This article appeared in HR Gateway April 24 2003
Time and money is being wasted by employers as workers take
longer to do tasks because of badly designed or ill thought out
Intranets claimed a leading consultancy.
Badly designed and unmanaged company Intranets are costing
employers up to £1,000 a year per employee, claims Nick Throp of
Mercer HR, and end up as 'repositories for information of limited
value':
'Many sites are created by self-serving departments with little
regard for the needs of other employees. Many companies fail to
recognise how their Intranet fits into an overall communication
and knowledge management strategy,' he said.
Intranets often mirror how organisations see and structure
themselves, he says, and it's apparent where information flows
from the top down or is created by people working in silos:
'The key is to understand employees' perceptions and
experiences of the Intranet. An audit by a usability expert, or a
comprehensive test on a group of users will identify what needs to
be improved,' said Throp.
Paul Blunden, CEO of The Usability Company who have their own
usability testing software called WebIQ, told HR Gateway today
that while he agreed with Throp's £1,000 estimate, the problem of
Intranet usability was one of measurement:
'Very little work has been done of measuring the usability of
Intranets but this is changing slowly. Measuring it would allow HR
to understand the behaviour of people when they use the Intranet
and what can be done to improve matters.
'All IT departments have web analysis tools such as Web Trends
that could be used to measure employee behaviour which would allow
HR to come up with concrete figures rather than the intangible
figures that are thrown around,' he said.
Most firms never discuss usability issues with employees, they
simply get the standard two hours' training and then when they
come to use the system for HR processes a few months later, for
example, they have to learn over again, he says:
'The problem is that many systems are simply not intuitive and
are usually based on an internal database with an entry page that
is full of confusing links. HR and IT need to consider the
usability of such as system,' said Blunden.
If you want to assess employees' experience of using your
Intranet, then here are some pointers from Mercer HR's Nick Throp:
- Intranet business strategy - do you have one? How are users'
needs understood and incorporated into this document?
- User needs - do you understand how the Intranet might help
employees and the management population to be more effective
in their job?
- Site architecture - what is the rationale behind it? Has it
been tested? Is it intuitive?
- Site content - how much content is up there? Would anyone
notice if you got rid of any of it? What process exists to get
content up on the Intranet?
- Usage statistics - are you getting good data? Do you
interrogate it? How do you feed this back into the content
creation process?
- Site visual appeal - is the site engaging? Do people feel
good about using it?
- Site branding - is it consistent? Is the User Experience
consistent with brand values? (Remember that branding is not
just a logo but is the whole experience of interacting with
the organisation).
- Access - can your site be accessed from everywhere in the
company? What about when employees are at home?
- Site usability - can employees find the information they
want easily and in good time?
- Communication strategy - how does the Intranet integrate
with other communication channels? How do they reinforce each
other?
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