Rebecca Rodgers, who runs our Brisbane office, is currently working with a large Australian community services support organisation. The project started with field research, and will shortly lead into intranet strategy and planning (and beyond).

It’s an incredibly diverse organisation, covering areas such as:

• aged care
• child care
• youth care
• emergency support
• community care
• (plus the usual back office and headquarters staff)

Needs analysis is a key element of almost all our projects, and it’s immensely valuable (and enjoyable) to spend so much time with staff doing the actual work of organisations.

Many interesting things have already surfaced, for example:

• the majority of frontline staff don’t have easy access to a computer or email
• many staff have English as a second language
• information overload can be experienced even if you don’t have email
• Excel spreadsheets are everywhere, trying to make up for a lack of systems

This project is only half way through, and there’s a lot more thinking and planning to be done yet. But it’s a timely reminder that intranet users (staff) are not all the same.

Staff have very different needs based on their:

• job role
• area of the organisation
• geographic location
• working environment
• (and much more).

This is why we’ve said for a long time that you can’t deliver effective solutions to staff you haven’t met. This is as true for internal intranet teams as it is for us…

What have you discovered when you’ve gone out into the field in your organisation?