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One of the first-and, seemingly, easiest-things to do on an active intranet is to put existing employee publications on it. Beware; it's not as easy as you might think. In this chapter, we will apply much of what we have already covered about intranets and apply these principles to the concept of an intranet-based employee publication.
There are a variety of ways to approach employee publications on an intranet, and we will cover three of them:
Notice that none of these options addresses the straight replacement of a print publication by transferring it to the screen. That's not an oversight. Simply stated, it's a bad idea to take print publications and shovel them onto a monitor. It is important to understand three concepts about publishing on an intranet:
Magazines, newsletters, newspapers, bulletins-whatever you call them-they all share print in common. And all print publications share certain elements.
Most print publications are defined, in addition to other elements, by their frequency. These frequencies are determined by a variety of factors, including:
In a corporate environment, monthly and bi-monthly publications are the most common, although many organizations (usually larger ones) also produce weeklies. Some organizations produce more than one publication. The less frequent, more expensive publications are feature-oriented, dealing with less timely reporting. Stories that are common to these magazine-type publications focus on company values, strategies, products, and success stories. The less expensive, more frequent publications handle the news.
In any case-whether the publication is annual or weekly-the editors
adhere to a production schedule based on the requirement that
the publication meet its distribution deadline. The contents of
the publication are mapped out and the editors assign articles
and deadlines to the writers. The writers do their research, write
the articles, and turn them in to the editors. In the meantime,
photographers are taking pictures to accompany the stories. Once
the articles have been submitted, the editors may turn to graphic
illustrators to produce artwork to enhance an article, or to develop
charts and graphs that illustrate a point. Graphic designers assemble
the contents onto pages that are sent to a printer. The printer
produces a final product-all the articles, photos and illustrations
bound and stitched into a single unit-which is returned to the
organization for mass distribution to the audience.
NOTE |
Wouldn't it be wonderful if a single article, upon completion, could be produced and distributed to the employees who could use the information? |
The most notable characteristic of this process is that the writers, photographers, designers, and editors work to meet a deadline so that all the material can be consolidated into the single publication. Wouldn't it be wonderful if a single article, upon completion, could be produced and distributed to the employees who could use the information? But budgets simply do not allow the Employee Communications managers to go to the expense of full-blown production for each article. The economics of the print process demand that all the articles be combined into a single publication. Based on the budget, and how the communications professionals have sliced and diced the budget, that single publication is deemed to be weekly, or monthly, or whatever, and all deadlines are established to accommodate the production schedule designed to keep the publication coming out when it should.
Employee publications epitomize the notion of top-down, one-way communication discussed in the early chapters of this book. Communicators are trained to be "gatekeepers," the individuals who determine what information employees will see and what information they will not see. There is rarely anything nefarious about this practice. Again, it is based upon economics-how much information can the Employee Communications department afford to print-and a lot of hard work will be put into assessing what information employees really need. They accumulate this information through employee communication audits, reader response surveys, and a variety of other feedback mechanisms.
The gatekeeper process is one of filtering information. The editors of employee publications strive to ensure that their efforts are strategic, so they align the articles they produce with the organization's larger strategies and objectives. The writers, then, gather all the information they can on the subject they have been assigned to write about. They review company literature, read reports, scour competitive information, and conduct interviews. From this vast array of assembled information, they cull the information that will best serve the interests of the story. Only that information is provided to the audience; all the other information-including that which might be useful to some members of the audience-is never seen in print. The article is then distributed as part of a larger publication.
If there is going to be feedback from employees in the audience, it will be limited in its scope. The most common kind of feedback is a letter to the editor. It could be months before such a letter is printed, if the publication editors decide there is room for the letter, and if they determine the letter is appropriate. Thus, if an article generates any discussion at all, it tends to be in isolated pockets at lunch tables or water coolers.
Sometime back, I mentioned reader response cards and employee communication audits. These are the limited means by which producers of publications are able to determine whether the publications are actually achieving the objectives they were designed to achieve. Generally, publications-like any communication effort in an organization-are designed to influence behavior of employees.
The influence of behavior is achieved by providing employees with information they need in order to modify their behavior in a manner consistent with the organization's principal goals and objectives. The specific nature of this information can fall into a variety of categories, depending on the issue. For example:
Each communication, in fact, should be geared toward influencing opinion or behavior. If it is not, why is the company using its resources to communicate it? Unfortunately, the only way communicators can determine whether their efforts have been successful is to ask. The processes they use to ask-surveys, audits, focus groups, and other feedback mechanisms-are time-consuming and often expensive. It can take considerable time before quantifiable feedback is available that allows the communications team to know if their efforts are working and, if they are not, how they need to be revamped.
These limitations on the frequency of distribution, one-way communication,
and feedback are not enough to suggest that a company can do away
with print altogether.
NOTE |
Paper does offer certain advantages over on-screen publications. |
Paper does offer certain advantages over on-screen publications. Paper is portable, accommodates long sections of plain text, and is easily annotated. Certain publications, such as finely detailed graphics, look great on paper. With more and more minutia and ephermeral material being moved online, when something is selected to be printed on paper it automatically conveys a certain amount of importance to the document.
There will always be some information that needs to be carried outside the organization, that needs to be portable. This is particularly true of many human resources issues that employees need to share with their spouses or significant others. Some employee publications also accommodate multiple audiences, such as vendors, shareholders, or customers. Consider the nature of material that may well need to be seen beyond the boundaries of the intranet. (Of course, you can print anything that appears on the intranet, but you need to consider the formatting and other elements of its appearance before determining that a black-and-white laser-printed copy is adequate.) Employees can read the material on the bus, or slip it into a briefcase to read on the road.
Some documents are simply not suitable for onscreen reading. Long tracts of text need to be broken up in order to be readable. Depending on the content, longer articles (2,500 words or more is a good rule of thumb) should be provided in print format.
Reports and materials that require an analytical response are best on paper in order to permit easy annotation by employees. They will circle or highlight information they want to remember or share with others. They will jot notes in the margins, or draw on diagrams. While "whiteboard" and document conferencing software is coming along, it is not quite ready for prime time. Such software may never replace the efficiency of paper for annotations because of the necessity of mechanical intervention to use it. Annotating paper is cheap, fast, and requires no additional training.
Finely detailed graphics look great on paper. An intranet can incorporate graphics, but beautiful photography or rich, detailed graphics look best on paper. Pick up any copy of Communication Arts magazine to see a review of some of the most gorgeous documents being produced by today's graphic designers. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, a company's internal publication needs to embrace a certain image that can only be captured through the use of the print-publication arts.
Organizations that have moved the lion's share of its information to intranets have noticed an interesting thing happening. They are producing less paper, since the minutia and details have been moved online. As a result, when employees receive something in print, it stands out; it looks really important!
This phenomenon is particularly important to note since there still will be instances when it is important to employ the push model of communication within the organization. (Intranets, as we have seen, represent a pull, since employees need to make an effort to go to the site where the information resides.) The introduction of initiatives is one example of a push requirement. Another would be new policies or procedures that every employee must see. More detailed information certainly can be stored on the intranet, but the primary messages still need to be distributed the old-fashioned way: from the top down.
Given the type of information that still calls for print, it becomes clear that the intranet still can support the publication of a vast amount of information that was printed in employee publications before the advent of electronic communication. News, supplemental information, short items, information that can easily be linked to other resources, and information that can be improved by interactivity are all examples of communication that can-and should-be transferred from paper to an intranet.
Still, many organizations undertake the transference of these publications by simply moving the print publications to the screen. The most popular method of making the switch is to continue producing the publication the same way it has been, but rather than print it, run it through a portable document filter. Thus, the organization believes it has put its publication online. These publications are, of course, portrait (vertical), which means that employees will have to scroll up and down the columns of text in order to read them. They are designed with a fixed font that cannot be easily enlarged; using the "zoom" feature of programs like Adobe Acrobat can enlarge the text but then require the employee to engage in even more scrolling. Turning pages is cumbersome on a screen, as well. This is simply not the answer.
In fact, there are several rules communicators-and the systems professionals assisting them-should follow for producing a publication on the screen.
I am frequently amused when I hear that an organization is going
to move its weekly publication to an intranet, or that it is going
to create a monthly online magazine. Remember, the whole notion
of a production schedule is rooted firmly in the limitations of
print. No organization can afford to produce an article in print-with
all of its color, photography, graphic design, charts, graphs,
and other elements-as soon as the writing has been done; the only
economical model requires the publishers to wait until there is
enough material to fill an issue. Those economical limitations,
however, do not exist online. You can publish an article
as soon as it is ready!
NOTE |
Remember, the whole notion of a production schedule is rooted firmly in the limitations of print. |
In the publication section of your intranet, include a table of contents for the various types of articles. An excellent example is offered on the World Wide Web in Communication World Online, the online magazine from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). The front page of the publication-available on the Web at http://www.iabc.com/cw/-is shown in Figure 8.1.
Each of the main content links can lead to a chronological list of article headlines that serve as links to the text. Following each article, indicate the date it was posted. Again, Communication World Online shows how it's done with its "News You Can Use" section, shown in Figure 8.2.
The Communication World Online model is just one way to approach the constant flow of information to the online publication. In a corporate environment, you may also wish to create a link to key articles from the main employee home page as a means of drawing employees to the publication, where they will see other articles that might be of interest.
I don't need to say much here, since the entire last chapter was dedicated to the topic of writing for the screen. But I need to emphasize the importance of making sure the principles of writing for the screen carry over into online publications.
Many of the principles of writing for the screen also apply to how the publication is designed. Some guidelines to keep in mind regarding the design of the publication include:
Here comes that concept again: Hyperlinks are the primary advantage of Web technology. (It's getting to be a litany, isn't it?) There is little need to rewrite information in an article when a simple link can take employees directly to the site where the actual information resides. Employee benefits provide a great example. A news item alerts employees to the fact that the annual open enrollment is coming and advises them of the deadline. In print, this article also would summarize changes to the benefits program and provide some detail about the process for enrolling. Because that information was created for the Benefits section of the intranet, though, all that is required here is a link to the appropriate page. Figure 8.4 shows a sample article from a demo intranet provided by Alexander & Alexander Consulting Group, with links to the relevant sections of the demo intranet's benefits site. You can visit the site at http://www.radford.com and clicking on the "Web Products" icon.
If hyperlinking is the key technical capability of the Web, many-to-many is the primary model interactive technology has enabled. One of the worst things about putting a static print publication online is the fact that it is a one-way, top-down communication vehicle stored on a many-to-many communication vehicle. The hallmark of a true online publication is that it encourages audience participation.
Once again, I will use IABC's Communication World Online as an example. There are two sections of this electronic association membership magazine that exemplify audience involvement. "Ask the Experts" (Figure 8.5) makes individuals with a particular expertise of interest to the membership available for questions, which they answer within hours of the time the question is posted. An intranet environment is ripe for such an activity, with the organization's officers, initiative leaders, product managers and others taking turns answering questions. The timing of each individual's participation could be crucial, with the president, for example, taking a turn at a time of major organizational change.
Is this different than an "Ask the President" program that relies on print, bulletin boards (the analog type), and other traditional communication tools? It is, at its core, because the individual answering questions is responding quickly, and because the answer is available for everybody to see when they want to see it.
Another Communication World Online feature is "Question of the Week," which poses a question of interest to organizational communicators (Figure 8.6). The attraction behind this feature is that readers can learn what their peers think directly from them, rather than read an article where opinions are filtered through a writer's efforts. These raw opinions can work to a corporation's advantage, with ideas coming from a variety of sources-including some that might be seen as unlikely-in response to questions of interest to the organization.
Don't feel compelled to reinvent information for the intranet
when much of it already exists outside. If an article addresses
the launch of a competing product, why waste time and resources
developing copy that describes the product when information already
exists on your competitor's Web site? An article about a new investment
fund being offered in the company's 401(k) plan can link directly
to the fund prospectus on the Web. An article about a quality
improvement initiative can offer a series of links to outside
resources (which, by the way, are abundant). Instead of a wellness
tip each week, how about a link to a wellness site?
NOTE |
Don't feel compelled to reinvent information for the intranet when much of it already exists outside. |
I mentioned earlier that one of the primary information needs employees at large have is about the workings of the marketplace in which the organization functions, and the context about how the marketplace is driving change within the organization. The online employee publication can serve as a window to the marketplace with links to competitor sites, stock prices, economic information, analysts' opinions, and other data. The role of the publication is to organize the links into meaningful information so each employee can make a quick decision about the link he or she wants to follow, in order to get the information he or she needs. Providing that context can help the employee understand why the organization is making the kinds of decisions it is making while avoiding the information overload that can be inherent in too many paths to too many resources.
Remember, an intranet is not just an internal Web. An intranet is an internal Internet, which can include e-mail, gopher, FTP, newsgroups, chat rooms, and all the other applications that run on the Net. We tend to think of an intranet publication as one that must reside on the internal Web. That's true if all you have is an internal Web. With a fully functional intranet, though, you also can produce e-mail publications and a host of other types of documents. Work with your communications professionals to determine the best format and delivery method for each publication the organization needs to deliver. You may find the Web is not the optimum answer in every situation.
Even Adobe Acrobat (or other applications that produce portable documents) can serve an organization well-on or off the Web. Providing the publications are designed to be read on the screen, a PDF (portable document file) publication can provide all the richness of a print publication in terms of graphic design, artwork, photography, and other elements, and still contain hyperlinks both within the document itself, and to other sites on the Intranet.
For an example of a Web-based publication that incorporates PDF technology, visit Adobe Magazine on the World Wide Web at http://www.adobemag.com. (You'll need the Adobe Acrobat reader, but it is available for downloading free of charge from Adobe.)
Be careful using a PDF format, though, since the text in PDF documents usually cannot be searched by a Web search engine!
Because intranets are interactive, you can build feedback into your employee publication without waiting for the annual survey, or for employees to complete the reader response card and mail it in. Many employees don't bother with the reader response card because writing answers on designated lines can be time-consuming (or, at least, employees can perceive that it will be time-consuming). The opportunity for feedback from a Web-based publication can make it virtually effortless for employees to let the communicators know how well the material they have produced is meeting employee needs and influencing their behavior.
For example, at the end of each article, an employee can be given the opportunity to click one of two buttons. One says, "This article helped me understand the need for quality improvement." The other could say, "I am still unconvinced about the need for quality improvement." Or, a hyperlink could invite employees to visit a more ambitious survey in which they would be asked to answer several questions-but only by clicking on the appropriate radio button (for example, for each question, the employee would select "Strongly Agree," "Agree," "No Opinion," "Disagree," or "Strongly Disagree").
You can present a brief online questionnaire about each topic of interest to the company. And, on a yearly basis, you could present an online communication audit. The beauty of these approaches is that employees find answering such surveys simple and painless, and the data goes directly into a database where you can use it instantly.
We have discussed-and looked at-elements of a successful online publication. We have also decided that some material still belongs in print. That doesn't mean, however, that the intranet cannot support the print publication.
I participated in a panel discussion several months ago in New York at a conference of the Magazine Publishers Association. One editor in the audience questioned the panelists about what he could do on the World Wide Web with his science-oriented magazine other than duplicate the print contents. I agreed with him that the contents of his magazine were best presented in print, but that the Web could serve as a valuable resource to his readers. "What about an article about a major finding in a research report?" I asked him. The length of that article was limited (as with all print) by the economics of print publishing. "In the article, you should prominently display the URL for this story," I suggested, explaining that the URL would not be a duplicate of the story, but could contain:
This idea translates nicely to an intranet. If an article appearing in the company's print publication, for instance, addresses the acquisition of a new business, the Web site might include:
and so forth. This supplemental resource for additional information meets the needs of employees who come away from the print article with questions. The two worlds-print and online-begin to function synergistically, with each providing the value of what they do best in order to provide employees with a complete set of information designed to meet strategic organizational objectives.
This may seem like I'm reversing myself, but here goes anyway: Once your organization has produced material in print, you should archive it on the intranet.
Wait a minute. Didn't I say earlier that material that works best
in print should be left in print and not duplicated online?
Yes, in fact, that's precisely what I said. But in this
instance, I'm not talking about presenting the information in
publication format electronically. Instead, I'm talking about
creating a miniature version of Lexis-Nexis within your own organization.
NOTE |
The material contained in print-based employee publications is often quite valuable. |
The material contained in print-based employee publications is often quite valuable. Most employees, however, if pressed to find an article that appeared two years ago, would have a real challenge on their hands. While print is often characterized as being imbued with a certain permanence, it is one of the most transitory forms of communication we have. Do you still have last Thursday's newspaper? Odds are you don't.
For that reason, you should archive those articles on the intranet so they remain accessible to employees long after they have lost the original print article. The archive can become a valuable resource for:
This archiving may not be as simple a task as it appears at first glance.There are some technical issues to consider. Initially, this may seem like the perfect time to use something like Adobe Acrobat, but that would require more expense in product and training users. Unfortunately, too, most Web-based search engines currently cannot easily search Acrobat files; by the end of 1997, this situation will likely have changed as several vendors are working on search engines that will, in fact, index the text in PDF files. Obviously, if documents are stored in HTML they can be easily searched and retain formatting that helps convey meaning.
Archived material also requires planning for accessibility, that
is, how to best organize material to help users find the precise
document they need or all the material relevant to a subject.
Traditionally there are several tools that help retrieval: indices,
abstracts, and authoritative keywords. All of these require intellectual
effort and analysis by someone. Indexing helps provide references
to terms that appear in the documents, but is perhaps less necessary
when full-text of material is machine searchable. Abstracts are
helpful to summarize lengthy documents so that searchers can review
them to determine the relevancy of the material to their search
without having to take the time to read the entire document. Authoritative
keywords are required for very precise search results. For example,
if someone was searching for company material related to "information
systems," that exact phrase might not appear in any document,
but variations of it would: computers, PCs, network, and intranets.
Someone would need to develop an authority table of the proper
words to search for and assign them to the documents. Basically,
this is what librarians have been doing with books for years.
Providing all suitable online access points will ensure the retrievability
and usefulness to the company of the archived material via the
intranet, a substantial advantage over hard copy archival methods
in place today.
NOTE |
Providing all suitable online access points will ensure the retrievability and usefulness to the company of the archived material via the intranet, a substantial advantage over hard copy archival methods in place today. |
A computer screen is not a sheet of paper. We have made ourselves quite comfortable with Web technology-those of us who see it as "technology"-by assigning it labels that make us feel as though we are dealing with the familiar publications with which we grew up. We call the first screen of a Web site a home "page." If we create a quick path back to a page we might want to visit again, we say we have added a "bookmark." But the Web is not a book, and those sites on the screen are nothing at all like pages. Pages are matter; they are composed of atoms; they have substance. Computer images are light; they are zeros and ones; they are information but have no substance. Producing a publication for the screen requires us to stop thinking in terms of paper and start thinking in terms of light. We need to think in terms that are non-linear, non-hierarchical, that are interactive and multi-directional.
So far, we have covered the use of an intranet as it applies to information that concerns all employees. Beginning with the next chapter, we will address information provided on the intranet from specific departments aimed at distinct audiences. We will begin this discussion with a close-up look at how the intranet can apply to staff functions-those departments that exist in every organization to manage the day-to-day operations of the company. These include Human Resources, Legal, Public Relations, and Finance.