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Intranets: what staff really want

Gerry McGovern has published the results of a survey looking at what staff really want from an intranet. To quote:

Staff overwhelmingly want a better organized intranet where they can quickly find people, policies and procedures, and forms. In July 2007 we carried out an intranet survey using our Customer Carewords approach. We gave people a list of intranet tasks and also a list of things they might like to see improved on their intranet.

I would make a couple of observations:

• The results certainly accord with our experience in many different organisations. In many ways, though, this can all be summarised as part of the three purposes identified for intranets, so I don't think we're finding out anything really new here.
• I don't think we've ever had a problem describing what an intranet should be, but the real question remains: how do we get there? This is hard, and where the real work needs to be done.
• I always recommend against asking "what users want", as this type of question has many problems. Not least that the answers will typically be defined in terms of the current site, so it's often a self-referential form of investigation that doesn't identify innovative approaches.

Still, more data is always better than less, so many thanks to Gerry for conducting this survey and so generously sharing the results...

Posted by jamesr on August 23, 2007 10:36 AM
Categories: Intranets