Part 1 of 2
Next time you're meeting with your company's techies, do more
than doodle as they spout their jargon. Take the opportunity to
talk with IT about how the communications department can be more
involved in directing the corporate intranet. Ask any PR pro who
has been able to bring the company intranet under her purview, and
she'll tell you it is worth every minute of PR staff time.
In the hands of PR, a well-designed intranet not only
streamlines workflow and most internal processes, but can elevate
the status of the PR team among senior management.
In this first of a two-part series, our intranet builders recall
their best moves in devising up-front specs for their corporate
intranets, creating an information architecture employees recognize
and use, and devising a workflow that keeps the communications
department at the center of everyone's workday. Part 2 next week,
will explore the kinds of content PR should be pouring into their
company intranets.
Booting Up
- Intranets need policies regarding who can post, what can be
posted, and who has access. Jennifer Arvin, manager, media
relations and communications, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, chairs an
intranet steering committee from other departments, which ensures
better buy-in throughout her 9,500-person facility. For any
organization that deals with confidential matters (i.e. patient
info or government partners), it is critical to understand how
easily intranet material can be saved, copied, accessed or
forwarded. "We didn't want anything out here that was not
appropriate for everyone to see," says Arvin. The committee
regularly monitors content (one departmental gossip column was
nixed) and reviews applications by departments to erect their own
Web pages. - Build in an organized input channel so that employees become
your main content providers. This will also help to ensure that
your target audience buys in. Cynthia Cooper, director, public
relations, Monroe Community College, had techies create a form
within Microsoft Outlook for staffers to submit news and
announcements for broadcast. Other companies use Web-based
submissions pages. It is critical to devise a form that extracts
from employees all the necessary information (i.e. length of time
news should be posted, contact person, etc.) so that you don't have
to follow up. - Because no one pays attention to a memo the first time, build
in a "news archive" that accesses previous items and announcements
via title, author, or general keyword search. In Cooper's daily
e-newspaper to staff, she devotes a side column just to headline
links to recent announcements. - Build in some traffic analysis system (such as Webtrends), so
you can monitor how the site is being used. Use this "market
intelligence" to bring the most sought information closer to the
surface, via home page links, and promote better use of the
undiscovered resources. - Larger, older firms may have a hodgepodge of departmental
sites, but getting everyone to standardize on a new system "is an
uphill battle" that wasn't worth waging for Eric Hards, senior Web
designer, Lockheed Martin Systems Integration - Owego. Instead, he
"let [departments] do what they want and offered users tools to get
to the information." At Lockheed, he created a company-wide hub
site with sub-pages of links that reached into these obscure
departmental resources.
Channel Your Data
- Use your email smarts. Jamie Floer, PR manager for engineering
consultancy R.W. Beck, realized "a big cost cutting and more
efficient news" by moving her costly but drab company newsletter
into an email format that was more timely and included color
graphics and charts. Also consider how you might use email alerts
to push users to new intranet content or let users themselves sign
up for alerts about HR or other new content they might want to
see. - Keep in mind that people will want to follow offline habits
online and make more use of familiar tools, so don't make users
learn a new nomenclature for their intranet. Wherever possible,
carry over publication titles and common terms already used within
the company to label content areas and navigation buttons. And be
redundant, says Hards. "People get to information differently," so
let them access things like directories via alphabetical or
category listings. Let them get to the resources in multiple
ways. - Offer individual departments their own Web pages. Arvin and
Hards find that this gives specific groups within a company or
satellite offices a sense of ownership of the intranet, and it
encourages them to post items.
Be the Editor
- Even if it is a matter of doing light editing on announcements
written by others, most corporate communications heads suggest
investing your own time in monitoring and marshalling most of the
important content that goes on your intranet. "You have to have an
extra set of eyes to look through it," says Floer. This not only
enhances your own visibility but it ensures that the copy that goes
on the site conforms to corporate policy and Web readability. - Be a proactive editor, says Anderson. Since taking over
intranet responsibility from IT, "my phone is ringing with tons of
gold nuggets of information that had gone un- covered." One of the
incidental benefits of a well-managed intranet with good
information flow from all sectors of the company is that it gives
the PR pro a better handle on what is happening in her own company
and more publicity material. Just by reviewing material departments
now post about themselves on her year-old intranet, Arvin says
"There are things we never knew were out there." - Rather than letting every member of the Monroe Community
College staff broadcast their own daily email announcements,
Cynthia Cooper now has them submit news to her by 3 p.m., which she
edits and pours into an HTML e-letter template for daily morning
delivery. "It takes ten to fifteen minutes a day," she says, but
her "Daily Tribune" replaces the chaos of personal e-announcements
throughout the day. "People see it as their daily newspaper." - Brand it. Give your intranet a name and an identity so that
employees identify it both as separate from the larger Internet (a
common source of confusion) and as something of which they are a
part. Floer held a contest among R.W. Beck employees to name their
own intranet. Design the page to embody this identity. Since her
hospital is but one within a parent company's network of intranets,
Arvin distinguished her intranet with a unique design. "We wanted
to make sure that when people pulled up our site, it looked
different."
Tools They Will Use
As Y&R ad guy Scott Anderson says, "you need to merchandise"
even your intranet, so try these tips for luring employees into
your net.
1. Have IT configure all corporate PCs to launch their browsers
into the company intranet by default whenever they start up.
2. Put "New Content" icons next to recently updated
material.
3. Use "What's New" and "Did You Know?" email alerts and
sidebars in print material to point employees to refreshed intranet
content or underused online resources.
4. Monitor site traffic and put the most popular links on the
intranet home page.
Editor's Note: In next week's issue, look for Part II, "Content
Matters: Giving Employees Intranet News They Can Use."
Contacts: Scott Anderson, 949/754-2092; Jennifer Arvin,
314/286-0301; Cynthia Cooper, 585/292-3022; Jamie Floer,
407/648-3540; Eric Hards, 607/751-5462