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Increasing Intranet Usage |
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First, the good news: the key to increasing use of an intranet is to follow a fairly simple concept. The bad news: following this concept can mean some hard work. A common question is, "How do I increase usage of my intranet or intranet site?" Often, the person asking the question is looking for some marketing tactic or clever bit of site promotion that will bring users to the site on a continuing basis. To really answer the question requires a bit of further analysis of the question and of the site. First of all, it is helpful to examine the question in light of the core purpose of the specific intranet site. Why is it desirable that employees access it more often? Hopefully, the answer is that the site has valuable information that will make employees more effective, or applications that will speed task completion. If the main reason for trying to increase the page hits on the site is just to make the boss happy, put up some pages of links to humor web sites and send out an e-mail announcing the location of the pages. Page hits per day will soar, but you will probably not have helped your company at all. So really the question is how to get employees to use the intranet to be as effective and efficient as possible. For example, if it is possible to request vacation using a web application on the intranet, you want every employee to simply go to the application as their first action whenever they decide to take some time off. If they look around for paper forms, call Human Resources to complain that they couldn't find the paper form, then finally complete the request online they have not been very effective or efficient. The key is to have employees go to the intranet first for anything that can be found there. This avoids time wasted on attempts to accomplish tasks through other channels, such as calling random fellow employees. Now that we understand why increasing usage is a good thing, let's figure out how to increase usage. An obvious answer presents itself if we turn the question around: "As an employee, why the heck would I try the intranet as a method for getting something done?" The answer is that I, as an employee, will try the intranet if I think the intranet holds the information or task method I seek. In other words, I will go to the intranet as my first step to request vacation if I believe I really can request a vacation there. Based on that principle, the key to increasing meaningful intranet usage is simply to make it likely that employees will be able to find the things that they need. In other words, an employee trying to get work related information or accomplish a business task should find themselves saying, "Hey, I'll bet that's on our intranet!" simply because they often do find useful things there. But how can this be accomplished? Well, let's consider a couple of scenarios. If your intranet only has messages from the CEO and a random assortment of semi-useful pages published by various departments, then no one will assume that it is a very good place to try to get anything done. If, on the other hand, your intranet has a significant number of useful pages and methods for accomplishing business tasks, then employees will start to figure out that it actually might make sense to begin many tasks by going there first. I like to refer to this point of perceived usefulness as "Critical Mass." Until an intranet reaches Critical Mass, people tend to go there only after exploring other options. Once a Critical Mass of usefulness is attained, folks begin to simply go there assuming that they will be successful. While they are there, they will notice other functionality that they didn't know existed. They may find that a report figure they always called someone to get is only a couple of mouse clicks away. Usage increases. Employees start to suggest new applications or types of content to make the intranet even more useful and complete. The chain reaction has begun. I wish there were an easier answer to the question of increasing intranet usage, but there just isn't. While snappy slogans, trivia contests, and colorful posters are just great for getting employees to go to the intranet once, the key to increasing meaningful usage is to do the work necessary to make the intranet a tool that serves the needs of employees. |
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