Musings about the role of the intranet in the digital workplace
Categorised under: Digital workplace, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
It was an interesting experience writing A week in the digital workplace. The real-world narrative structure forces you to look at how things are really going to work, from a user perspective. (No abstract theory allowed!)
Coming from an intranet starting point, I’ve found it useful to look back through the stories, and to observe where the intranet ends up fitting in the bigger digital workplace landscape.
Here are my observations:
- It’s still about the intranet. Far from dying, the intranet is an even more important starting point for staff, and it’s where they’re spending an increasing amount of their day.
- These are not today’s intranets. The intranets that form the hub of the true digital workplace are hugely different to today’s intranets. They are business tools that are directly integrated into work, and they finally deliver the vision of elegantly joining together behind-the-scenes tools and platforms.
- Does the intranet only live on the desktop? While “Morris” is still recognisable as an intranet, would Sarah call the functionality on her phone the intranet? I suspect not. What will these new always-available tools be called? I have no idea.
- The future is a lot more social. But rather than replacing the “traditional intranet”, they will drive the evolution of the intranet towards something much better aligned with the needs of staff (as people).
- Lines are blurred. Staff don’t understand systems, and don’t care about systems. What they want is a “single seamless environment that provides them with the tools and information they need to do their jobs”. The digital workplace is perhaps the way to understand what this looks like, and I think it paints an exciting future for intranets.
The intranet remains, for me, the best platform for helping the business and staff be productive. The vision of the digital workplace, rather than making intranets obsolete, should give teams new impetus for driving the intranet forward.
Do you agree with this? What are your intranet take-aways from A week in the digital workplace?
Tags: digital workplace, future, future vision, Intranets
James Robertson is the Managing Director of 
7 Comments:
I agree that people want a “single seamless environment that provides them with the tools and information they need to do their jobs” and that, by going beyond what traditional intranets currently are, the digital workplace will provide this environment. Sometimes it’s better to use a new name for a renewed concept. It gives it a new and fresh start. Morris (the digital workplace you describe with talent) would definitely be a friend of mine, whereas most current intranets are not.
I DO like the examples and focus on how a digital workplace should be focused on people and help them to do their work better and be more engaged which benefits the organisation too. A win-win!
It also shows (as I commented on your other post) that it isn’t something revolutionary. It’s certainly aspirational and motivating but it is also it is evolutionary building on existing intranet best practice and extending it.
I agree with what you say and think it fits nicely with my postings on the digital workplace and employee engagement based on my experiences as the BT intranet manager and help with other organisations since as a consultant.
Let’s go do it now everyone!
Hi James, Just wanted you to know I enjoyed reading “A Week in the Digital Workplace.” I got the sense that many of the intranet features you mentioned in the paper are going to be available in the near future.
I was particularly intrigued by the idea of the intranet becoming something akin to a personal digital assistant. The iPhone already has Siri, so could your vision could not be very far away.
@Mark, while I agree that a great intranet (and a great digital workplace) will be delivered in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary way … I would question how fast many organisations are moving in this direction in practice.
Unfortunately many intranets have been stuck for the last 5-10 years, and new tools are (by default) creating more fragmentation, rather than pulling together into a coherent environment.
So the challenge, I think, is to generate senior management buy-in, and to start taking a more strategic approach to designing and deploying new capabilities…
@Ernst, glad to hear that you’d find Morris to be a friend!
To me, it feels like the digital workplace is an “environment”, whereas the intranet is a more tangible “thing” that sits within it. Will staff even be aware that they’re using a “digital workplace”?
Much of the hard work is done behind-the-scenes, to deliver an elegant intranet (and mobile tools, etc, etc).
i agree James and there is recent evidence that this is starting to happen butit is still too slow and fragmented.
I guess that’s where we can help!
Mark
At ground level the change that happens is evolutionary, and often feels mundane, slow and inconsequential to those in the middle of it.
So, for most of us, the future intranet Sarah is using just might require some revolutionary thinking, compared to what many of us experience currently. However, we need to continually think in new (revolutionary) ways in order to effectively direct the evolutionary steps we are taking.
This kind of future thinking narrative is also invaluable for helping us provide a picture to our executives and colleagues of what we as intranet professionals see when we look at the intranet. (Just like a parent who looks at their child and sees not only who they are now, but who they are yet to become.)
I have found the phrase ‘digital workplace’ helpful in conveying this picture to people, but it is always a descriptor not as a name. I agree the digital workplace is the environment, not the thing. So we still need something to call the place where people come to do this digital work, the place that hides all the different systems, processes and connections happening behind the scenes, and just delivers everything “I” need to get on my job.
I agree, that place for me is still the intranet, regardless of what it’s going to ‘grow up to be’. (Just as I’m not going to change my child’s name when it reaches adulthood, even though it will be a very different person then to who it was at 3.)
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