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Internal phone directories and staff directories are only useful if the details in them are complete and accurate.
This is not easy, and a mix of approaches will be needed. In general, there are three ways of keeping staff directories up to date:
- centralised updates
- self-service updating
- integration with other systems
Centralised updates
One common approach to maintaining staff directory details is to allocate the responsibility to a central staff person or team. In this approach, staff send changes to the central team, who update the staff directory accordingly.
Common staff or groups allocated the responsibility for maintaining the staff directory include:
- receptionist or corporate switchboard
- help desk
- HR team
- IT network administrators
- phone system administrators
- call centre staff
Beyond being a central ‘clearing house’ for staff directory changes, these groups are often the first to know when changes occur. For example, the HR team are responsible for setting up new staff, while IT staff may be involved in ‘re-patching’ phones when staff move desks.
When taking a centralised approach to updating the staff directory, put in place formalised processes and responsibilities to ensure that the updates are consistently made. Also make sure that staff know who to contact to get their details updated.
Self-service updating
As an alternative (or in addition) to centralised management of the staff directory, staff can be provided with the ability to update their own details. This ‘self-service’ capability is widely recognised as the most practical approach in large, decentralised organisations.
Providing self-service capability involves implementing a straightforward editing interface as part of the staff directory itself. Staff can then choose the ‘update my details’ option, and revise their details as required.
The biggest potential issue with self-service approaches is that staff may forget to update their details. If staff are not sufficiently diligent in maintaining their records, the value of the staff directory as a whole can quickly be diminished.
Increasingly, organisations are exploring ‘internal Facebook’ or ‘my site’ approaches. These provide another angle on self-service updating, and if successful, may provide a stronger reason for staff to keep their information up to date.
Depending on the environment it may be valuable to use rewards or recognition to encourage updating of the staff directory.
Integration with other systems
The staff directory should also be integrated with the various systems that hold staff information, including:
- HR systems (payroll)
- IT systems (login, security)
Establish integration to allow updates in any of these systems to automatically flow through to the staff directory, eliminating the need for duplicated updates or manual intervention.
Ensure that processes are put in place for common changes that occur in the ‘lifetime’ of an employee, such as automatically adding the staff person to the directory when they start, and removing them when they leave. Automated updates should also occur after promotions, restructures and new job titles.
Use a mix of approaches
In practice, all approaches to updating the staff directory will be required. This level of redundancy helps to ensure that details are not missed, particularly when staff are busy.
One approach can also support the other. For example, when centralised staff identify out-of-date information, they can contact the staff member in question and encourage them to update their own details.
Giving staff the ability to update their own details is one thing, but encouraging them to do so is much harder. Particularly when many have a vested interested in _not_ updating it (eg photo embarrassing, wanting to ‘hide’, apathy due to ‘uselessness’ of intranet).
What are the best motivators you’ve seen James?
Getting the update – When staff visit the intranet if their profile hasn’t been updated in 90 days they are forced to visit the editable version of their profile, asked to check it, and after clicking OK taken where they wanted to go.
Mixed environment – To provide the control required some fields are updated live on clicking OK and others are emailed to the ‘central control’ team for vetting and then updating.
Ideally – the new values would be held and the ‘control staff’ approve the change (one click) making the values live. [We’re not there yet but working on it]
:-)
A good summary James. We’ve got a mix of approaches in-house and ‘People Finder’ is the most used tool on our intranet. However we’re still recording staff details in multiple systems for different purposes. I’d prefer a single source of truth. Do you know of any SME case studies that have solved this?
Hi Pat, “motivation” is a key issue for so many of the enterprise things we want to do. Such as updating staff directory entries, participating in social networks, collaborating, and personalising the intranet.
In some environments, this is easy. In a professional services firm, staff want to promote their expertise so that they’re invited onto the high-profile projects.
In typical corporate and government settings, this is much harder. Strategies like Dorje’s outlined above, and I’ve seen organisations do monthly “prize draws”, only giving the chosen staff member the reward if their profile is up-to-date, otherwise telling them that they could have won…
These types of rewards and recognition can work, although may be limited in scope.
This is why an overlap of approaches, both centralised and decentralised, is so important…
Hi Dorje, do staff resent being forced to update their staff directory entry?
We are struggling with a staff directory at the moment. The phone list is currently driven by the active directory, but I’d like a mix and to have some ‘facebook’ style options for staff. What software is available? I’ve not been able to find much out there. Thanks
I have seen two other succesful methods of getting people to update their staff directory entries:
– Goodies such as free SMS or additional employee rebates for people having a complete entry
– Small box on the startpage “News from the employee directory” similar to XING / LinkedIN / Facebook etc.
The idea of displaying “Your profile is 60% complete” is also a potentially useful one. Seems to be working quite well for the social networking sites at the moment, but we’ll see for how long…
We use eDirectory so eGuide (the staff directory) hooks into the central user database. Whenever staff are employed or leave, eDirectory is updated, and the changes are reflected in eGuide.
Catch you in Erskineville. The Tart Cafe isnt bad.
Jason
Just wondering if anyone has relied on a self-service method to populate an employee directory holding approximately 3000 members? I’m researching pre-populating vs self-service and leaning towards pre-populating for the initial launch and then allow for self-service?
@Leah, I think you want good overlap between all three methods of updating. So that’s pre-populated out of HR and IT systems at the outset, and then strong self-service from that point. Only one method will not be enough to keep the information up to date.