The 'default' design of the news on the intranet home page may be no more than an area for posting ad-hoc news items. Cluttered and poorly laid out, many news sections are difficult for staff to scan and use.
As a starting point, the effectiveness of the news section can be improved by taking a few simple steps:
- Ensuring there is a clean, consistent layout of news item that clearly distinguishes between individual entries.
- Displaying a date for each news item.
- Indicating the type of news items, such as whether they are policy updates, corporate news, social events, etc.
- Clearly marking whether news items relate to the whole organisation, or to specific geographic locations (or business units).
- Providing a full archive of past news items, grouped according to date and category.
While these changes may appear to be very basic (and they are), they can do much to improve the impact and usability of the intranet news section.
Pushing via email
The intranet is not very effective as a 'push' medium, as it relies on staff choosing to visit the site in search of new or updated information.
One approach is to make the intranet the default home page for the web browser installed on all desktop machines. Going beyond this, some organisations also automatically launch the web browser when staff logon in the morning.
Both of these approaches can work, and anecdotally there is good evidence that staff react well to these kinds of changes.
These changes are not, however, enough. Experience has shown that some users quickly learn to ignore the intranet, and either close the browser or click straight through to other destinations.
While 'email overload' is a problem confronting every organisation, email can play a valuable role in supporting internal communications and enhancing the effectiveness of intranet-based news services.
Instead of waiting for users to choose to visit the intranet, send out a daily or weekly news email to all staff.
This should contain a list of the latest news items, a brief summary for each, and a link back to the intranet. It should also be used to consolidate a number of earlier 'all staff' emails that were sent out on an ad-hoc basis.
Sending out this regular news email provides a number of benefits:
- Ensures visibility of news, even if the intranet isn't being used.
- Reinforces the role of the intranet as a central 'repository' for information.
- Allows staff to catch up on missed items when sick or on holidays.
It is hardly plausible that in any medium-to-large organisation there are only a few 'news items' each day. For intranet news to be useful, this must be increased by an order of magnitude to ensure that a comprehensive (and useful) range of internal news is released.
In many cases, only a narrow subset of corporate news items, HR updates, technology changes or intranet changes are released. What is often missing are news items that relate directly to the operational aspects of the organisation, such as product releases, front-line policy changes or updated legislation.
In many cases, intranet news relates more to administrative details than to changes that are actually important to the majority of staff. Intranet news often also has a very 'head office' feel, downplaying or entirely missing regional news.
To resolve this, the intranet or corporate communications team needs to look more widely than just centrally-published news, press releases and CEO updates. This involves:
- Consolidating business unit news into the centralised intranet news service.
- Actively seeking out news that directly relates to operational aspects of the organisation.
- Including news that relates to regional areas or offices.
- Increasing the number of staff who can publish news, specifically focusing on those located in key business units and regional areas.
Expanding news coverage in this way will require improvements to the way that news is managed and published. As the scale of news grows, the simple list of 4-6 items on the home page will no longer suffice.
