The benefits of a company intranet

By STEVE HART, careers editor

When it comes to getting news of their company, the 7000 staff at Telecom in New Zealand and Australia receive it first from the intranet - an in-house internet site.

Meredith Keys spends her day sifting through the company's press releases and picking up stories from colleagues across the organisation about the people, their hobbies and work at the company.

"I operate just like any other journalist in researching, interviewing people and writing stories," says Keys who is Telecom's online communications adviser and a trained journalist. "I aim to get one new story on the intranet every day and make contacts right across the company."

The website Keys edits is called Pulse and fits in with the company's aim of having an open and transparent communication with its staff.

It is just one of the company's 102 intranet sites for employees wanting to share information about their departments such as finance, marketing, development and human resources. Pulse has been running for almost three years, although Keys has been in the job for a year. Telecom's intranet site was launched in 1997.

Keys says her focus is news, such as what is happening around the company, what people are doing and the new technology the company is developing.

Intranet expert Alan Davies, director HR Online, says it is important that company intranet sites are the first thing staff see when they turn on their computers.

"The benefit of an intranet includes people getting to see key messages at the same time. It sets the expectation that it is something they should look at every day and, just like any good internet site, it needs to change and be updated constantly."

However, he says simply introducing an intranet won't change the culture of a company.

"It has to be supported by the insistence that people use it for the primary source of announcing and gathering information.

"A consistent philosophy across all groups within the company is needed to support a genuine culture change to share information. If this is not done then the intranet is just another piece of technology."

And he argues that staff without access to a computer to read intranet pages should get a paper version of key announcements.

"Intranet pages should be 'printer friendly' so they can be printed and read later, either on the bus or at home."

So employees need to read their company's intranet daily - something that appears to be happening at Telecom where 5000 members of staff read the Pulse site last month.

"People see the site as a credible news source," Keys says.

"We are not about hiding things at Telecom but I'm not here to tell negative stories, I'm here to tell our story - readers can get other views from the other media."

Office staff get access to news from an online clipping service so they can balance what Telecom is saying internally against what the external media is reporting. And there is an online forum for staff to share views and ideas.

Telecom says it's all part of the corporate openness the company has adopted. But why?

"There has been a lot of feedback that our intranet has been successful in altering the culture at Telecom," says John Goulter, the company's public affairs and government relations manager.

"For the past four years there has been a programme in place to transform the culture to make it a lot less prone to silos - we don't want different groups of staff working in isolation and in competition with each other.

"Our intranet encourages a free exchange of information.

"We want the whole staff to understand Telecom's goals, what we are and what we offer. It has been instrumental in getting information and feedback from staff.

"We have found there is no real alternative to doing everything that one can to help staff become as unified as possible around the company's goals," he says. "It is the same for any organisation - staff need to know what their company is all about."

Telecom's intranet also allows staff to email the company's senior management such as chief executive Theresa Gattung and Simon Moutter its chief operating officer with questions about the company's products, performance and comments about the firm in the media.