Staff members’ digital identities underpin everything they do in today’s organisations. The ‘digital workplace’ is centred around staff profiles that show who staff are, what they are doing, their skills and expertise, and who they are connected to.

As the richness of interaction, communication and collaboration grows, so does the importance of the staff profile as a central hub. This leads to the following statement:

There must be only one staff profile in the digital workplace.

Unfortunately most organisations are some way off this simple vision, and the situation is potentially getting worse not better.

A legacy of confusion

As business systems have gone online within organisations, a profusion of separate staff profiles has often been created, such as:

• web-based staff directory as part of the corporate intranet
• separate staff profile within the HR system
• staff details within Outlook and Exchange
• additional staff profiles within e-learning systems, and other web-based tools
• staff profiles within earlier intranet tools, not yet turned off, such as Notes
• local staff listings and phone books within individual regions, offices and teams

While some of these systems are integrated behind the scenes, many are not. This results in outdated information, inconsistencies between systems, and confusion about where to go to get staff details.

[February article, read the full article]