My work focus over the past 16months has been implementing booking systems, now I’m returning to the organisation’s intranet to “sex” it up.  When we got the new intranet up and running, the structure and navigation in place, we worked hard to communicate the full potential of this channel. Sadly, no matter how hard we tried, most of our authors just wanted to publish pages of paperwork. We went to great efforts to encourage the organisation to think about how different audiences find and use information, how we could help staff to do their jobs using the intranet as the platform, I even went out to care homes to show staff the functionality of the intranet and to find out how staff were accessing information, what they used the intranet for, what they needed. I ended up having to show them basic keyboard skills. The feedback was frightening, these staff definitely needed information from the intranet, yet none of the managers or web staff felt empassioned to do anything to help their staff. They were too busy, those staff only need to access information occasionally, what’s the point? Naively, I was saddened at the lack of interest by the staff who built the pages to consider their users needs, levels of ICT understanding, etc, particularly for staff that were based in satellite offices.

So now, after 16 months on other projects, I’m back to see if I can inspire the organisation to look at it’s intranet again and explore how it can become a dynamic and inclusive communication channel for all staff. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has worked or is working on their organisation’s intranet and what have been the quick wins, what has engaged the staff, what has not worked, etc…