Beyond this, to implement these plans, you need governance. How your intranet will work must be thought through. There should be content standards that explain how content should be added and maintained. There needs to be a process to cover new starters and their onboarding to the intranet. There should also be ‘look and feel’ rules that cover which widgets, colours and images should be used. Will your intranet pages look the same? Do you have a corporate style for documents? Will there be a standard ‘work’ photo for everyone’s profile, or can people add their own? Will having a well-populated profile page be a requirement that people are appraised on?
Content authors training, style and content guidelines.
Every quarter send a quick survey asking your users for three things your intranet should START DOING and three things your intranet should STOP DOING. Make it simple. When you get the results, share the data and insights with the company. Learn from it. And do something about it.
Employees don’t go to the intranet to surf or hang out. They’re seeking specific content—often a phone number, a form, a policy or HR information—then they’re gone until they need something again.
Intranet content should be specifically for employees, written for the screen, in an employee context (i.e., what’s in it for me?). Ideally, it has half the word count as print, is presented in the inverted pyramid format, and is delivered in small chunks with subheads, bullets and callouts.
It must also be fresh. Add an expiration date that forces the author or publisher to revisit, renew or archive content. If it’s not kept up to date, the content is automatically deleted.
Unmanaged content on the intranet can lead to the intranet becoming a dumping ground for irrelevant, out-of-date content. This section of the governance document is particularly relevant for intranet authors and to a lesser extent, may be used by approvers and content writers.
Topics within the publishing content and documents section may include information on:
In submitting news stories, the following procedures should be followed:
Length of stories:
All staff members with weCollaborate editor accounts may post announcements. The weCollaborate team may post announcements and events at the request of organizational units on an ad hoc basis.
Event announcements are limited to those organized by UN entities. Events taking place in locations other than at UN premises must be sponsored by UN entities. Participation in events taking place during work hours should be according to normal official rules and regulations.
All entities submitting announcements and/or events are encouraged to submit them in a timely manner, at least 24 hours before the requested posting date or time. Experience has shown that it is more effective to make an announcement closer to the date of the event than too far in advance.
The weCollaborate team has the responsibility for removing or reformatting announcements or events to ensure a standardized approach.
The weCollaborate Editorial Board is chaired by the Director, Outreach Division, Department of Global Communications, and includes representatives of other departments and offices.
The Editorial Board provides guidance on urgent and complex issues brought to its attention by the weCollaborate team.
Requests for the editing and/or removal of content already posted shall be considered by the weCollaborate team and, if necessary, by the Editorial Board. If a story is removed in its entirety, it will be replaced with an explanatory note signed by the weCollaborate supervisor, indicating by whom and why the content was asked to be removed.
Comments, questions and concerns about article content and/or about the actions of and editorial decisions taken by the weCollaborate team may, in the first instance, be submitted to weCollaborate@un.org. When applicable, such correspondence shall be shared with the relevant department, office and/or content submitter in a timely manner.
Further recourse about the actions of and editorial decisions taken by the weCollaborate team may be brought to the attention of the Editorial Board.
Guidelines for Commenting on weCollaborate Stories
Research suggests that the following points are key:
The information architecture for the intranet captures the three main pillars of intranet content: Organizational Information, Functional Information, and Social Information.
Mega-Menus
These have been around for a while, but most organizations with whom I speak have not looked at these. The idea is this - rather than have so many top-level navigation items, try adding a few action-oriented menu items, with many options for drill-down.
Task-Oriented Grouping
Most of you reading this likely have an intranet that is organized by department and follows the org chart nearly verbatim. This is an "old way" of thinking, because if we're honest, how many of you come to work to "work with HR" or "work with Engineering?" We come to work to do tasks - to get work done - so ditch the org chart and start thinking about the task rather than the department. Another reason why this strategy works is because new employees almost never know what every department does. So organizing by department can be confusing for new employees as well. Oh yeah, and what about age-old problem of "Where does that live…HR, IT, Legal?" This often minimizes or eliminates these issues. But be careful, sometimes org structure is all that your users know, so there may be change management issues with the task-oriented approach.
Action-Oriented Labels
This tactic relates more to links that are on pages, rather than navigation items, but we have seen behavior change when the language used on links is changed to be more action-oriented.
Promote Top Areas
Every intranet platform today has the ability to promote popular links or areas, yet many never leverage this functionality. The truth is, it's popular for a reason, so surface that information for others to see.
Under the current structure, this information is organized as follows:
Bite-Sized Delivery - Your content should be delivered in a bite > snack > meal fashion. In other words, first give the user a bite (a simple link), then a snack (maybe a mega menu or additional options), then the meal (the entire page or content). See the example here of the White House site, where "Issues" is the bite, the list of top issues is the snack, and any one of the issues is the meal (where the "meat" is).
ROT stands for Redundant, Outdated, Trivial, and is a great way to classify your content. ROT is just what it sounds like, digital noise that almost always prohibits effective knowledge discovery and often leads to massive user frustration. And at first glance, you may think that the largest "cost" of ROT is storing all of the content that is not adding value, but that's the least of your worries.
Tell me if this sounds familiar: You try to find something in a specific location on your intranet, but you can't find it, so you use the intranet's global search, but you still can't find it. So after spending nearly an hour, you ultimately have to ask a colleague, who then emails it to you. BUT, rather than store this in the intranet where it should be, you save it locally 9or keep it in your email), so you can quickly find it next time without the heartburn. Anyone? A lot of things have happened here. From user frustration, to low adoption, to circumventing the systems (storing artifacts locally so you no longer have to search for it), to restricting collaboration and knowledge sharing. And so it goes with ROT. It can cause a lot of grief. Start by identifying what the R, O, and T are in your organization. Our governance toolkit includes guidance, scripts and templates for helping you to identify ROT within your organization.
Put people and culture at the heart of your intranet. Put photo gallery at the bottom of the home page, people will scroll down to see people-centric content.
Leadership has to model the behaviour they want to see on the intranet.
Move or create leadership blogs on your intranet. It’ll encourage people to interact, and your employees are always interested in getting insight into leadership’s perspectives and personalities. One pro tip: keep the content human.
Build your intranet based on your organizations’ goals and needs, not on what you think other organizations are doing. Intranets may seem generic, but a good intranet takes into consideration your industry and its specific challenges.
Have your leadership team and executives commit to using the tool. Town halls and key initiatives are great ways for leadership to exercise the tool in visible ways.
The homepage is the front page of the intranet and is found at intranet.latrobe.edu.au.b.Sub-site: A sub-site is a collection of web pages that make up a subsidiary site of the intranet i.e. a college,c.function business unit sub-site.Site owner: This is the person responsible for the content and quality of the sub-site. The site owner (usually thed.College Provost or head of department or functional head) may delegate intranet content and developmenttasks to a nominated representative (the site editor or section manager).Site section manager or editor: This is the person who updates and maintains a web page or collection of pages,e.as specified in the webpage footer of that site.Section 6 - StakeholdersResponsibility for implementation – The following UNEP staff have been delegated with intranet responsibilities:Vice-Chancellor; Senior Executive Group; Chief Marketing Officer; Manager, Internal Communications;Section managers, editors and content owners.Responsibility for monitoring implementation and compliance – Internal Communications will be responsible forreviewing this policy and related guidelines and procedures, monitoring implementation and compliance, and highlevel decision making relating to the design and content of the intranet, including top level information architecture.
Record Retention Policy
This policy regulates the retention and disposal practices of content currently posted on the internal communications platform, UNEP Intranet- weCollaborate.
The purpose of the weCollaborate retention schedule is to help content owners:
The disposal of outdated content on the other hand will take place every two years. This process will be pursued in agreement between the weCollaborate Team and the content owner.
The benefits related to implementation of this policy are: preservation of institutional memory, access to up-to-date information, and, ultimately, maximization of the system’s performance in terms of fast retrieval of info.
Retention criteria
The retention schedule assigned to weCollaborate content is based on the importance of information as a historical record for the Organization.
Permanent retention is recommended for some categories as they are a reflection of the work and the spirit of UN staff, for example, “News and Staff Stories.” This information will be stored in the system indefinitely or until a digital website repository system becomes available.
Other categories (1 year, 30 days, etc.) are listed below. Note that some information displayed on the weCollaborate homepage is not retained by the system, including: Most popular, Toolkit, Quick links, and Social media corner.
Records identified for deletion will be subjected to content owner‘s review before their removal of the system. The selection criterion is inactivity, which means that the page has not been updated in two years or more. The content owner will receive electronic correspondence with links to the respective pages for review and will have up to 45 days either to update it or request deletion. Otherwise, after 45 days, the pages will be removed from the UNEP Intranet -weCollaborate platform.
Controlled documents - such as quality manuals, procedures, SGBs, and AIs - should be saved in local drives outside of weCollaborate.
This information applies to all Duty Stations.
Retention schedule for UNEP Intranet – weCollaborate content
Content category | Retention time | Comments |
News and Staff Stories | Permanent | Including images, links, and comments. Contact weCollaborate to find items older than 3 years |
Staff Directory | No retention | Administered by OICT |
Classifieds | 30 days | Classifieds unpublished after 30 days; photos and files deleted after 60 days |
Announcements and Events | Permanent; unpublished after 1 year | Contact weCollaborate to find items older than 1 year |
Job Openings | No retention | This information is linked from inspira. |
In the Spotlight | 1 year | |
Staff Union Articles | Permanent | Including images, links, and comments |
Departmental Pages | Permanent. Will be reviewed every 2 years. | These pages should be updated at least once every two years; subject to review |
Files | Retention subject to use. Will be purged if inactive for 2 years. | Files, including images, are subject to review. |
Attention Span - Keep pages clean and simple, not busy. A new employee should be able to visit any page on your intranet and know exactly where to click or go next within 2-3 seconds.
Consistency Is Key – Nothing drives users crazy like inconsistency, and this includes inconsistency in design, layout, navigation, terminology, etc. Familiarity breeds findability.
(a) Home Page: The design of the home page is managed and determined by the governing body of the intranet. Every intranet that wants to have high adoption rates needs to create homepages where the content changes frequently (ideally, daily or even more frequently if it can be managed.) It should show information that is not only relevant to topics being discussed across the company, but it also tailored to the individual. The intranet homepage is the most hotly-contested real estate on the site, with every business area hoping to have a direct link to their information. Every intranet team should have a simple policy outlining what does (and more importantly, doesn’t) get published to the home page.
(b) Category Menus: The design of the category menus is managed and determined by the governing body of the intranet.
(c) Division / Office / Regional Office Spaces: The design of the division
(d) Embedding Electronic Processes: Processes should be embedded in the intranet. This will transform it into a place of productivity.
| Overview | Source | Ideas to Actions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Search | Effective intranet search functionality, therefore, calls for:
|
| |
| Employee Recognition | A peer-to-peer recognition tool empowers your users to take ownership for recognising and rewarding one another can not only provide a much-needed boost to morale and engagement, but also give users the means to take ownership of their intranet. | ||
| Put recognition on the home page. | |||
| Mobile | Mobile optimisation can include the ability to submit photos via a mobile phone. | ||
| Make sure it’s mobile-friendly technologies and that the mobile experience is carefully planned around key scenarios that your users need to accomplish. Ensure to test on several different platforms and in various environments. Make sure it’s search-friendly and that team sites are easy to find and navigate across devices. | /perspectives/10-tips-building-intranet-employees-will-actually-use/ |