Crowd source your intranet

I've been looking at intranets of big, big companies. Comparing them is interesting and has given me a lot of ideas about what works and what doesn't.

One of the most exciting trends I've spotted is the notion of increasing participation in content creation. UGC (user generated content). When I worked as an intranet manager many moons ago, we had a cascade of trained, monitored and weary regional and divisional 'editors' and trained them up cautiously to use a locked down CMS with rigid workflow. It was slow, thankless and pretty irritating for all involved (not least the end users who could transfer knowledge quicker by carrier pigeon).

Today, more and more orgs are starting to throw open the content doors as users become more familiar with creating and consuming content that comes from many sources. This might be limited to comments on news articles, or updating personal details on staff directories. Or it could be as bold as opening the whole she-bang as a wiki or freely contributing video clips.

Success criteria used to be measured in terms of control: "Can we stop people being rude" or "How do we make sure the information is correct". Thanks to social media and wikis in the wider web world, a lot of these arguments have been resolved. Members of a community are quite good at translating normal social boundaries into a digital realm, so users rarely act 'inappropriately' when given clear guidance and accountability. Wikipedia, for all it's detractors, has shown that in the main information is satisfactorily useful to compensate for the rare occurrence of vandalism or error.

And these are corporate environments - participants are accountable (as long as they're not anonymous) and are unlikely to upset their career or colleagues. As an organisation, getting your content made by the people you already pay has massive benefits:

• lower costs (no need to pay dedicated content creators)
• increase employee satisfaction (employers are 'listened to' and can see evidence of their benefit)
• instant communication (knowledge from the grass routes can be spread throughout the organisation instantly)
• flexible workforce (teams can be brought together around content online, collaborate, and then disband)

So what are the new criteria for success?

• Engaging - The content needs to be relevant to the employees and their tasks. Let it grow, respond to activity and requests
• Moderated - employees need boundaries and guidelines, and someone to turn to if they have a grievance, but not a workflow that would inhibit participation or information sharing
• Welcoming - if the tools are invisible to the user, easy to use and intuitive, give good feedback and clear support, then they encourage participation by everyone and won't be seen as elitist.

So there you have it. How to cut your workforce, increase your productivity and please your staff this Christmas.