Making the company's intranet a useful and value-adding tool that employees actually like seems to remain a thorn in the side of many internal communicators. From the content approval system to the relationship it enhances or corrodes with the IT department, challenges surrounding its operation never seem to be in short supply.

But the intranet can be the ideal way of getting employees to absorb important information without them feeling it's being forced on them, believes Terry McKenzie, senior director of global employee communications and communities at Sun Microsystems. Which is why the company's about to launch one of the most exciting web 2.0 sites in global business.

WebNext, aimed to launch later this year, will transform how the intranet's used at Sun. "It aims to get away once and for all from the idea of the intranet as a place where the company dumps every last piece of information and then gets mad when people don't read it," says McKenzie. "Instead, it aims to be the employees' favorite place to visit and have as a homesite, because they've populated it with things they care about."

Read on for more about WebNext in this extract from the new edition of the Melcrum report, Transforming your intranet.

WebNext will allow each employee to tailor their own site, relevant to them – but this is a big step away from the local portals and customizable homepages of old. The program is being referred to as Project 90/10, because the company wants everyone's website to be 90% populated by the things the employee cares about and uses every day on the web, 10% by the things the organization is pushing down to them – and it's being built with that specific usage ratio in mind.

First port of call on the web
The philosophy is simple but bold: if 90% of the content is the employee's – including social networking tools, instant messaging, and community software – then it's going to be a more appealing place for them to go and use as a homepage, so the 10% of corporate communication that's pushed through to them will have more impact.

They'll be using the site more as their own workplace, their first port of call on the web – rather than as "a separate place I have to go once a week for stuff". It'll be heavily dependent on RSS, but also on widgets and "gadgets" (single-purpose applications that run on a computer desktop or are hosted on a website) for feeds, instant messaging applications, and other software people can install themselves – so that they have no need to go anywhere else on the web.

From victims to volunteers
"So, because people want to go there and use it as their homepage, they won't be victims of internal communication – they'll be volunteers and participants in it," says McKenzie. "As director of communications, I know that I'm sacrificing a lot of content capability my company would dearly love to push to people.

But I know I'm going to be able to capture a bigger share of eyeballs for the stuff I do push, because I'll have everyone's desktop. And I'm going to take all the other stuff and turn it to RSS feeds, so it becomes a different kind of leadership communication. People aren't necessarily going to listen to you because you have a title, they're going to listen to you because it's interesting and you've got something relevant to say."

Until next time,

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Why your intranet can't just mirror the web
Alex Manchester, Melcrum's Social Media and Intranets Newsletter, November 24, 2008

Attending a conference this week in Sydney on the topic of social networking and business collaboration, I was struck by one significant thought: how much the web is different compared to a typical intranet...read more

What should my internal comms budget be?
Melcrum's Communicators' Network, November 24, 2008

"A new senior executive has committed to investing in internal comms in a service/production area for a financial services company. I've been charged with forecasting a budget and really don't know where to start. Please help!"...Join the discussion

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