Extending the reach of the intranet at Boots and BA

Intranets have great appeal for organizations looking for a low-cost communication channel, and they can also deliver compelling cost savings if they include employee self-service functions such as booking holidays or requesting benefits. The big drawback is that they traditionally require access to a PC to do this – fine for office workers, but most companies also have people on production lines, driving vehicles or out meeting customers. The intranet can then start to appear divisive, and the cost benefits of self-service never get realized because the offline approach still needs to be in place. This article looks at how some companies have addressed this challenge.

 

Choosing delivery points
One of the most common approaches to giving intranet access to non-computer-using employees is to install kiosks. These may be purpose-built for an industrial setting, for example, and with a touch screen rather than a mouse. Spanish steel producer ArcelorMittal introduced 34 such kiosks serving 5,000 workers in one of its plants. Other companies use internet cafés as a model and place standard PCs in places where staff congregate such as canteens or cloakrooms.

Providing kiosks needs to be done with a degree of trust and respect for employee privacy. Users may need to update personal information, or simply feel intimidated by onlookers if their computer skills are rudimentary. One company, already struggling with a culture that saw using PCs as “non-work”, compounded the problem by only putting kiosks next to managers’ offices on the grounds that it would “prevent theft.”

As an alternative to kiosks, some companies offer secure access to their intranets over the internet. IT departments may not welcome this suggestion yet, but it’s technically feasible and can be just as secure as internet banking. As home computer ownership grows, this addresses many privacy concerns and can be more cost-effective than shop or factory floor kiosks.

Content is crucial
Intranet content needs to be even more compelling when targeting audiences that would not otherwise be in front of a PC. Few will log on just to read the company magazine. The most successful companies make the intranet the only way to get essential services. Some even make it the only way to get your pay slip. This helps build audience size and, once the intranet is accepted for transactions, it becomes viable as a communications channel too.

Having an intranet available to all creates a valuable opportunity to open up two-way dialogue, particularly between management and mobile workers or the shop floor using discussion boards or online question and answer sections. This kind of forum is sometimes seen as high-risk because it can lead to a string of very negative comments, particularly when companies go through difficult events such as redundancies. It’s certainly true that comments on forums tend to be more direct and emphatic than those made face-to-face. However, like any open meeting, this can be handled by facilitation. Most leaders would say it’s better to know that these feeling exist than to have them expressed only in the canteen.

Providing social content such as “For Sale” and “Wanted” boards or forums around sporting activities such as soccer World Cups can also aid adoption. These are often among the most popular areas of any intranet and provide a space where the perceived beneficiary is the employee rather than the company.

 

Managing the change
Introducing an intranet to employees who may not use computers regularly can be a challenge. Often, companies find resistance comes from middle management, who argue that it will distract staff from doing the “real work” or that older blue-collar workers don’t have IT skills. Again, at ArcelorMittal the average age in one of its plants was 45. To overcome resistance they trained managers help employees in how to use the PC. Two years on it’s now the principal form of communication for employees in the factory.

To address the “real work” issue, the rollout team need to reinforce that it’s acceptable behaviour by introducing activities where using the intranet is a requirement. Good examples of this can include:

• Running an employee satisfaction survey online rather than on paper.
• Launching competitions that can only be completed on the intranet.
• Incorporating e-learning modules from the intranet into individual development plans.

Companies also need to be sensitive to employment issues around time spent on the intranet. Asking employees to conduct transactions at home, for example, could be perceived as “free overtime”. Having a dialogue up-front with the workforce (for example, through union representatives) can help avert this issue.

 

Failing communication models
Some companies who have been keen to widen access to their intranet did so because they were concerned that the traditional cascade of information to the workforce wasn’t working. They feared that supervisors were filtering out some of the communications or reinterpreting what was being said. This mindset can be antagonistic, as supervisors may conversely feel that they’ve being sidelined and resist the intranet even more. A more constructive approach is to keep the cascade, but complement it with online content. In this way the benefits of face-to-face dialogue are retained, but the intranet can give a more detailed, official and authorized account.

When introducing kiosks, most companies also offer training sessions. Perhaps surprisingly, though, the take-up of this is often low. This is probably because it is offered too soon – it takes time for people to understand what the kiosks offer and what help they might need. Often kiosks are locked down to the company portal, rather than allowing internet access. This may reduce IT support costs, but it misses an opportunity: if employees can use the kiosks for shopping, online banking and so on, then they effectively train themselves in computer skills. This can be more effective than classroom-based training because people pick the tasks they’re motivated to do.

Although there are change-management challenges involved, the overall picture is a positive one: companies that invest in taking their intranet to the larger workforce generally end up building stronger relationships, as well as realising significant cost savings. Even the simple step of making intranet terminals available on the factory floor can be appreciated as breaking down the attitude of “them and us” with office staff.

 

Communicating to retail staff at Boots
Boots, a health and beauty chain, was faced with the problem of taking its intranet to the 90 percent of its staff who were based in stores around the UK and beyond. At the time the only PCs available were in the managers’ offices and some pharmacies, making access difficult for the sales teams on the shop floor, who were keen to get regular updates about targets and performance. Longer opening hours also meant that face-to-face team briefings were becoming harder as staff worked a wide variety of shifts.

 

Figure 1. The Boots intranet, “MyStoreNet”

The solution was to create a customized portal called MyStoreNet (see Figure 1, above) that could be delivered through the screens of the sales tills. Group intranet manager Helen Day collaborated with IBM to create a design that worked with a touch screen. “We did a workplace assessment, but didn’t mention portals; just tried to understand people’s information needs and what was frustrating about their day job”, explains Day.

“We also looked at business drivers and picked sales information as the most important, then divided the user base by manager and non-manager and pharmacist and non-pharmacist so we could target content more effectively.”
The result was a greatly simplified version of the intranet portal delivered through tills to the shop floor, giving just the essential information along with updates such as shoplifting alerts and a weekly briefing communication.

Initially some people at Boots’ head office worried that the solution would distract staff from serving customers. According to Day, “They thought the tills should be focused on taking cash, but when we talked to the store managers they said there were times when people had to man the tills but had little else they could do. Delivering information through the tills was an effective way of making use of this quiet time.” To address concerns, every page also had a button to take the till straight back to sales mode.

The result was very positive. Team leaders were excited about being more in touch and motivated by live target data, and sales staff were able to spend more time on the shop floor.

 

Staying in touch with high flyers at BA
You don’t get much further from a PC connection than when you work as cabin crew for an airline, yet 98 percent of British Airways staff use their intranet regularly. The majority of their staff are not office-based, yet over 70 percent regularly log in from home.

It wasn’t always like this. Initially BA established an intranet to meet communication needs. According to Nimmira Juma, a manager in BA’s Employee Self Service program, “We needed to make sure all employees had easy access to a single source of up-to-date information. Printed news quickly goes out of date.”

 

Figure 2. BA’s Employee Self Service platform has disproved skeptics

After 9/11, when airline business was badly affected, a new imperative arose to cut costs and, the Employee Self Service (ESS) program (see Figure 2, above) became key. Tony Breadmore, communications manager for BA’s Employee Self Service program, comments: “Any company could do it – but it takes will, time and commitment. It’s delivered millions of pounds in savings each year.”

Access is provided through a combination of PCs, kiosks and access over the internet. The kiosks were initially dedicated structures. “BA was introducing check-in kiosks at the time,” explains Breadmore, “so we could piggy back on having a ‘big blue thing’ that would be obvious even in a workshop.”

Kiosks are more like internet café PCs, but with a dedicated desktop, rather than just Windows XP. And, although access from home is common, Juma expects the kiosks will always be there.

 

Making intranet access easy
“We like to think staff can access the intranet at work if they want to, and 40 percent use a kiosk. Within a few yards, there’s always somewhere you can log on to.”

The ESS team worked hard to address security concerns. The system also knows where you’re logging in from and won’t show confidential information if you’re in an internet café, for example. “People complain that it’s easier to get to their bank details than change something on the intranet, we’re so secure,” says Breadmore. When employees expressed concerns about privacy, the team was responsive. An unused session logs out after 60 seconds, and the team made sure printers were close to terminals.

 

Many expected that there would be too much resistance to what BA was doing.
“People said it would be impossible to do – you’ll never get people in workshops using PCs. We’re very pleased to tell them ‘you’re wrong’,” says Breadmore.