Who is connected from where?

One important recent trend is working remote. While in the old days working at home was regarded at least as odd and obscure, nowadays it is becoming widely accepted. Obviously internet technology plays a large part in getting working from home more widely accepted. With the use of webtechnology (and other communication technology) we no longer are cut off from the organization, even if we work miles away from the office. Flex workers too are connected, regardless the location (inside or outside the building) they log in. It’s this logging in to the workplace that has changed organizations and will change it in the near future.
This gradual opening up of organizations to include people who work remote presents us with one simple new requirement for intranets: intranets need to comply to the international web standards set by the W3C. Previously intranets could be built with software supporting (only) the desktops inside an organization building or buildings. People could only login on the intranet by first entering the office building. People outside (on the internet) could not - and often still cannot - access the internal web of a company.
This set intranets apart from internet websites with regards to web standard. Intranets quite often used to be disconnected from internet websites. Internet and intranets have been separate worlds in communication thinking over the last decade. This offered another reason for communication decision makers to be more ‘flexible’ with complying to W3C standards while building internal online channels than they would when building external online channels.
At this moment in time tis produces a legacy of intranets that do not support remote logging in. Or to be more precise, many such legacy systems do not support logging on using other operating platforms than the one used inside an office building.
Here is a typical example of what you get if an organization uses an intranet that works only on Windows Internet Explorer, while people at home may use another operating system, like Linux or Mac OS.



Image: An intranet page that does not support other operating systems than Windows XP or Vista. Logging on to the digital working environment from a remote location is hampered by closed (instead of open) IT-systems. In environments such as this, IT-policy results in limitations for flexible workers.

The fact that internet is adding online workplaces to the offline spaces to work means that communication tools need to support this trend. Online internal communication should not be hampered by IT-restrictions that state a preference for system X over system Y. Such preferences imply that IT-policy prefers X-users over Y-users. While all users are members of the same organizational community. Internal communication strategy therefore needs to be very clear about who is part of the community and which restrictions apply. This is not something that should be defined by technical instructions and restrictions. Intranets are primarily about communication and not about technology and technological restrictions.

Internal communications

Current internet trends are about Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and Twitter. “But how do you fit them in an organizational context?” I’ve heard many of such questions during workshops. They show a reverse thought pattern in communication policy making. This starts with the application of tools, and ends with the strategy that should contain them.
Communication strategy, which describes the general direction in which we are or should be moving, often follows as an afterthought in this respect. The same applies to situations where people ask “We have launched our intranet some time ago, but nobody is using it. How do I create support?” This question should always precede the building of IT-systems. So while a good adaptation of innovative tools requires a communication strategy we see a lot of innovative tools appear without strategic direction. 

Internal communication is a relatively new and undiscovered field in communication. It’s importance is growing though. But there are some hurdles to take. In fact, understanding intranet is one of them.
The strategic importance of intranet is increasing fast. This growth is not due to an increase of corporate communication messaging, but to the increased volume of digital information flowing inside the modern organization. This shift in focus or attention, from communication to information, is a crucial one for professionals in communication. Digital formats have already become the standard for information exchange. Paper formats will eventually phase out. And with it, paper thinking will phase out too.
We stand at the beginning of the new, global society in which digital communication and information exchange transcends all boundaries in the physical world.
It is happening.
And it’s unstoppable.

The consequences, challenges and opportunities for communication professionals are evident. With the shift in communication from analog to digital the responsibilities for communication tools change as well. The traditional communication message needs to be remixed to fit the changing needs by organizations and their communities.
This is more than a challenge; it’s a great opportunity!

Sexyness

One major reason for the communication cone-view on intranet is that intranet lacks sexyness. The mental image of intranet policy amongst professionals is made up of geeky IT stuff and unwilling audiences that need to be motivated and sent on writing courses to post and pull content. Although the concept that internal communication is very relevant for productivity and well being, this is seldom translated in a strategy, let alone appropriate tools. External communication and marketing on the other hand seem more concrete and less problematic. It’s a striking fact that marketing has an almost guaranteed support from management, something that doesn’t come as natural for internal optimizations. However, the recent financial and consequently global economic crisis may bring changes in this pattern.
An important contributing factor to the unsexyness of intranet is the fact that internal communication is often invisible to the outside world. While the whole point of sexyness is its visibility. Another, related and clear distinction between internal communication (IC) and marketing communication (MC) is that IC is not about selling, while marketing sexyness is exactly that. It is no wonder that sexyness and sales are an item in marketing.
Most internet innovations of today are marketing driven. They all have to do with business models and ways to make money. The rule “Money counts and time is limited” (and vice versa) has left an online track of trials and errors (and successes) of often short-lived developments in online possibilities to try business models. What started with simple bannering, using animated gifs, is now moving into advertising in online video and gaming. Innovations such as social blogs became marketing as soon as corporate blogs became sellable new tools for businesses or upgrades to content management systems already in use.
The simple observation that marketing hypes are often simply transfered to the internal virtual worlds of organizations, without adapting them, causes several communication problems we face on intranets today. The strategic scope of internal communications does not equal a marketing scope. The effective application of marketing tools such as flashy digital magazines in internal communication lies in its adaptation, not in it’s copying.
So, requests regarding intranet or digital internal communication often refer to the sexier stuff from the www-marketplace. This has been the case over the last decade or so. But although the online communication tools may have changed over time, the overall mental framework of commissioners, to apply these tools effectively, has not. Innovation rush tends to cover the what-does-it-do?, the how-can-we-build? and especially the when-do-we-have-it?-questions. The why-question is often skipped, simply because ‘everybody is doing it’ seems a good preemptive answer. Innovation in communication therefore often appears to be about technological innovation and not about improving communication.