Intranet resources: numbers, "way of working", what next with 2.0?

Intranet teams always feel under-resourced. Are they?

First, let's take a look at some numbers. I am aware of 3 relatively recent sources which are in fact quite similar.

1. James Robertson's intranet resource survey conducted by StepTwo  in 2005, where he and Iain Barker published their findings: Intranet teams: survey results and key findings:

• Organisation with over 10,000 employees - from 10 to 13 intranet headcounts
• From 1,000 to 10,000 - around 7

2. A second source is the survey conducted at the Intrateam Event in 2007, organised by IntraTeam A/S.

• The 103 respondents were from organisations averaging 7,000 employees, had 5.4 intranet headcounts, which makes an average of 0.8 per 1,000 employees.

3. The third source is my own Global Intranet Survey of 2007  where I reached the average of 1 headcount for 2,300 employees. This is based on data per size category going up to very large organisations of over 100,000 people.  When I look at the smaller sizes within the survey population, the figures are similar to StepTwo and IntraTeam.

• Less than 1,000 employees - 3 intranet headcount
• 1 to 5,000 employees - 8 intranet headcount
• 5 to 15,000 employees - 12 intranet headcount
• 15 to 30,000 employees - 19 intranet headcount

When the intranet becomes the "way of working" do resources go down?
If we consider content providers part of the intranet team, the number of resources will vary according to how decentralised the publishing model is. Logically, the more the intranet is integrated into the way of working, the lower the official "intranet headcount" will be. Why? Because people who provide content will consider it part of their "normal" job. It will be considered the natural way of working, and, hopefully the CMS and/or content publishing systems (including 2.0 tools) will enable highly decentralised publishing. If they don't, then the intranet as the "way of working" will be crippled.

Low resources for what should be a strategic asset for an organisation
As we go higher up in size of organisations (the Global Intranet survey offers categories up to over 200,000 employees) the ratio of intranet headcount to employee base drops, but not always consistently. There are different explanations for this: 

• In large decentralised organisations, intranet managers and major content providers do not always know each other, nor are they aware of each other's existence.

• Another factor to consider is that organisations with a significant percentage of people who are not pc-connected may have an intranet headcount that is not proportional to the total employee base.

I personally conclude that big or small, the numbers we've seen in these 3 surveys are too low!

Will 2.0 publishing tools bring a new dimension to the intranet resource issues?
The easy of publishing content on a blog or wiki will make it easier for people throughout the organisation to contribute content. This raises issues for many organisations who fear they will lose control of both content (what is published and when) and quality (how it is published).
Among the big questions every organisation will have to answer are:

• What degree of regulation should be defined?
• Will groups of users be able to self-regulate?
• Should anonymous contributions be allowed?
• Should the intranet structure be defined so that official content and user-generated content should be published in separate places?
• Which in turn raises the question of what is meant by "official" versus "user-generated"? How are they different? How are they complementary? Does one threaten the other?

No right or wrong answers
I've heard intranet managers discussing these questions in several forums recently, and it's clear there are no right and wrong answers. I've concluded that there are 5 factors that play very great influence on this:

1. The organisational culture: an open, trustful environment or a suspicious one where people must be "careful" of what they say.
2. The industry sector: highly regulated with high legal risks or not.
3. The professional culture: for example, legal and financial people are more conservative than marketing and R&D people when it comes to sharing content
4. The tools in place: basically a question of how easy or hard to use, and centralised, partially or fully decentralised models.
5. The will to change at the top of the organisation:  senior management awareness and attitude to communication and knowledge sharing.

Please feel free to add comments about your own resource context and how you think 2.0 tools may or may not impact how intranets are managed and how content publishing will evolve.

P.S. You can now purchase the Global Intranet Trends Report and the Global Intranet Analysis Report. Let me know if you have any questions or require more information.

Comments

[Stephan Schillerwein]

I keep hearing argument no. 2 as well ("The industry sector: highly regulated with high legal risks or not.") and can't help wondering whether this is really a reason or rather a (welcome) excuse?

After all, it's more a question of how you address it (and adapt it to your special circumstances), not whether you do it at all or not.

[Jane]

The number one reason in the Global Intranet Survey was "our culture is not ready". That really sounds like an excuse, but, at the same time, I know companies where it is true. The question is: who can change it and how? I'd say senior management by "just doing it". I know that's not realistic and won't happen in most organisations for quite awhile. Intranet managers can nudge things along, by support the groups and managers who are ready and willing to experiment and see what happens.