This article appeared in HR Gateway April 24 2003

Time and money is being wasted by employers as workers take longer to do tasks because of badly designed or ill thought out Intranets claimed a leading consultancy.

Badly designed and unmanaged company Intranets are costing employers up to £1,000 a year per employee, claims Nick Throp of Mercer HR, and end up as 'repositories for information of limited value':

'Many sites are created by self-serving departments with little regard for the needs of other employees. Many companies fail to recognise how their Intranet fits into an overall communication and knowledge management strategy,' he said.

Intranets often mirror how organisations see and structure themselves, he says, and it's apparent where information flows from the top down or is created by people working in silos:

'The key is to understand employees' perceptions and experiences of the Intranet. An audit by a usability expert, or a comprehensive test on a group of users will identify what needs to be improved,' said Throp.

Paul Blunden, CEO of The Usability Company who have their own usability testing software called WebIQ, told HR Gateway today that while he agreed with Throp's £1,000 estimate, the problem of Intranet usability was one of measurement:

'Very little work has been done of measuring the usability of Intranets but this is changing slowly. Measuring it would allow HR to understand the behaviour of people when they use the Intranet and what can be done to improve matters.

'All IT departments have web analysis tools such as Web Trends that could be used to measure employee behaviour which would allow HR to come up with concrete figures rather than the intangible figures that are thrown around,' he said.

Most firms never discuss usability issues with employees, they simply get the standard two hours' training and then when they come to use the system for HR processes a few months later, for example, they have to learn over again, he says:

'The problem is that many systems are simply not intuitive and are usually based on an internal database with an entry page that is full of confusing links. HR and IT need to consider the usability of such as system,' said Blunden.

If you want to assess employees' experience of using your Intranet, then here are some pointers from Mercer HR's Nick Throp:

1. Intranet business strategy - do you have one? How are users' needs understood and incorporated into this document?
2. User needs - do you understand how the Intranet might help employees and the management population to be more effective in their job?
3. Site architecture - what is the rationale behind it? Has it been tested? Is it intuitive?
4. Site content - how much content is up there? Would anyone notice if you got rid of any of it? What process exists to get content up on the Intranet?
5. Usage statistics - are you getting good data? Do you interrogate it? How do you feed this back into the content creation process?
6. Site visual appeal - is the site engaging? Do people feel good about using it?
7. Site branding - is it consistent? Is the User Experience consistent with brand values? (Remember that branding is not just a logo but is the whole experience of interacting with the organisation).
8. Access - can your site be accessed from everywhere in the company? What about when employees are at home?
9. Site usability - can employees find the information they want easily and in good time?
10. Communication strategy - how does the Intranet integrate with other communication channels? How do they reinforce each other?

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