Mark Blevis

The conversation at day one of the 14th Intranets for Corporate Communications conference surrounded the evolution of corporate intranets from the traditional centralized model to the de-centralized social model based on social technologies made popular on the Internet.

I could list the myriad of specific reasons shared by predominantly government organizations for keeping social technologies off of their internal networks. However, it would be far easier to lump them into a single category: fear (there are some political reasons as well, but fear is by far the biggest single factor right now). The fear includes impact on productivity, overwhelming amounts of content to organize and archive, and turning the intranet into a two-way communication channel. Government organizations also raised concerns about Access to Information requests (which I won’t attempt to address here).

A number of interesting statistics were presented to illustrate why organizations should be incorporating social technologies on their intranet:

• Randy Woods of non~linear creations shared the results of an unscientific study they conducted in which 45% of respondents believe “everyone owns the corporate intranet” (beating the IT, HR and Communications departments, and several others)
• Carmine Porco of Prescient Digital Media Ltd. shared Centre for Media Research findings that 39% of surveyed 18-24 year olds would leave a company if denied access to social media and social networks (social media has become a competitive advantage for productivity AND recruiting)
• I shared Forrester Reasearch‘s Canadian Social Technographics report which identifies Canadians as “the most active social networkers in any market” they’ve surveyed to date (57% of Canadians use social network sites at least once a month, 6% more than the U.S.)

The consensus among the presenters and delegates is that social intranets, or hybrids of traditional and social, are the way to go. The issue is trying to get buy-in from the decision makers.

I offered the following suggestions for deriving a Return On Fear to make corporate intranets social:

Leverage the Technology: It used to be that the cost and limited functionally of intranet software demanded centralized content management. The tools are no longer a barrier to entry, functionally or fiscally. You may even have the necessary technology in your organization already. If money is a factor, consider using proven open-source technology that meets your needs.

Keep things simple: It’s important to have a strategy and a plan to execute it. However, don’t over-think or over-complicate things. The more simple things are (reasons, language, interface, etc…), the more likely the organization will embrace the tools. Acceptable use policies should be simple to understand and short (anything more than a paragraph or two will be ignored). Consider creating five to 10 simple guidelines to help the participants.

Community of communities: Don’t think of social technologies as delegating the intranet to the employees. Give contributors a reason to contribute and they will deliver. Have the primary site be an advocate of and aggregate for the various internal communities (geographic, business unit, skills, personal interests, etc…). By the way, management and centralized communications should be viewed as a community like all others. Exceptions must be made during a crisis while still making sure to include the voice of the communities since they also have a role (and concerns) in getting through the crisis.

Support the business objectives: If the tools are deployed to support work, they’ll be used for work. Think empowering vs. policing the communities. Most people and communities will self-police since they understand that some non-work-related chatter will be tolerated. For organizations that think instant messaging, forums, etc… will destroy productivity, ask yourself why you allow employees to have phones on their desk, email and Internet access.

Make it part of the culture: For the de-centralized components to contribute to productivity and the good of the organization (operationally and socially), contributors must have time allocated to keep their community current. They also need the support of management. If management models the social intranet behaviour, the organization will follow. Yes. Management should participate in the social intranet culture.

Apply the “so what?” test: Make sure the content is relevant to the audience. Some people call this the signal-to-noise rule.

Build the basis for trust: Trust is a two-way street. If management trusts the organization with the tools and capability to connect and collaborate on the intranet, they will in turn trust management as an enabler and connector. This can only be beneficial for the organization.

We can save the discussion of creative ways to drive adoption and the management and archiving of content for another day.