I read this article with great interest as I am about to establish a Community of Practice among intranet authors in my workplace.

Our intranet authors are spread over many geographical sites and are also in different levels of the organisational hierarchy.

This paper outlined how I might use the new collaborative tools on our new intranet to help strengthen the community, their knowledge and empower them to help each other.

However, I would also like to concentrate on relationships and networking that exists outside of a computer-mediated environment. In line with Step Two Designs article, No collaboration without communications (see my earlier post) I would like to also offer face-to-face workshops once or twice a year to help put faces to names and support the online collaboration.

As Resnick and Mejia write, "A less well-known application of social networks is the Community of Practice." As a side issue, I think if I referred to this term when what I am actually really talking about is work-based social networking, it would also assist managers to think of social media in terms of professionals and knowledge sharing, rather than just socialising and having fun. It would help to break down some of senior managements misconceptions about social and collaborative tools.

Reference
Broomhall, A (2009) No collaboration without communication Retrieved from http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_nocollaboration/index.html

Resnick, M.L., Mejia, A. (2007). Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization. Paper presented at the 2007 Industrial Engineering and Research Conference. Retrieved 16 April, 2011 from http://proquest.umi.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/pqdweb?index=11&did=1864150261&SrchMode=1&sid=12&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1302329578&clientId=22212

This article was really interesting and valuable. Thanks so much for posting!

I work in Staff Communications where we are of course highly interested in staff engagement, trust and credible sources and lines of communication.

It was interesting to read that IBM staff rate their company's intranet as a more useful source of information than news media, executive communication or even their direct managers. This supports what I read in the IKEA human intranet article (see my earlier post on diigo - Inside IKEA's Human Intranet Approach). It seems people are more willing to trust what they read on the intranet, than what they hear from their boss! It would be really interesting to go further into this and see some research on why this is the case.

The other points in this article rang very true for me. As Kerr (2011) states, "The article also raises the changing face of the workplace such as flexible work hours that has become an opportunity through internet technology whereby people can work from home." It was interesting to read that Ford estimate they have saved almost $2 million in one year from some fairly straightforward stuff like people being able to change their personal address and contact details online at home, rather than handing in a form that goes through several administrative steps.

The organisation where I work now has to deal with a disparate workforce. More than half of our staff work in the field and have limited access to corporate information and systems which are normally found via the intranet. However, I am facing difficulties internally progressing remote and home access due to arguments of security. We also have a very unionised workforce and there are beliefs that some staff might try and claim a 'working from home allowance' to complete even the smallest of tasks.

This article has given me some hard dollar return examples from home access, which are often very difficult to prove.

References:
Intranets Nurture Companies from the Inside. (2001, January 29). The New York Times. Retrieved April 2, 2011 from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E5DE103FF93AA15752C0A9679C8B63&pagewanted=all

Kerr, K (2011) Comments re Intranets Nurture Companies from the Inside Retrieved from http://groups.diigo.com/group/curtin_net308/content/intranets-nurture-companies-from-the-inside-2683532

Reference Chin, P (2009) Inside IKEA's Human Intranet Approach Retrieved from http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200908/ij_08_21_09a.html

In 2006, IBM was responsible for hosting possibly the largest online collaborative brainstorming session known as the IBM InnovationJam. The idea grew from earlier innovation jams held internally and hosted through their intranet. The first one held in 2003 focussed on the launch of new corporate values. The jams were driven by the IBM chairman "who personally participated by typing his thoughts into the jam forums and reading literally thousands of comments." (Transforming your intranet, 2008) This use of the tool and therefore public commitment from senior management to the jams would have undoubtedly helped with staff engagement and participation in the jam. Thousands of suggestions were received from staff covering IBM operations, workplace policies and how to improve relationships. Staff then voted for the best 35 ideas which were then implemented. (S. Musselwhite, 2007) The jamming sessions also sped up the implementation of ideas - partly because the consultation, staff buy-in and testing, and pre-socialisation have already been done. Interestingly, research showed IBM staff trusted the information on their intranet more than the information they got from their managers or even on the informal 'grapevine'. Similar to IKEA and their approach (see other article Inside IKEA's Human Intranet Approach), IBM used an already existing framework or business feature to help technology work. IBM capitalised on the trust in and use of intranet to host a 'jam' - a new medium IBMers created that went "beyond online communities, brainstorming sessions, or traditional suggestion systems." (A Global Innovation Jam, 2011) References: A Global Innovation Jam (2011) Retrieved from http://www.ibm.com/ibm100/us/en/icons/innovationjam/words/ Musselwhite, S (2007) Intranet Strategy and Management London: Ark Group Transforming your intranet (2008) Sydney: Melcrum Publishing

The goal of many intranets is to centrally store corporate information so that all staff can share information across divisions, access it and use it to make work-based decisions. This article argues that while there are many organisational benefits that occur from introducing collaborative tools to an intranet, if they are not managed properly they can create information silos, and therefore become tools that support anti-knowledge sharing. The article says the strengths of collaborative tools can also become their weakness. It starts with staff forgetting to publish outcomes or finalised documents produced in a 'locked down' collaborative space to the published area of the intranet. This then potentially causes hundreds of small collaboration spaces containing important and useful corporate information that hasn't been shared with the wider group. It is this fragmentation which makes it hard to find anything. The article argues, "This is the lesson we didn't learn from Lotus Notes and we are repeating it now." (J. Robertson, 2007) Even though some documents might be published to a broader audience, those who don't have access to the full collaborative space they were produced in may lack the context to understand what they are reading and how to use it. That is, the project plan might be a working document held in a permission only collaborative space, but the change management plan might be published. Both need to be read together to provide the user with richer context. "By 'locking up' the knowledge in these spaces, organisations make knowledge sharing harder, not easier." (J. Robertson, 2007) As an intranet manager and member of a professional intranet peer group, I have witnessed this happen in many organisations. These organisations are now spending lots of money and lots of time untangling their collaborative tools. In an unmanaged environment, not only do teams create information silos, but because of the nature of the collaborative too

This article explores how a world-wide furnishing store (IKEA) used their already existing culture to guide the production and implementation of their intranet to ensure the technology was the right fit for them. With a very strong focus on teamwork, community and collaboration already recognised in the IKEA business-model, IKEA were well aware that a strong corporate culture does not guarantee user-acceptance of information systems. "Rather than forcing its corporate culture to bend to accommodate a technology-based system, IKEA used its firmly established culture as the foundation for its IT solutions." (P. Chin, 2009) And something must have worked. In 2008, IKEA Inside (their intranet) was listed in the world's ten best intranets by well-known user-experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group. IKEA were mindful of not letting the technology they introduce ruin an already well-established human focussed corporate culture. They said their culture gave them the framework to introduce new things to the business - including information systems and technology. As Beth Gleba, Internal Information Manager for IKEA North America points out, "Before, during and after [intranet implementation], our culture is our culture." In my experience as an intranet manager, I definitely agree that a company's already existing culture will influence the final state of a technology. In organisations that don't focus on people or put staff at the front, there will often be a "disconnect between the technology-based systems and the people they're meant to support." (P. Chin, 2009) It is because the people who've made the technology haven't taken into consideration the end-user, or worse, just don't care - and where that happens that attitude is often supported by the already existing corporate culture. Reference Chin, P (2009) Inside IKEA's Human Intranet Approach Retrieved from http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200908/ij_08_21_0

While web 2.0 technologies have been around for awhile now, many organisations are still in an experimental phase. There are all too often rare wins and rare examples of it being used correctly to fulfil a strong business need or solve a business problem. This article argues that organisational collaborative tools such as social intranets etc will not be embraced or used to their full potential if employees do not already communicate with each other - i.e. have a structure, management style or physical layout that supports them to communicate. As the article states, "The existence of collaborative tools does not automatically imply that people will collaborate or collaborate effectively." (A. Broomhall, 2009) This makes sense. In a working and professional environment, most staff are more guarded in their communication (depending on the culture of the organisation of course) and less reluctant to use collaborative tools like they might as strangers on the World Wide Web. If the fundamentals of communication are working well in an organisation and already exist (ie. people have met face to face, have already established communities, have trusted relationships where they share information) they are then more likely to collaborate online. There are several intranet features which can be used to strengthen these communication paths and employee relationships: - staff directory - news channels - social news sites. It is these types of technologies (available on most intranets) which can help encourage the development of communication networks, and in turn support the use of collaborative tools. Reference: Broomhall, A (2009) No collaboration without communications Retrieved from http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_nocollaboration/index.html

In this topic, I aim to look at how corporate intranets are evolving to become places of collaboration. I will also look at how different organisations use the tools available to suit their business and culture.