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 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.