Warning: Long post follows!

On November 1, I conducted a webinar for Ragan Communications titled, “Best practices for building a better intranet.” There wasn’t enough time to answer all the questions submitted through the WebEx platform, so Ragan bundled them up and sent them to me. Here they are, along with my answers. I’m hopeful that readers will share their own thoughts on any of these answers by leaving a comment. I’ll check the comments for follow-up questions, as well.

What are your thoughts on SharePoint 2010?

If you’re going to use Sharepoint, use Sharepoing 2010. If you’re already using Sharepoint, upgrade. Sharepoint 2010 addresses a lot of the issues that made earlier versions problematic as an overarching platform for an intranet and it has really beefed up its social media components.

Microsoft has put together a comprehensive document describing the improvements to Sharepoint 2010.

What about legal issues like “getting paid” for a work text outside hours.

Each organization is going to have to tackle this one based on the kind of workforce they employ (hourly or salaried, collective bargaining agreements, etc.). Among salaried staff, it isn’t an issue. We’re already seeing a trend among younger workers (generally those born after 1977, the Millennials and the yet-to-be-named generation that follows) toward “weisure,” a combination of work and leisure that leads people to work when and where it makes sense while engaging in some leisure activities while they happen to be at the office. the measure of productivity is not how much work gets done between 9 and 5, but how much work gets done, period.

This is even true, to some extent, among hourly workers. In an organization I’ve done some work with, hourly workers were more responsive to a management query over Facebook—to which they had to reply during off-hours—than they were to the same message sent over company email.

How do you convince an overworked IT dept that moving the intranet to web 2.0 is a worthy investment of their time/priority work?

The answers to this question could cover a lengthy blog post of its own!

There are two general answers to this:

• Show them the value.
• Don’t convince IT. Convince the organization’s leaders who set IT’s priorities.

For the first approach, you’ll need to know the objectives your IT department is geared to meet. What does leadership expect from them? On what criteria are the heads of the IT department being evaluated? If you can tie the introduction or expansion of social software into those goals, you’ll have an easier time.

You can also point to ample research results that demonstrate the value of social software on intranets, such as McKinsey & Company’s global survey on how organization’s are benefiting from Web 2.0.

Of course, the same research results can be used to build executive support. Once social media on intranets becomes a priority for leaders who want the their organizations to see results like higher engagement and improved performance, they’ll make it a priority for IT.

Given that my company is starting from ground zero, do you have recommendations for guides helping with planning implementation in stages?

There are all kinds of software packages that provide analytics of your intranet traffic. They all extract data that is accumulated on the server. Webrends is probably the best known. There are also open source tools you can use, like Piwik. Some of the intranet content management systems and platforms provide their own analytics; Sharepoint 2010 does, for example.

It would be useful to track intranet use to continue to modify and improve features. Web trend software?

Webtrends…

In a heavily unionized environment where employees’ jobs are relatively secure, what’s the best strategy for addressing employee conduct as you implement new Web 2.0 tools?

To begin with, you need a well-communicated policy. Second, you need to monitor input and remove content that is out of compliance with the policy. Third, you do need to be prepared for content that may run counter to management views—and to support employees’ ability to post that content. It is a hallmark of trust and engagement for a company to encourage expression of legitimate alternative views. I recall seeing some terrific examples of this in comments left to articles on the Intel intranet.

Ultimately, this is not a matter of discipline (the threat of termination), but one of culture change (a shift in the way we do things around here). Shine the spotlight on great examples of employee contributions.

For a company that has about a third of its 14,000 employees who work in a factory environment and not in front of a computer, what do you advise as the best first steps to take toward 2.0?

Identify a platform that enables the delivery of content over mobile devices. And ensure employees have access to the intranet from home using a simple userid/password combination. Many companies will resist this, insisting their information is too confidential to risk web access. However, banks provide access to individual customer accounts with a simple userid/password combination, and I can think of nothing requiring greater security than my bank account, can you?

You mentioned that there are new tools to improve site searchability. Can you discuss one of these tools?

Tags!

Providing employees with the ability to add tags to intranet content—words they would associate with the material and would likely use to search for such information—is added to the search mix. In one organization I worked with, an employee couldn’t find the mailroom on the intranet, only to learn later that it was called (in a prime example of corporate jargon) Document Delivery Services. Had tagging been available, the employee could have added the “mailroom” tag to the Document Delivery Services page, after which any employee who searched for “mailroom” would have found it.

If you’re not able to integrate tags into your existing search, consider an internal social bookmarking site that does on your intranet what Delicious does on the web. IBM and Mitre are two organizations that developed their own internal social bookmarking sites, which allow employees to search both the search engine and other employees’ bookmarks. Employees are able to bookmark and tag both internal and external sites. There used to be a product called Cogenz that hosted intranet bookmarking sites, but it seems to have vanished. There are probably others. Sharepoint 2010 features both tagging and social bookmarking.

Our company doesn’t have an intranet but wants one. Where do I get started? Is there software you recommend? Is this something we build internally? and You do you recommend any packaged intranets? We have 250 employees.

While there are myriad options for you, I wouldn’t start with the software. I’d start with your requirements. Work with others in the company to create a requirements document that lists the various things you want the intranet to be able to do, both short- and long-term. Then, when you explore intranet platform alternatives, you can make decisions based on their ability to satisfy your requirements.

Once you’ve done that, you can start looking at options. These include hosted solutions like like Ektron and Atlassian, the use of a customizable platform like SharePoint 2010, or a more federated approach that includes multiple platforms (including both installed and hosted solutions). You’ll want to include the Web 2.0 elements you’ll want to include and decide whether you want to install software or use a hosted solution like Awareness or Jive.

You should consider working, at least initially, with a consultant who has experience in planning intranets from scratch. The folks at Prescient Digital Media are among those who are good at this.

What about companies that are bilingual? We run into so many delays having to translate the content so it’s in 2 languages.  Do you know of any software we could use to speed up the process of translation (e.g., automated)?

I wish there was an easy answer to this one. Machine Translation (MT) has improved dramatically, but still is rarely good enough to just publish as is—it usually serves as the first pass at the translation that still requires human review and editing.

Some organizations get their content up in the dominant language, then let the other locations handle translation into the local language on an as-relevant basis. I’ve seen a few companies where translations of summaries appear along with the original article in its primary language.

I’d be interested to know if anyone reading this post has other multiple-language solutions for intranets!

What is AJAX?

AJAX is the acronym for Asynchronous, JavaScript, and XML. It’s a cobbling-together of scripting techniques that make web pages more interactive. You can learn more by reading the Wikipedia listing.

With the movement to increase access to Intranet site content outside of the office environment, how would you suggest distinguishing intranet content (employee generated) from “authoritative” sources?

In most cases, the way the intranet is constructed addresses this. There are social elements of the intranet, like employee blogs, which are clearly labeled as having been written by the employee. Authoritative pages may include comments, employee ratings, or employee-generated tags, but these, too, are already clearly identified as employee contributions to the “official” company material. Nobody would confuse a policy document or the landing page for a business unit as something an employee created.

How do you measure a successful Intranet in terms visits and usage?

This is another huge question, a thorough answer to which would be far too long to publish here. In general, I’m more inclined to measure outcomes (reduced printing costs, reduced travel costs, increased employee collaboration, faster time to market, improved knowledge sharing, etc.) than outputs (e.g., number of visits). Still, studying usage patterns can reveal a lot of useful information.

I’ve seen some rules of thumb on the percentage of employees who should be visiting the intranet weekly in order to determine effectiveness. The problem is, none of these rules of thumb are in agreement!

Here are some good resources on intranet measurement:

• How to measure the success of your intranet by Gerry McGovern
• A balanced approach to measuring the intranet by Aidan Cook
• How can the effectiveness of intranets be measured? from the Intranet Benchmarking Forum

How do you measure increasing engagement due to intranet use of web 2.0?

It depends on what you mean be engagement: engagement with content or employees engaging with one another? If the former, increased visits would let you know more people are engaging, as would the number of comments left, ratings contributed, pages tagged, etc. If the intranet includes self-service tools, are they being used more?

If the latter, your efforts to measure become more subjective. Monitor the parts of the intranet where employees can interact with one another for a month and note any time employees shared knowledge or information with one another. This could be an answer to a question posed by an employee, uploading of an employee video, views of employee blog posts, discussions in forums, and the like. It won’t be scientific, and you may miss a lot, but you’ll still get a lot of sense of the interaction taking place on the intranet.

If you use an externally-hosted social suite, these kinds of statistics are often built in. The applications from Pollstream, for instance, can give you good insights into the knowledge sharing taking place. (Disclosure: Pollstream is a sponsor of my podcast, For Immediate Release.

Given the open access that will be available to all employees using these types of intranets, do you have pointers on developing guidelines for sharing information?

Employees should be bound by the same guidelines that govern interaction on the Web. They should disclose who they are, be respectful of other employees, respect privacy, and so forth. There are hundreds of social media policies from many different types of organizations available on the web. A good starting point is the Social Media Governance site, which has about 160 policies listed.

Regarding a CEO blog and interaction with employees, are there any specific applications you recommend?

I’m not sure what you mean by “applications”—your CEO should use whatever blogging utility is being used to produce blogs across the intranet. I’d make sure it supported the use of video and audio, as well, and that comments are open.

(We are a ) small nonprofit service company with a very static intranet—- where is the best place to start changing the Intranet? Is it best to transition slowly in light of resource challenges or is it best to just do a total overhaul? and Also, tons of info out there about intranets. What to ask employees to meet organizational needs (surveys)? and What’s a good reference/resource for employee surveys?

The best place to start is with the changes that will most satisfy what employees need to do their jobs more effectively and to share their knowledge with other employees. To this end, I’d strongly suggest an audit of the intranet, including some employee research (focus groups and survey) to identify what’s working, what could work better, and where pain points exist for getting things done. The results of the audit should help you determine if there are incremental improvements that can be made, major additions are required, or you need a complete overhaul.

For a company that has about a third of its 14,000 employees who work in a factory environment and not in front of a computer, what do you advise as the best first step to take toward 2.0?

As noted in the answer above, I’d start with an audit to determine how your employees prefer to access the information on the intranet. I wouldn’t be concerned only with those who aren’t in front of computers; even those who are may prefer smartphone access, for instance! That said, I’d make sure to begin down the path of developing intranet apps for smartphones, something companies like Google and Intel are already doing. (Your research will go a long way in this effort to make sure you’re developing apps that actually serve employees’ needs.) I’d also make sure the intranet was accessible from home computers.

What is the role of Twitter-like status updates on intranet?

Status update utilities on intranets are of growing importance (as evidenced by the addition of status updates to Sharepoint 2010). They provide for instant communication within groups as well as broad distribution of queries seeking subject matter expertise or other input.