The potential for corporate intranets to improve how work gets done is truly great. A paperless workplace, improved communication channels and a more informed workforce, better processes, greater efficiency.
But for HR pros, the real attraction is employee self-service.
Here, finally, say the experts, is a tool that will actually enable the HR department to free itself from the prosaic transactional duties that have consumed so much time, and focus instead on the value-added strategic issues.
But a lot of the experts will also tell you that in many cases companies fall short of realizing the full potential of their intranets.
The technology is great, that’s seldom the problem. Rather, as is often the case with new tech toys, the users haven’t quite figured out how to employ them to maximum effect.
In the last couple of years there has been much greater interest in corporate intranets, says Sandy French, president of Northern Lights Communication.
“People want a new media solution for communicating with employees. People want technology,” he says.
However, just as there has been a greater demand for intranets, there has also been a greater number of badly designed intranets. “I’ve seen more sites pop up that have not been thought through for the sake of expediency, but they don’t do anything,” he says.
For the intranet to be truly useful — to really change business — requires a lot of time, thought, preparation and planning.
For starters, it’s essential HR departments understand some basic rules for putting content on a site.
“The intranet cannot become an information dumping ground, people are just way to busy for that,” says French.
Your intranet has to provide employees with relevant, easily accessible information they can get to in a hurry. But too often HR departments have fallen into the unfortunate habit of simply taking word files, converting them to html and dropping it on the site, says Diane McElroy, senior vice-president of Aon Consulting’s communication practice and an intranet specialist. At most sites users end up scrolling through reams of useless information, it’s difficult to navigate and the information is often stale.
McElroy provides six “golden rules” for an effective intranet site:
1. It must be easy to access and navigate.
2. It must be written and designed to maximize the advantages of computer learning and browsing.
3. It must provide linkages and provide a means of quickly printing or accessing required information.
4. It must provide value-added information to the user.
5. It must be fresh with updated information.
6. It must be graphically creative and interesting.
“People learn and read differently on the Web,” she says. Content needs to be reconfigured to go on the intranet. It should be edited and broken down into smaller chunks with directories, sub-directories and sub-sub directories.
“Basically what it comes down to is planning, planning and more planning,” says McElroy. Figure out what should be on the site to begin with, but also create the site with an idea of what will go on over time.
Earlier this year, Aon surveyed Canadian organizations about intranets.
While just 34 per cent of companies already have an intranet, of those that don’t almost one-half intend to implement one in the next 18 months. And of those that already have an intranet, 73 per cent still only provide static information.
Canadian companies are still focusing on static information, says McElroy, posting benefit information, policies, programs and the like, with a plan to add self-service — the promise land of intranets — down the road. Self-service can come in the form of personalized information or transactional opportunities. However, when it comes time to move onto the next phase and add either or those options, many companies discover they don’t have the capability and the site has to be completely rebuilt, she says.
The Ontario Public Service introduced an intranet as part of an effort to reduce the administrative costs of government. Ted Paradis, the team leader for the WIN (workforce information network) project, says they went into the project with the mindset that they wanted some self-service from the start. With 65,000 employees, the new intranet could eliminate anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 calls a year to HR departments across the Ontario public sector, he says.
With possibilities like this, it’s not surprising that while most businesses still don’t have an intranet, there’s an awful lot thinking about getting one.
The Aon survey also found that HR is playing a greater role in intranet development, where just a few years ago the process was dominated by IT.
McElroy says the intranet has to be a partnership between IT, HR and communication specialists. And again that comes back to thorough planning, says French. Too often HR goes to the IT department with unrealistic, ill-considered requests and the tech people don’t take them seriously, says French.
HR needs to take time to figure out exactly what their needs are and provide hard-core objectives, timelines and budgets to the IT department.
While site design is critical for success, so too is having employees who are willing and able to change the behaviours that will ensure the success of the intranet in order to realize the efficiencies and benefits it can offer. This goes for HR, too.
There’s no point in putting state-of-the-art technology in the hands of the HR department and letting them do the same things they have always done, says Paradis. “We knew that if this is going to be successful, we can’t just pave the cowpath,” he says of the Ontario government’s implementation.
“If we’re going to change the way we do business, we also have to change the expectations of how we do our job.” And that’s not easy.
HR will no longer be the keepers of the company data because it can be on every employee’s desktop. Instead, HR can concentrate on helping employees use and interpret that information, thereby leveraging it to maximum effect. A lot of HR people are used to pushing paper, they don’t have to do that anymore, says Michel Salmon, general manager of HR for the e-commerce services provider, BCE Emergis. Instead they can add real value in other ways, by becoming better coaches for managers, for example.
For Salmon, the intranet was a “way of survival.”
When he first joined the still young BCE Emergis, the HR department was three people for a workforce of 600. At that time company leaders had made it clear they did not even want an HR department. And so going in Salmon realized they had to automate everything they could to reduce the administrative tasks as much as possible so his team could concentrate on adding value to the company and proving their worth. The first step was getting the company programs and policies on the company Web page before they even had an intranet.
“There has to be value added to the personal interaction and it has to be more than just taking an order — that can be automated,” says Salmon.
Another example: rather than managers getting involved with every reimbursement or expense request, an intranet enables management by exception, says Salmon.
Employees can fill in the form and receive automatic authorization, and count on the system to red flag $600-a-night hotel bills and other requests out of the ordinary.
Corporate intranets also drastically reduce the flow of paper around an organization. Not only for announcements and policy updates but for completing benefit forms and so on. Security is still a concern and people still like seeing people’s signatures on things but that already serves no real purpose and will likely disappear, says Salmon.
“You don’t need that ink on the piece of paper anymore,” he says.
If a good information policy is in place and employees treat their login passwords the same way they treat their bank debit cards then it is possible to transfer information just as securely.
And for employees, once they become accustomed to going to the site for basic information, employers can add new tools and services — limited only by the creativity of the HR department. Rather than having to take an hour out to go and talk to a banker, employees could log into the intranet site and do projections of the impacts of adding $5,000 to an RSP account, as but one example.
But for HR pros, the real attraction is employee self-service.
Here, finally, say the experts, is a tool that will actually enable the HR department to free itself from the prosaic transactional duties that have consumed so much time, and focus instead on the value-added strategic issues.
But a lot of the experts will also tell you that in many cases companies fall short of realizing the full potential of their intranets.
The technology is great, that’s seldom the problem. Rather, as is often the case with new tech toys, the users haven’t quite figured out how to employ them to maximum effect.
In the last couple of years there has been much greater interest in corporate intranets, says Sandy French, president of Northern Lights Communication.
“People want a new media solution for communicating with employees. People want technology,” he says.
However, just as there has been a greater demand for intranets, there has also been a greater number of badly designed intranets. “I’ve seen more sites pop up that have not been thought through for the sake of expediency, but they don’t do anything,” he says.
For the intranet to be truly useful — to really change business — requires a lot of time, thought, preparation and planning.
For starters, it’s essential HR departments understand some basic rules for putting content on a site.
“The intranet cannot become an information dumping ground, people are just way to busy for that,” says French.
Your intranet has to provide employees with relevant, easily accessible information they can get to in a hurry. But too often HR departments have fallen into the unfortunate habit of simply taking word files, converting them to html and dropping it on the site, says Diane McElroy, senior vice-president of Aon Consulting’s communication practice and an intranet specialist. At most sites users end up scrolling through reams of useless information, it’s difficult to navigate and the information is often stale.
McElroy provides six “golden rules” for an effective intranet site:
1. It must be easy to access and navigate.
2. It must be written and designed to maximize the advantages of computer learning and browsing.
3. It must provide linkages and provide a means of quickly printing or accessing required information.
4. It must provide value-added information to the user.
5. It must be fresh with updated information.
6. It must be graphically creative and interesting.
“People learn and read differently on the Web,” she says. Content needs to be reconfigured to go on the intranet. It should be edited and broken down into smaller chunks with directories, sub-directories and sub-sub directories.
“Basically what it comes down to is planning, planning and more planning,” says McElroy. Figure out what should be on the site to begin with, but also create the site with an idea of what will go on over time.
Earlier this year, Aon surveyed Canadian organizations about intranets.
While just 34 per cent of companies already have an intranet, of those that don’t almost one-half intend to implement one in the next 18 months. And of those that already have an intranet, 73 per cent still only provide static information.
Canadian companies are still focusing on static information, says McElroy, posting benefit information, policies, programs and the like, with a plan to add self-service — the promise land of intranets — down the road. Self-service can come in the form of personalized information or transactional opportunities. However, when it comes time to move onto the next phase and add either or those options, many companies discover they don’t have the capability and the site has to be completely rebuilt, she says.
The Ontario Public Service introduced an intranet as part of an effort to reduce the administrative costs of government. Ted Paradis, the team leader for the WIN (workforce information network) project, says they went into the project with the mindset that they wanted some self-service from the start. With 65,000 employees, the new intranet could eliminate anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 calls a year to HR departments across the Ontario public sector, he says.
With possibilities like this, it’s not surprising that while most businesses still don’t have an intranet, there’s an awful lot thinking about getting one.
The Aon survey also found that HR is playing a greater role in intranet development, where just a few years ago the process was dominated by IT.
McElroy says the intranet has to be a partnership between IT, HR and communication specialists. And again that comes back to thorough planning, says French. Too often HR goes to the IT department with unrealistic, ill-considered requests and the tech people don’t take them seriously, says French.
HR needs to take time to figure out exactly what their needs are and provide hard-core objectives, timelines and budgets to the IT department.
While site design is critical for success, so too is having employees who are willing and able to change the behaviours that will ensure the success of the intranet in order to realize the efficiencies and benefits it can offer. This goes for HR, too.
There’s no point in putting state-of-the-art technology in the hands of the HR department and letting them do the same things they have always done, says Paradis. “We knew that if this is going to be successful, we can’t just pave the cowpath,” he says of the Ontario government’s implementation.
“If we’re going to change the way we do business, we also have to change the expectations of how we do our job.” And that’s not easy.
HR will no longer be the keepers of the company data because it can be on every employee’s desktop. Instead, HR can concentrate on helping employees use and interpret that information, thereby leveraging it to maximum effect. A lot of HR people are used to pushing paper, they don’t have to do that anymore, says Michel Salmon, general manager of HR for the e-commerce services provider, BCE Emergis. Instead they can add real value in other ways, by becoming better coaches for managers, for example.
For Salmon, the intranet was a “way of survival.”
When he first joined the still young BCE Emergis, the HR department was three people for a workforce of 600. At that time company leaders had made it clear they did not even want an HR department. And so going in Salmon realized they had to automate everything they could to reduce the administrative tasks as much as possible so his team could concentrate on adding value to the company and proving their worth. The first step was getting the company programs and policies on the company Web page before they even had an intranet.
“There has to be value added to the personal interaction and it has to be more than just taking an order — that can be automated,” says Salmon.
Another example: rather than managers getting involved with every reimbursement or expense request, an intranet enables management by exception, says Salmon.
Employees can fill in the form and receive automatic authorization, and count on the system to red flag $600-a-night hotel bills and other requests out of the ordinary.
Corporate intranets also drastically reduce the flow of paper around an organization. Not only for announcements and policy updates but for completing benefit forms and so on. Security is still a concern and people still like seeing people’s signatures on things but that already serves no real purpose and will likely disappear, says Salmon.
“You don’t need that ink on the piece of paper anymore,” he says.
If a good information policy is in place and employees treat their login passwords the same way they treat their bank debit cards then it is possible to transfer information just as securely.
And for employees, once they become accustomed to going to the site for basic information, employers can add new tools and services — limited only by the creativity of the HR department. Rather than having to take an hour out to go and talk to a banker, employees could log into the intranet site and do projections of the impacts of adding $5,000 to an RSP account, as but one example.
