Subscribe to newsletterCommunicating with employees who are not connected to the intranet
Glen contributed some real data to the discussion about “Spam from corporate communication” and the follow-up post: “Effective internal communication benchmarks”
“Our read rate or click rate is around 6%-10% depending on the subject.
Articles about human interest get the most hits. Articles about
security and technology are much lower. We employee about 130,000
employees. We publish about 6 articles a day and publish them to the
homepage of our intranet.”
It is great to see some real figures. Thank you Glen.
6 articles a day is a lot. I wonder how many companies manage to produce several articles in a week?
I did a case study on La Poste (French postal services) for my web site over 6 years ago, and learned about their dedicated team of internal journalists whose only job was producing articles on subjects related to the activities of La Poste.
They also produced short summaries that could be printed on large sheets of paper and posted in the distribution offices around France, letting the employees “on the road” see the news in the morning when they came in to pick up their mail bags. There were new news posters every day. The HQ-based team made it a rule to provide regular content, at daily intervals.
Technology has advanced since then, and companies are doing things ranging from employee radio (a large bank in France is experimenting with this), videos in places where people collect, external web sites (Arcelormittal’s webTV is an example), screen-savers for office-based people and same content short messages on TVs around the factories, and so on.
Of course, many organisations now let employees access the intranet from outside the enterprise, from home for example, so the number of “non-connected” employees is becoming more difficult to assess.
However, how many people will come home after work, and turn on their computers to see the news from their company? Not many I bet. Unless of course they need it for something else, such as work instructions for the next day (airline personnel, bus-drivers, etc.).
Making the intranet the primary tool for distribution of news only makes sense if practically everyone can access the intranet. Otherwise, there must be parallel methods. Sounds obvious, but not all enterprises practice this approach. Print publications are usually glossier and less frquent. Then tend to serve to communicate more in-depth information / stories.
How many organisation have daily communication of company news to employees who do not have easy access to the intranet? And what are the methods?
3 Responses to “Communicating with employees who are not connected to the intranet”
Comments are now closed
March 26th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Communicating with employees who are not connected to the intranet
Jane McConnell has written a post on communicating with employees who are not connected to the intranet. To quote: Technology has advanced since then, and companies are doing things ranging from employee radio (a large bank in France is experimenting…
March 28th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
One option you didn’t mention are kiosk terminals – probably because they score so badly in most cases.
The reasons for this seems to lie more in their placement than general infeasibility, though. From my observations those terminals are often located in the worst places imageable. Right beside the time-punch clock, near very noisy machines, in the aseptic hallway leading to the coffee kitchen etc.
Even if not that drastic in all cases, I seldom encountered an kiosk so far, that immedeatly attracted me to sit down and enjoy (!) a couple of minutes of using the intranet. In fact, one usualy feels quite out of place just sitting down there…
So maybe we should start looking at how the better Internet Cafes create spaces where people like to use the Web and learn from that for our intranets and for the employees that don’t have regular access to PC’s.
March 30th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Hi Stephan – I totally agree. I was in a company in the northern part of France a few months ago and having a coffee after lunch with the communication manager. There was a kiosk in a corner (therefore fairly private), near the coffee bar, with a bright attractive logo (the intranet logo. During the 30 minutes we stood there, chatting and having a long coffee break, the kiosk was constantly used. This particular intranet offers a lot of local user services (the company is part of a global group) and the intranet managers stay in close touch with what people want.
What made it so useful? I would guess first the content/services offered, then the privacy, and lastly the very pleasant “look and feel” of the corner itself.