Internal Communications

The Rise of the Networked Enterprise

Posted by Andrew Cringle at 11:13 am Social Media Tagged with: Enterprise 2.0, Internal Communications, Research, Strategy

Mar 012011

Whilst organisations continue to invest in the internal adoption of social technologies, it is becoming clear that, so far, only a few have worked out how to make the most of these new opportunities. McKinsey’s latest survey into the use of web 2.0 tools within organisations has identified the emergence of this new class of company – ‘The Networked Enterprise’.

Almost two-thirds of the businesses surveyed by McKinsey are now using social technologies to some degree, benefiting from quicker access to knowledge and internal experts, greater communication and operational efficiencies, increased employee satisfaction and greater levels of speed to market and subsequent success for product/service innovations.

However, as with any new technology, the rate of adoption and the ability to generate significant improvements varies enormously. McKinsey’s report identifies four major types of organisation -

Developing -The vast majority (79%) of organisations are still learning how best to deploy the new technologies. They are realising only modest improvements in business performance and have yet to develop significant usage or integrate tools into daily work flows, as a result they see little change in levels of communication, collaboration or information sharing.

Internally Networked Organisations – Some organisations (13%) focus primarily on using social tools within their company, resulting in higher levels of employee participation and greater integration into work-flows. The major benefits come from significantly more flexible internal processes; information shared more easily and less hierarchically, greater collaboration across silos and a more project-based approach to tasks.

Externally Networked Organisations - These companies (5%) achieve substantial benefits from using web 2.0 tools to connect with customers and business partners. They see benefits in marketing effectiveness and revenues but much less improvement in operational efficiencies and internal sharing and collaboration.

Fully Networked Enterprises – These are the elite organisations (just 3%) that are successfully integrating web 2.0 technologies throughout their operations; connecting the internal efforts of their employees and extending the company’s reach out to customers, partners and suppliers. As a result these organisations are seeing both sales growth through increased market share and higher margins through increased operational efficiency.

The benefits of the fully networked approach not only deliver competitive advantages now but provide the means for businesses to extend that advantage; lessons learned in one market, region or function can be quickly shared and adopted throughout the organisation, leading to faster innovation, greater organisational effectiveness and better products/services.

Key Steps to Becoming Fully Networked

The creation of effective networks, both internal and external, is quickly becoming an organisational necessity. If they aren’t already, senior managers everywhere need to be thinking about how they can enable their business…

Integrate the use of Web 2.0 into employees’ day-to-day work activities
Drive up levels of adoption and usage
Break down barriers to organisational change
Apply Web 2.0 technologies to interactions with customers, business partners and employees.

The ‘Networked Enterprises’ already have an advantage, the challenge for everyone else is to join them quickly or risk being left further behind.

Internal Communications’ Developments for 2011

Posted by Andrew Cringle at 5:42 pm Social Media Tagged with: Enterprise 2.0, Internal Communications, Intranets, Research

Jan 062011

The way people communicate within organisations continues to change. The role of Internal Communications is becoming less about broadcasting the company message and more about encouraging those conversations and collaborations that will most effectively deliver the business’ goals.

The Intranet Design Annual 2011 from the Nielsen Norman Group offers some interesting insights into the way organisations are expanding, changing and re-imagining their internal communications activities, delivering greater value, to more of their members, more regularly. Having seen many of these developments first hand in our client discussions, we’ve picked out a few of the trends we expect to see more of in 2011.

More Companies Can Now Have Better Intranets

More and more companies are now able to develop high quality intranets. This is partly due to the wider recognition of the value of investing in intranets and partly due to the availability of better tools for building intranets. The easier it is to make the implementation work, the more resources that are left for design and usability. This is especially important in smaller organizations, which found it costly and time consuming to make things work with clunkier technology.

However, quality intranets remain a long-term commitment. Many organisations supplement their intranet teams with outside resources — such as design firms and consultants — for their redesign projects, only to cut back resources after launch. Long-term usability requires ongoing commitment, both for continuous design improvement, and for things such as search quality initiatives, consistency and style guide enforcement, and training new users and content contributors.

Mobile Intranets

Mobile access to intranet sites continues to grow in importance. Significantly those sites with fewer features have much better usability than full-featured websites; focus on specific features that are important to employees on the go instead of trying to squeeze the entire intranet onto a tiny screen.

One major difference between mobile intranets and mobile websites is that an intranet team can optimize for the relatively small set of company-issued mobile devices.

Managing Knowledge

As well as providing searchable access to the organisation’s knowledge archive, many intranets are now actively encouraging members to share their expertise more widely and are using social media tools to provide the means for users to identify and connect with people, knowledge and resources across the organisation.

Knowledge sharing. Providing searchable archives for case studies, reports, creative samples, and other existing information can help people with similar problems avoid having to start building their solutions from scratch. Sometimes, knowledge sharing can be as simple as a Q&A tool to connect employees with questions to colleagues with answers.
Innovation management. Managing and encouraging innovation by offering users tools for taking ideas and improvements from conception to completion.
Comments. The simplest way to inspire user-contributed intranet content is to let employees comment on existing information, ranging from news stories to knowledge bank resources. Systems that force people to create content from scratch every time inhibit user participation, commenting features reduce the fear of the blank screen.
Ratings. Giving a grade requires even less work than writing a comment, and thus rating systems can further broaden user participation. Sites that use ratings can list top-rated resources first in menus or give them added weight in search listings.
Participation rewards. User participation increases when contributors are visibly rewarded, such as by adding points or badges to their profiles. Because there’s real business value to features like knowledge sharing and innovation management within an enterprise, some intranets went beyond the symbolic value of visible recognition and offered real prizes to employees who gathered sufficient participation points.

Continued Trends

These are fairly established practices that are likely to be implemented more and more widely in the coming months-

A wide spectrum of technology solutions: there’s no single way to build a great intranet.
Structures based on organisational tasks and activities rather than legacy silos.
News as a main homepage feature, but with increasing emphasis on the usefulness of news stories.
Better employee profile pages. In addition to offering information beyond plain contact listings, profiles are coupled with a more structured way of finding employees with specific expertise.
Blogs by both executives and regular employees.
Emphasis on search and on initiatives to improve search quality (which continues to suffer on many intranets).
The use of pre-designed page layouts and a CMS to establish and maintain content consistency.
Training for site managers and people in charge of individual areas, in recognition of that fact that user experiences derive from people and not just technology.
Increased use of video on intranets, including features that let employees create and share video content.

Intranet Innovations 2010

Posted by Andrew Cringle at 5:39 pm Social Media Tagged with: Internal Communications, Social Media

Nov 302010

Some interesting insights into the future direction of internal business communications – courtesy of Step Two Designs’ 2010 Intranet Innovation Awards.

Content is no longer king

Innovative communicators are re-imagining the Intranet.

The most important change hasn’t been the technology platform; it’s been the mindset of intranet and project teams – moving on from the idea of the intranet as an internal website.

Rather than simply focusing on the one-way delivery of static content and corporate news, intranet innovation is now looking at ways to transform how staff work, using new technology to rethink traditional approaches and to focus more on connecting people and resources in order to help deliver business goals.

Social media is ‘standard’

2010 marked the ‘tipping point’ of social tools; site-wide commenting, the integration of blogs, micro-blogging, wikis, and social staff directories, and free-ranging contributions from all levels of an organisation, from the CEO down and frontline staff up.

Basic social tools are no longer ‘nice to have’, they’re now standard. If a site doesn’t have extensive social functionality, built-in from the ground up, then it’s significantly behind the curve of intranet development.

For those facing cultural barriers to adoption, including senior management’s fear of losing control or employees wasting time, the message is clear; an organisation still holding back its employees, intentionally or not, from contributing to and discussing all aspects of the business, risks missing out on a significant route to innovation and growth.

Personalisation that works

Personalisation, where staff can configure the intranet to match their needs, has seen a resurgence on intranets in the last year.

Whilst the idea of enabling staff to set up ‘their’ intranet themselves, is an attractive one, the challenge has often been the ’5–10% rule’ – in typical organisations, only 5–10% of staff will make use of personalisation or social features. This rule has been seen in effect across the globe, in the private and public sectors, even in major technology and consulting firms, and in those with a greater proportion of those ‘Generation Y’ users thought most likely to use new technologies.

To make personalistion work, you need – a proactive culture, features that deliver real benefits and personalised options that are critical to the daily work of staff. It needs to go beyond the out-of-the-box widgets like ‘my documents’ and the weather. Instead, it should deliver features like to-do-lists, project updates, contact searches, selective content subscription etc.

Consider the experience

It’s interesting to compare public websites and intranets with respect to the user experience.

The best websites provide customers with an easy, effective and seamless experience that hides underlying complexity.

No major public website would consider giving customers multiple usernames and passwords, or presenting six different applications with differing look-and-feel. Yet this is often what is created for staff within organisations: a disjointed collection of applications that often feels thrown together rather than designed.

Increasingly, the best intranet sites feature polished, professional and effective interfaces. Regardless of the technology platform behind the scenes, they cross boundaries and breakdown silos to deliver users experiences that are a pleasure for staff.

SharePoint versus all others

Microsoft’s SharePoint has become a significant, and perhaps dominant, intranet platform.

SharePoint is indeed powerful, but it’s not a lightweight intranet solution. Only with enough development time, resourcing, budget and effective communication will it meet many of the more complex business requirements.

Despite this, SharePoint remains on the radar of many intranet teams, permeating through all and any types of business, whether suitable or not. It is worth remembering that it’s certainly not the only solution out there.

Generating support and buy-in

Whether launching a new or replacement intranet, a considerable amount of time and effort should be invested in communicating and engaging with staff on the changes ahead. From user-centred research, to testing, launching and developing the site post-launch, it’s vital to have support and buy-in from all levels of the business. It is particularly important to secure senior management support, without which few projects are likely to be successful.

The key message is: Don’t forget this vital component when planning your site’s development schedule. A failure to engage and communicate with the business will often lead to a failed intranet, whether the breakdown occurs during the development phase, or post-launch.

Read more about the Intranet Innovations 2010 annual report.

Communication – The Key to Employee Engagement

Posted by Andrew Cringle at 1:23 pm Social Media Tagged with: Employee Engagement, Internal Communications, Social Media, Strategy

Mar 262010

The MacLoed Report, ‘Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement’, published in July 2009 was intended to start a nationwide discussion about developing greater employee engagement. The aim was to generate responses during early 2010 but it seems the difficult economic conditions and the election may have slowed down progress.

The inital report was a wide-ranging review of the nature and impact of employee engagement and not an attempt to provide answers. However, it was surprising and a little disappointing that a search of the whole report, one about the future of business, could find not one mention of either ‘social media’ or ‘social networking’. And, indeed, there seems to have been little debate since about how new technologies can contribute

The report identified four ‘broad enablers/drivers’ which were often cited as being critical to employee engagement, all of which could clearly benefit from the improvements in communication, conversation and collaboration that new ‘social’ tools and techniques can offer…

Leadership that “provides a strong strategic narrative which has widespread ownership and commitment from managers and employees at all levels. The narrative is a clearly expressed story about what the purpose of an organisation is, why it has the broad vision it has, and how an individual contributes to that purpose. Employees have a clear line of sight between their job and the narrative, and understand where their work fits in. These aims and values are reflected in a strong, transparent and explicit organisational culture and way of working.”

Engaging Managers, “at the heart of this organisational culture– they facilitate and empower rather than control or restrict their staff; they treat their staff with appreciation and respect and show commitment to developing, increasing and rewarding the capabilities of those they manage.”

Voice, “An effective and empowered employee voice – employees’ views are sought out; they are listened to and see that their opinions count and make a difference. They speak out and challenge when appropriate. A strong sense of listening and of responsiveness permeates the organisation, enabled by effective communication.”

Integrity, “Behaviour throughout the organisation [that] is consistent with stated values, leading to trust and a sense of integrity.”

A focus on these four areas, and some thought as to how improved communication techniques can deliver greater returns, sounds like a great place to start for any communications professional looking to make a difference to their organisation.

A Special Report on Social Networking

Posted by Andrew Cringle at 11:55 am Social Media Tagged with: Enterprise 2.0, Internal Communications, Social Media, Strategy

Feb 262010

There are currently two very different views on social media, especially concerning its value to business.

Some will tell you that it’s just too big to ignore, the whole world is using it and it’s not going away; if you’re not at least considering making it work for you then you’re already way behind.

Others say it’s just the latest over-hyped big thing, a distraction for the workforce and, as nobody can make a convincing case for the ROI, a potential black hole for investment.

The truth lies somewhere in-between. The new technologies do offer enormous potential benefits for business but only the best have worked out how to realise them. Whilst some companies have struggled however, there are plenty of developers, consultants and evangelists out there to help them make sense of it all. The applications and their uses are improving all the time and the variety and choice is growing too; all of which suggests a prosperous on-going future for these new mediums.

Whatever the long term prospects, it’s clear that businesses today can’t afford to just ignore social media. Even if the decision is ‘not for us’ they must at least consider the potential impacts, positive and negative, on both their external and internal communications and relationships. And, as with anything as fast moving as new technologies, they need to keep revisiting their analysis.

One indicator of the growing importance to business of social media is the fact that The Economist recently produced a special report ‘A world of connections’. It’s well worth a look, especially the article on the challenges, issues and benefits facing those trying to the deploy the new technologies within their businesses.

The Economist argues, and we agree

‘…social-networking technologies are creating considerable benefits for the businesses that embrace them, whatever their size…this is just the beginning of an exciting new era of interconnectedness that will spread ideas and innovations around the world faster than ever before.’

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