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I'm beginning to research and develop an intranet for an agency of about 200 employees. One of the main goals of the intranet is to have it be "employee owned"--for example, giving employees the ability to post and edit personal profiles, agency blogs and general content. In addition to this, I think it would be extremely beneficial to encourage employee participation and interest during the development process. In order to do this, I'm planning on putting together a company wide survey that I hope will provide some feedback/guidance/new ideas for what our intranet should be or could offer. Can anyone offer some questionaire/survey/polling examples, general questions I should ask employees, or any other interesting ideas that might help to include employees in the development process and gather some helpful feedback? Thanks!
By all means do a survey, but I'd suggest starting smaller, unless you're giving something away for people's participation. We got good responses to surveys when there was a prize offered as incentive (company hockey tickets in one case, Amex gift cards in another), much less response without that incentive.
I'd definitely assemble a pilot group of people from around the company. Make sure to include all types of people, especially secretaries/admin assts. Half the time the execs don't do their own work, they depend on their assistants to look stuff up for them. Mix in both senior and jr level people and I think you'll get a broad range of responses to help the planning.
Large groups get unwieldy, and you can get such contradictory responses that you can't do anything useful with it. A smaller group allows for a better dynamic, and you can turn them into evangelists for the project and they can sell it to the larger group.
Surveys will help and get you moving in the right direction as for the scope of the Intranet project.., however, when you ask for opinions on what the Intranet should include it's a bad idea to keep the poll open ended or allow them to free-form their answers.
Ask questions like...
"Within a company portal, useful features might include...
* Company News
* External News Feeds
* Items For Sale
* Comments & Concerns
* Suggestion Box
Or Collab Specific...
* Workflow
* Messaging
* Meetings - nvites
* Reports - financial data
* Client data - CRM
* File Sharing Portlets
Check all that apply"
Also.., up front you should define if the Intranet will be to Inform employees on what's going on in the company.., or a place for them to work, which would then include collaborative applications such as integration with messaging, calendars personal & shared.., document exchange, company knowledge.., the list goes on and will differ for the various groups & departments. In other words, the features used by the CEO will differ from those used by a receptionist.
What i like about polling is it not only gives you an idea of what people want.., but even better.., after you launch and find people don't participate as you expected them to (this is normal), you now have documentation to back you up when the post launch comments ensue.. "it isn't friendly".., "this info isn't useful".., "I don't like the color".
Lastly.., a project such as this a huge undertaking. If I were you I'd focus on the content side and leave the technical to a service provider like Plumtree, MS Sharepoint..., or one of the Saas companies like InfoStreet.com Using a platform provider means you only have to focus on content management. Less gray hairs.
Surveys will help and get you moving in the right direction as for the scope of the Intranet project.., however, when you ask for opinions on what the Intranet should include it's a bad idea to keep the poll open ended or allow them to free-form their answers.
Hi guys, great topic.
I went through the same problem about three years ago with my company. William, right on track when you're talking about focusing on content. It is definately the hardest part to configure, and getting accurate information from the employees of what they wanted in the workplace was an even bigger challenge.
[quote=William223]Lastly.., a project such as this a huge undertaking. If I were you I'd focus on the content side and leave the technical to a service provider like Plumtree, MS Sharepoint..., or one of the Saas companies like InfoStreet.com Using a platform provider means you only have to focus on content management. Less gray hairs. [quote]
I also decided to go with an online based service provider. Just because the cost/value of having to build your own intranet software doesn't pan out for having a small business.
I'd i also like to add... I found a lot of providers that all the same tools, but we felt it was important to use a provider who had the widest range of features, so that as my company grew, we wouldn't have to switch providers. Scalability was key.
I am running an almost identical project for a public sector organisation of around 150 employees.
I would be interested in your experiences thus far - did you find the feedback here helpful? What do's and dont's can you share with me at this stage?
Did you decide against a survey? I am thinking of carrying out a similar survey, using a working group of around 10 peoaple to distribute and collate responses for me.
Simon Fathers
Quote:
Originally Posted by jsmith
I'm beginning to research and develop an intranet for an agency of about 200 employees. One of the main goals of the intranet is to have it be "employee owned"--for example, giving employees the ability to post and edit personal profiles, agency blogs and general content. In addition to this, I think it would be extremely beneficial to encourage employee participation and interest during the development process. In order to do this, I'm planning on putting together a company wide survey that I hope will provide some feedback/guidance/new ideas for what our intranet should be or could offer. Can anyone offer some questionaire/survey/polling examples, general questions I should ask employees, or any other interesting ideas that might help to include employees in the development process and gather some helpful feedback? Thanks!
Surveys and polls are good, but employee preferences and daily work reality often don't match up very well, esp. when it comes time to maintain the content and applications. I would suggest a different approach to your discovery process, which focuses more on work processes and probable return on investment of the effort:
- Determine the types of employees who are most likely to use the Intranet
- For each type, such as Salesperson, Executive, Designer, etc., select one or two people who can reasonably represent their needs
- Interview this small sample in depth about their work processes and Internet usage. Ask about information resources, communication needs, social media favorites, frequently used reports, competitive intelligence, etc.
- Find the most glaring gaps for each employee type, and list ways that the need could be met through the Intranet
- Explore the cost of providing the content and features on your list
- Prioritize according to high-value / low-cost
- Provide the most valuable components first
- Take a poll or survey after 6 months to figure out what should be added next, using the list of needs mentioned above, and a small set of additional options derived from the Intranet Help Desk (which, I suppose, is you)
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