Since January we’ve been excitedly working on a new intranet for the Department of Communities and Local Government: a wholesale replacement for the previous collection of out-of-date and restrictive systems that DCLG had been using.

• Have an improved content structure
• Be redesigned, with a much simpler layout
• Be easier for admins to maintain
• Promote interaction between DCLG staff members

Importantly, DCLG wanted us to work with staff to test decisions and assumptions about how all those things should be done.

Source: dxw.com Posted by admin 38 days, 12 hours, 17 minutes ago

Cultural differences have been a major challenge for many workspaces, especially those that are welcoming a variety of different nationalities.

An American employee would probably remain skeptical at first, and wait to see how much time his French coworker dedicates to a lunch break. An Italian worker may be put off by the long silence of their Japanese teammate.

We all work differently and our professional expectations, as well as our cultural values, highly influence the way our workspace is designed. In a new issue of the research paper 360°, titled “Culture Code”, Steelcase has addressed these challenges by mapping the different work cultures found in 11 different countries.

Source: www.deskmag.com Posted by admin 56 days, 11 hours, 2 minutes ago

The Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF), the world’s leading authority on intranets, has released new research into best practices for managing intranet content.

“Managing Intranet Content: A good practice guide”, issued as a resource for IBF members, reveals that more than half of all major organizations have no strategy in place for managing increasing volumes of intranet content.

The 47-page report provides practical insights and guidance for intranet managers facing a new wave of challenges, including:

• alignment of intranet content with business strategy;
• management of decentralized publishers;
• how to maintain quality of content;
• appropriate governance for user-generated content.

Source: www.sbwire.com Posted by admin 55 days, 10 hours, 47 minutes ago

Expectations run high for the role of intranets in employees daily work routine, but if they aren't meeting these six requirements, they're falling short.

A goal that organizations often define for their intranets is that it should support the employees in their daily work, often with the ambition that it shall be perceived by the employees as their natural digital work environment. The intranet is envisioned as the centerpiece in the digital workplace, the glue that binds the different parts of an enterprise together.

Source: www.cmswire.com Posted by admin 60 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes ago

Sometimes, you get what you pay for. In the case of the intranet, you normally get crap.

What do you expect though if you only give the intranet team 1/50th or 1/200th the budget given the Internet team? You get what you pay for.

Of course, for every 10 or 20 crappy intranets, there are one or two good ones – and 99% of the time, they are well funded, and enjoy serious senior management support. These are exceptions to the rule, which is why the current state of the intranet is akin to a refugee projec...

Source: www.intranetblog.com Posted by admin 61 days, 22 hours, 6 minutes ago

by Tom Loosemore on 18/03/2013 I’ve just got off the phone after talking to Andrew Simpson, the civil servant leading the redevelopment of the DCMS intranet. I’ve never met Andrew face to face, but I look forward to doing so, because he and his tiny team deserve a big thank you. They have just created the exemplar for a government intranet in 2013.

“How Do I?” – the DCMS intranet putting user needs first To learn much more, read thesetwo blog posts from Luke Oatham, a developer from Helpful Tec...

Source: digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk Posted by admin 62 days, 22 hours, 30 minutes ago

For more than a decade now, I've struggled to define what fuels the most sustainably productive work environment — not just on behalf of the large corporate clients we serve, but also for my own employees at The Energy Project. Perhaps nothing I've uncovered is as important as trust.

Much as employers understandably hunger for one-size-fits-all policies and practices, what motivates human beings remains stubbornly complex, opaque, and difficult to unravel. Perhaps that's why I felt so viscerally the shortsightedness and futility of Marissa Mayer's decision to order Yahoo employees who had been working from home to move back to the office, and Hubert Joly's to do the same at Best Buy.

Source: blogs.hbr.org Posted by admin 66 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes ago

Every day it saps productivity, innovation and engagement — three key ingredients that drive higher employee performance, and in turn, revenue gains.

Step back and think about it for a minute. In order to be a high-performing employee, you need to be focused on the right tasks, have access to the right information and skills to get things done, and work as efficiently as possible to get the job done. This is especially important for knowledge workers — your most experienced and expensive employees.

Source: www.cmswire.com Posted by admin 67 days, 22 hours, 58 minutes ago

Most modern companies these days are aware of what an intranet is and does, but to avoid any confusion from the outset, an intranet can be described as: “A browser based tool that allows employees to communicate, search and share company information.”

When beginning to plan, one of the most important aspects to this is justifying the cost to the finance department. To do this, it’s necessary to come up with a good business plan that will go some way to proving that there is ROI.

Source: www.elcomcms.com Posted by admin 67 days, 23 hours, 2 minutes ago

With none of the Intranetizen team able to make the IntraTeam event this year, Martin Risgaard Rasmussen kindly offered to step in and write a review of the event. Thanks, Martin!

As a true IntraTeam Event veteran attending the conference for the fourth time I was looking forward to the annual intranet ‘family reunion’ in Copenhagen that Kurt and his ‘Intra Team’ usually puts together, so before leaving my home in Aarhus on my three hour train ride to get there I naturally had high expectations to this year’s event and I was – once again – not disappointed.

Source: intranetizen.com Posted by admin 69 days, 5 hours, 43 minutes ago