The intranet does not have to be fun to make employees happy

This is another article in which I try to create adoption and acceptance for the intranet in the organisation. I will take another angle and look at what motivates employees and what role the intranet can play to create happy employees. I believe we all agree that organisations need happy employees to be successful. It is another way of identifying good content for the intranet.

How employees are motivated

After research on the Internet I learned that there are many theories on how to motivate employees. I definitely do not want to interfere with these discussions, but for this article I selected these four general more or less accepted motivators:

• Money - simply put: employees expect a fair financial compensation for their effort
• Creativity - We are all unique human beings and we all want to put our personality and ideas into our work 
• Recognition - A shoulder tap is in many situations more worth than a financial raise / bonus
• Future - is the job secure, what are the options to grow in the organisation 

Let's apply these to the intranet. 

Money

The reward that is paid and everything else that is related to money: compensation, bonuses, expenses, employee benefits and promotions

The salary of employees is not related to the time they spend on the intranet.

Make sure that all information related to the salary can be found on the intranet:

• When it will be paid (online access to salary slips)
• How the variable pay is calculated
• An overview of timesheets (the hours worked)
• Salary matrixes (these should be up to date, otherwise they are worthless and seriously harm the trust in the intranet)
• Information about profit sharing
  

But there are more things related to rewarding except the salary:

• Employee benefits (e.g. group insurance, cheap loans, day-care and other perks)
• Declarations. Make it easy to submit expense declarations and also make it clear when they get paid.
• Bonus calculation forms
• Provide access to up to date procedures and policies, ideally have the procedures automated in online forms and provide automated feedback of the latest status.

Online service provision is the key here!

These tasks and procedures are perfect candidates to be automated on the intranet (e.g. the expense declaration form)

Showing the latest status of a transaction can be of great value, e.g: "waiting for approval" for a declaration - I once was waiting for a declaration to be paid for over two months, then to find out it was waiting for approval of a manager who was on maternity leave.

Make the procedures clear and transparent: "the amount will be transferred to your account within two weeks after submission".

Each organisation has different ways to reward employees. See what is done in your organisation and provide this information on the intranet! Make sure that all possible questions are answered and make the procedures as transparent as possible. Having outdated information is almost a mortal sin.

Creativity

Employees are expected to express their creativity in their work, not on the intranet, unless the intranet is their job.

The most important thing for employees is that the information for doing their job is available on the intranet. Quick and easy access to this information is a key factor for the success of the intranet. This improves the efficiency of the organisation and also makes the employees happy.

But this is not creativity. Creativity involves original thinking and producing; and the intranet is the ideal platform to share ideas and knowledge.

This can be facilitated best by the so called "collaboration or social" tools. Empower the employees by providing a space for open communications. Create forums, wikis, blogs and project areas on the intranet where employees can share their ideas, visions and creativity.

• Create a space where employees can ask questions to e.g. solve a difficult case (and get creative answers from colleagues)
• Blogs from colleagues will inspire for more creativity, the posts and their feedback are often good food for thought.
• Open communications will encourage interaction between employees and take away traditional information/knowledge hubs.
• Another article with great ideas: "The need for intranet collaborative and discussion spaces" by @Wedge

Recognition

Employee recognition is often limited in organisations. The lack of recognition is what employees most complain about.

Some hints for building some recognition in your intranet:

• When developing the employee profile, pay attention to giving employees an option to complete their own details
• Put some effort into linking people to content, content to people and people to people on the intranet
• Creativity on the intranet (see above) can also result in recognition for the employees. It is a double cutting knife: When employees are creative in a social intranet, communities will emerge with the recognition that comes with that
• Employee recognition is a difficult topic because it needs to fit in the corporate culture (or not!). Also an interesting idea: "Enhance the intranet with the gaming theory" - an article by @Alex_Manchester

Future

The intranet cannot guarantee job safety. Jobs will continue to be uncertain in the 21th century.

But on the bright side: There are many opportunities to take control of your personal development.

The intranet can help employees to make better choices with respect to their future career with:

• Career paths
• Online Training programs and access to training material
• Knowledge management
• Up to date Skills matrices
• Vacancies
• Job descriptions
• Success and non success stories about the company in the real world. Yes, don't be surprised that many employees don't know how or what the company is actually doing
• True and open information on the corporate strategy (as far as possible)

A good intranet will make the organisation better. An organisation can only be really successful when it is well organised internally.

Be open and transparent and demonstrate that to the employees.

Final thoughts

I bet that most intranets do not have all this information or tools. Does your organisation care about their employees. Can you look them right in the eyes? Then make this available on the intranet, it will give a higher value of the intranet and in return you will get happier employees.

Don't forget to make these things easy accessable on the intranet, because these are the topics the employees are most interested in. Task based, user centric.

I know it is a challenge to keep all the information up to date. You should really pay attention to the information architecture. It would be a good idea to link the information in the intranet directly to the real information. How often people have to write content twice - one time for their own records and the other time for the intranet, the latter they will often 'forget'. This is a classic receipt for intranet failure!

This all sounds so obvious; now get it on the intranet!

More reading

A collection of articles about collaboration on the intranet on IntranetLounge

The article as PDF (134.63 kb)

You can follow me on twitter at @BasZurburg (http://twitter.com/BasZurburg). I mostly tweet about intranets and changing corporate environments due to new thinking.