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“OK … it might be lovely … but it’s really not us!”

4 July 2011

What’s the most deeply-felt complaint from internal stakeholders about their intranet? To get to the real answer to this question, you have to be quite persistent. Users will tell you that it’s too slow. It’s old-fashioned. It’s difficult to find things. And it usually is all of these things.

Now … it would be easy to take these answers at face value and address them in an ‘intranet re-vamp’ project that will deliver a better intranet; an intranet more fit for purpose.

But if we dig deeper, there’s often something else lurking below the surface. Something that many users will struggle to put into words. Something that may seem almost too trivial to mention, but that stops them identifying with their intranet.
That thing is … however good or bad you may think their intranet is, it’s just not them!

We heard these voices recently when we were re-designing an intranet for a global confectionary brand. What the users were saying to us is that none of their deeply held brand values of commitment, innovation and fun were coming through in the intranet experience.
The moral of the story? It’s time to stop seeing intranets merely as spaces where staff go to find and share information. It’s time to see them as venues where people choose to meet and work together (and sometimes find and share information).

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