Intranets are most useful when they help staff do their jobs. This includes finding a key piece of information (‘what is the address for our interstate office?’) or completing a process online (‘I need to apply for some leave over Christmas’).

The best approach for helping staff is to focus on tasks. These are the activities, simple or complex, that staff need to do on the intranet. The goal is to streamline and simplify how these tasks can be carried out.

Uncovering staff tasks

It is valuable to understand the full range of tasks, including common activities done by a wide range of staff, and important tasks that deliver business benefits to the organisation.

There are many ways of identifying these tasks:

• Interviews and focus groups. Discussions with staff, whether one-on-one or in a group, will naturally uncover information about key tasks. Staff will also express frustration with current bottlenecks, as well as highlighting their most important activities. Guide these discussions to ensure that sufficient information is gained about intranet-based tasks. (See the earlier article Conducting intranet needs analysis for more on this.)

[CM Briefing 2010-07, read the full article]