Most intranets have some form of policies and procedures, typically focusing on authoring guidelines and standards.

The question is: are these the right policies to have? In many cases, intranet teams have established policies that they find difficult to enforce, while missing the opportunity to develop policies that will be much more beneficial for both the intranet team and the site itself.

This briefing takes a different look at the role of intranet policies, and outlines five policies that all intranet teams should develop.

The role of intranet policies

Policies and procedures are all too often written as administrative or bureaucratic documents outlining how to operate within an organisation. A classic example of this is the “email usage policy”, commonly written, but almost never read.

When it comes to the intranet, many organisations have policies that cover intranet authoring standards, such as writing style, linking policies, and the like. While these are certainly useful, there are policies that can have a much greater (and more direct) impact on the success of the intranet.

Intranet policies can be written as simple guides outlining how the intranet operates, and how it is to be managed. These ‘human-friendly’ policies should ideally be no more than a single page in length, designed to be given to intranet stakeholders and authors.

They should also be written by the intranet team, rather than some other group. The primary purpose of these policies is to answer common questions, or to resolve common issues.

More importantly, they give the intranet team support when dealing with difficult situations. Even when the policies have been written by the intranet team themselves, they still provide greater weight than just the verbal recommendations of the team.

[CM Briefing 2006-11, read the full article]