tools - video conferencing, messaging, activity feeds
Portal to enterprise data and apps – integration with existing ERP, CRM systems

It’s possible, and in fact probable, that many organisational intranets will have a combination of one or more of the above. This means not all functions will be relevant to all organisations. It’s also possible that some organisations may have a high adoption rate of some functions but not others. Or they could have a high rate of passive user adoption but a low rate of active user adoption.

This is why the all encompassing term of ‘intranet user adoption' can be confusing - there are many nuances and variables to consider.

It may be more meaningful to manage your intranet user adoption efforts at a more micro level. For example, foccusing on Employee Profiles views (passive users) and updates (active users).

What is user adoption success then?

Of course, deciding the target goal for adoption - what is good? what is bad? - can be a subjective, arbitrary and difficult task in itself. Particularly without the benefit of any comparative or benchmark data or a broader business context available.

However it’s handy to keep in mind the tipping point rule of thumb that says when an innovation is adopted by 15 to 20% of the target audience, an acceleration in the adoption of the innovation is likely to occur. This doesn’t mean that user adoption strategies should stop. This should only be considered when the innovation - self-updating of employee profiles for example - reaches critical mass (remembering that that critical mass is the point at which an innovation is self-sustaining).

Measuring user adoption

A possible starting point for organisations wishing to get a handle on what is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ level of user adoption is the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). Regular readers of this blog will know that the WIC is an online benchmark service that allows you to compare the level of intranet user adoption and satisfaction with 190 other organisations that have already participated.

For example, the chart below shows the average level of adoption for the benchmark questions related to publishing of content (as you can see, the bar is pretty low at the moment!).

Summary

The term ‘user adoption’ gets thrown around quite often these days. It sometimes seen as the panacea for an organisation's challenges in implementing collaborative software.

While it’s certainly a worthwhile goal to get more employees engaged with the various functions that can fall under the banner of intranet user adoption, people responsible for ensuring organisations make the most of their intranet investment should think more deeply about what ‘intranet user adoption’ really means, how it is defined and how to determine it's success.

May 7, 2014 3:01:04 PM | Intranet Measurement, Intranet Trends

February 05, 2014

The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2013 (based on end user feedback)

by Andrew Wright

The Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) is a free web based survey that allows organisations to obtain feedback about their intranets from the people that matter the most - their intranet end users. The WIC team then benchmarks the feedback from all participating organisations, enabling a comparative score and rank for each survey question to be given.

In 2013, 61 organisations from 9 different countries participated in the WIC, bringing the total number of organisations who have participated to 179.

Note: Total surveys completed = 193. Some organisations have completed the WIC twice.

This article lists those organisations from 2013 who received the highest rankings in a range of categories, based on feedback from their own staff (you may also wish to view 2012's top ranked intranets).

2013 top ranked intranet - Milan Chamber of Commerce (Italy)

For 2013, the overall top ranked intranet was from the Milan Chamber of Commerce (Italy). The Chamber of Commerce supports and promotes the general interests of local businesses and markets through in-house functions or others delegated to it by the national or regional governments or deriving from international conventions.

The Milan Chamber of Commerce also ranked #1 in many of the survey questions including: Value, Look and feel, Home Page, Understanding culture and values, Finding information, Search, Managing documents, Re-usable documents, Policies and procedures, and Reports and/or dashboards.

See the case study - Leading intranets - Milan Chamber of Commerce.

Milan Chamber of Commerce Home page

2nd ranked intranet - QIC (Australia)

The second ranked intranet was from QIC. Established in 1991 by the Queensland Government to manage its long-term investments, QIC has grown to be one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia, with more than 90 local and international clients and $70.1 billion in funds under management as at 30 June 2013.

QIC rated well in the following questions: #1 in Australia, #2 home page, information easy to read, publishing content, managing documents, policies and procedures, content, reports and/or dashboards, and #3 value of the intranet, look and feel. access to business applications,

Sample comments from staff about the intranet:

We have seen dramatic improvements in the intranet over the last year - the intranet is much more user friendly. I see benefit in the continued development of this channel as a place for employee interaction, toolkit for resources, information and how to guidance and to promote 'connective' stories that promote QIC values and culture.

Being a new starter to the business, I have found the intranet to be great in helping me with every-day tasks. It is very easy to find your way around and provides me with the information required.

Keep up the good work. A huge improvement. Everything should always be a work in progress, most things can always be improved upon.

QIC Intranet Home Page

3rd ranked intranet - Prophet (USA)

Prophet is the third ranked intranet for 2013. Prophet is a strategic brand and marketing consultancy with offices around the globe. Clients include BMW, Cisco, GE, Johnson and Johnson, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, The Cosmopolitan, Visa, and Zurich Financial.

Prophet rated well in the following questions: #1 online discussions, staff details, access to business applications, #1 in the United States, #2 value of the intranet, look and feel, re-usable documents, providing feedback, notification of changes to intranet content, #3 finding information, publishing content, provision of intranet training.

Prophet home page

Sample comments from staff:

I think the team has done an awesome job with the redesign -- the broader thing to tackle is our culture of sharing knowledge - really getting people to dig in with this -- we are all responsible for this -- but in the end the team has done an outstanding job of giving us an environment to do this well

The recent changes to our intranet, especially the elements of gamification, make engagement with the company, content and culture almost second-nature. The photos and personal profiles add an excellent element of social media.

I LOVE THE INTRANET. It's super collaborative, and I really like the ability to talk to colleagues across different offices. The visibility on the pipeline is brilliant, as are the staff profiles.

Prophet was also a gold winner in the 2009 intranet innovation awards.

Other highly ranked organisations

The following organisations also ranked in the top 3 (top 5%) in one or more of the survey questions or categories:

AmBank Group (M) Bhd (Malaysia), #2 for completing work tasks
Beaver Street Fisheries (United States), #2 for online forms
British Gas, (UK) #1 UK intranet, #1 10,000+ employees, #3 online discussions
Socialministeriet (Denmark), #1 for completing work tasks
Department of Transport (Australia), #3 information for new starters
Endress+Hauser (Switzerland), #2 information about products/services, #2 search
ERM (UK), #1 off-site access, #3 personalisation
Home Assistance UK Ltd (UK), #3 intranet availability
JT International (Switzerland), #3 understanding values & culture
Køge Kommune (Denmark), #3 ease of reading information
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (Australia), #2 new starter information, #2 content accuracy, #2 understand culture and values, #2 finding information, #3 home page, #3 news, #3 policies and procedures, #3 product/service information, #3 feedback about intranet, #3 mobile access
Nestlé (Switzerland), #2 collaboration
NNE Pharmaplan (Denmark), #2 personalisation, #1 1000 - 10,000 employees
PinnacleHealth System (USA), #2 complete work tasks
Queensland Country Credit Union (Australia), #1 online forms, #3 managing documents, #2 intranet training
State of Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles (USA), #2 work instructions
Simpson Grierson (New Zealand), #3 content, #3 change notification, #2 intranet availability, #3 staff details, #2 news
SNL Financial (USA), #3 collaboration, #3 reports & dashboards
St Barbara (Australia), #3 search, #3 re-usable documents
Swisscom AG (Switzerland), #1 collaboration, #1 mobile access, #1 content easy to read, #3 content accuracy, #3 off-site access
Tiscali Spa (Italy), #3 work instructions

Characteristics of highly ranked intranets

The following characteristics were common among the leading WIC intranets.

Staff spend more time using them

Staff from the top 6 most valuable intranets (ie. the top 10%) spent an average of 43.1 minutes each day on the intranet. While staff from the bottom 6 organisations spent on average just 18.1 minutes - less than half.

This is consistent with WIC research from last year which shows that the more time staff spend using the intranet, the more valuable they perceive it to be.

The challenge for intranet professionals then is to deliver content and services that will keep staff coming back.

They are more interactive

While intranets in the top 10% out-scored those in the bottom 10% in all survey questions, for some questions there was a larger discrepancy than others. This would suggest that, as the highest priority, the biggest opportunity for improving intranets lies in these areas.

The biggest discrepancies were in the four questions (from a total of 50) shown in the chart below.

These questions all relate to making the intranet more interactive and convincing staff to contribute content. For more information about this, see 10 lessons intranets can learn from Wikipedia.

They support clear business objectives

There are many articles about intranet strategy that discuss the importance of aligning the intranet with business objectives. After speaking with many of the managers of the leading WIC intranets listed in this article, it appears that most of the business objectives supported by their intranets can generally be placed into three broad categories:

Innovation and continuous improvement: This includes the ability of intranets to identify and support new ideas, forums for discussing new ideas and for looking at ways to improve things, project & team sites for implementing these ideas, serendipitous connections for fostering innovative & collaborative work environments, and communications to inform people about process changes resulting from the implementation of new ideas
Operations: This includes the ability of intranets to support call centres and front line staff, to improve customer satisfaction by delivering products and services more quickly, effectively and efficiently, to ensure processes and tasks are completed consistently throughout the organisation and to automate manual processes where possible.
Employee engagement: This includes the ability of the intranet to provide staff with access to the information and tools they need to their jobs from anywhere at anytime on any device, allowing them greater freedom and flexibility to control their own work more effectively.

For more information about these objectives, including additional examples of how intranets can help, see 3 compelling business reasons for having an intranet.

They ‘mine’ their social content

While enterprise social networks (or social intranets, social software, enterprise 2.0) have been getting a lot of attention lately (partly because of the difficulty in gaining traction), research from Deloitte and McKinsey suggests that this attention is warranted and that those organisations that ‘get it right’ will gain a significant advantage over the competition.

Leading WIC intranets have recognised that greater staff participation and interactivity with the intranet is not only inevitable but is critical to raising the value of the intranet. However with this greater level of input from staff comes a greater need to recognise the ‘signal’ from the ‘noise’. So just as big data has created the need for a data miner, increased online social interactions has created the need for a ‘content miner’ - someone to analyse and identify key nuggets of information and include them in a formal organisational wide information repository.

For more about this topic, see Intranets: the signal and the noise and the need for a 'content miner'

Participate in the WIC in 2014

If you would like to participate in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) this year you just need to complete the WIC registration page (or if you are from Denmark, view the Danish WIC site). It takes just a couple of minutes and you could have the benchmark results on your desk within two weeks, for free.

While it can be a little daunting and takes a lot of courage to ask for feedback from your end users, deep down you probably know that it's the first step you need to take to provide a better intranet experience. Without this concrete feedback, you are relying largely on intuition and guesswork to identify improvement activities. In addition to this, past experience has shown that benchmarking your intranet will help improve it.

Nearly 200 organisations from around the world have already benefited from participation and many have provided recommendations for the WIC.

The survey is currently available in 13 languages with others being added as requested. The WIC is also supported by a network of partners from around the world.

Key facts

The intranet is built with Liferay technology
There are 1153 end users
The intranet was developed from May 2012 (beta) and finally launched in September 2012. An external makeover is planned for 2014.
The 3 most visited areas are:

Home page: news and information people need can be found here immediately.
Directory and profiles
The communications section and provisions (containing detailed information to colleagues)

In a year and a half over 700 items were created for the “fixed part” of the homepage and more than 300 other content items were generated by editors of the various internal sections.
The average duration of a visit is about 6 and a half minutes,
On average 40,000 pages per month are displayed with clear peaks in the most intense periods of work (up to 43,000 in May 2013-37000 in July 2013)

Screenshots

Below is the Milan Chamber of Commerce home page (the full background image can be changed according to the season, event or simply for aesthetic purposes.)

Widget page

Each user can create their own widget page. Below is an example page showing possible widgets that staff can choose. From this page it’s possible to move, open or close widgets as required.

HR Page

This page is an example of complex internal section containing links to content and documents.

Digital Workplace and Intranet Employee Benchmarking

Intranet end user benchmarking, sharepoint, internal communication, digital workplace

October 20, 2014

Why it takes guts to ask for feedback about your intranet

Benefits of benchmarking

Prioritise your development efforts

Benchmark your intranet against 200 other organisations

September 04, 2014

Intranet Benchlearning with Peers

Highly relevant and usable best practices

Important to challenge the ‘blindness of peers’

About the Danish ‘benchlearning with peers’ concept

About the authors

May 07, 2014

Intranet user adoption: why it's confusing