We had a great webinar last week, Using the Web to Empower Employees, and had lots of great questions. So many questions, in fact, that we weren’t able to address all of them during the session. So I’d like to cover some of those here. Because many of them covered similar topics, I’ve combined a few that had the same answer.
Q: How do we encourage adoption and usage of our intranet?
A: Obviously this is a complex goal to accomplish. “Build it and they will come” is a sure recipe for failure. I see three major pillars to growing usage and adoption of your intranet.
The first pillar is credibility. Building strong credibility requires a holistic approach to quality in everything that is delivered. Content needs to be accurate and well written. Executives need to communicate with candor, substance and transparency. Functionality needs to work and be easy to use, and design needs to be engaging. Yes, design – there is a growing set of research demonstrating the very significant impact of design on the perceived credibility of both public websites and intranets, but intranet design is often neglected.
The next pillar is anchor content and capabilities. Think of your local mall. Many of the stores would never be able to survive as stand-along shops, so they depend on anchor stores to draw the crowds What are the anchors of your intranet? Cafeteria menus, classified ads, HR self-service for benefits selection and executive blogs =may not be significant value drivers in their own right, but they serve as excellent anchors to get users in the habit of using the intranet on a regular basis.
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