I promise not to make every post title a question, but there is something about a Jewish background that expects it, right?
But to the meat of the question, I sometimes wonder if organizations put enough thought into why their internal websites exist. “Everyone has one” is one reason, but it’s not a good explanation to me. Nor is the facile suggestion that the sites are there to “help employees communicate and collaborate.” This is true, and the major reason why intranets exist to begin with, but there are deeper issues I think a company needs to examine when trying to understand the purpose that underlies their intranet.
ROI is a wonderful buzzword (buzzphrase?), and it has very powerful application to an internal website. If you save half a million dollars a year on travel costs, or a million on benefits enrollment, these are real dollar benefits that intranets can offer. It’s one of the reasons why stats and reporting are so important – it’s a way to translate the impact a site has to offer into a reality that fits management’s needs. Business is in business to make money, and simplifying the impact of a tool down to ROI helps it stand alongside sales and other areas on a level playing field.
The other big benefit of the web is to reduce the effort of communication by speeding it up and providing the one-to-many relationship. Post it on the site once, and the guy in Oshkosh can see it at the same time as the guy in San Diego. Save money on your HR call center because all the answers are up on the site. As we get into the virtual workspace arena, allow dispersed and diverse people to work together without leaving their offices. In truth, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeing an internal site purely as an efficiency or cost-saving tool.
But the bean-counting loses something for me, and it’s why I think an intranet needs more thought behind it than pure numbers. I’m not by nature a numbers guy to begin with, and perhaps I over-romanticize the power of the web, but I think as drivers of these tools, it’s incumbent on us to think a little deeper about the purpose behind our sites. Many companies, including my own, are incredibly large. It’s very easy to get lost in the shuffle, and the sense of being a cog in a vast, uncaring machine is an easy thing to develop. This is where I feel an intranet can make a difference beyond the numbers.
In my own experience, how you feel as an employee has a tremendous impact on how you perform. A convenient commute, a great boss, good co-workers, chance for growth – all of these factors can and do make employees take less money or a lesser title. On the flip side, all of those being lousy can make even a great salary seem worth a lot less. We all spend the bulk of our waking hours at our jobs – why would anyone want to suffer that much time of each week, no matter how good the pay is?
And here’s where I tie this back to thinking through the purpose of one’s site. I think an intranet is an immensely powerful tool for building camaraderie, morale, and a healthy, happy working environment. No, it won’t help an employee whose boss is a jerk. It certainly won’t help an employee who’s grossly underpaid. But if we start to see these sites as a benefit alongside vacation days and 401Ks (though clearly not of that impact), if we start to see intranets as THE primary vehicle for developing a corporate culture, a true organizational identity, a sense of shared mission, I think we’re getting closer to a real philosophy of an intranet.
Look, I’ve talked to enough c-level execs to know most wouldn’t buy this if you gift wrapped it with $100 bills. But if there has to be a purpose behind an intranet – and I think there does – why force it to live only under the heading of money-saving? There’s more psychology in employee relations than I think execs sometimes understand, and you can actually do a lot more to make people happy with simple things than I think organizations do sometimes. At the end of the day, you can use an intranet as effectively to keep employees feeling positive about the company and their work as you do to keep them efficient and financially sound.
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