Filed under: Intranets, Knowledge management
Near the end now of another long day of interviews at the Area Health Service. I’ve now talked with everyone from the senior executive, through admin and lower management, to clinical staff (doctors, nurses, and allied health).
What is interesting is that, despite the hugely different roles, responisibilities and working environments, some key themes are turning up again and again.
These include:
- Everyone wants to know what is generally happening within the organisation, such as building works, restructures, and the like. Even if they are located in rural areas.
- No-one seems to want to receive news about social events, preferring to rely on their own social networks.
- Lack of time is a serious limiting factor, across the board.
- The overall site structure issues and usability problems are preventing most people from using the intranet. (Luckily, it is the easiest to fix, in many ways.)
- Policies and procedures are a major issue across the organisation, and they warrant some serious attention on the intranet. (I guess this is not surprising in a health organisation.)
- The corporate phone directory is needed by everyone, but is just not meeting that need.
- Most information is being sourced from outside the organisation, which is surprising. A lot of resources are obtained from the Dept of Health site, and from other online resources. This suggests that most, perhaps all, staff need internet access to conduct their normal work.
I’ve also expanded out my questions about people’s social networks, and seem to be making more headway now. Despite that, sessions have generally dropped to 45mins each, which might be due to increased experience or efficiency on my part. I certainly think that a good stakeholder interview can be squeezed into 45mins if required, with the full hour providing more than enough time for a chat at the end.