Help authors improve your intranet

Investing time in getting the words/images right can save hundreds of thousands of pounds in wasted staff time because your staff don’t have to wade through word soup.

If you are thinking of improving your intranet in 2023 then I really encourage you to think about training your intranet authors.

Setting platform choices aside, investing time in getting the words/images right can save hundreds of thousands of pounds in wasted staff time because your staff don’t have to wade through word soup.

I’ve taught intranet authors about:

  • how to order their ideas on the page,
  • how to use headings correctly so they improve search results
  • how to get their pages coming up in search
  • when to publish news and when to create pages and sites instead
  • how to put the foundations of good governance in place
  • how to make their content accessible not just for disabled people but also for neurodiverse people and of course “everyone”.
  • how to choose images and size them correctly.
  • how to tag things correctly
  • how to write hyperlinks correctly
  • consistency
  • contrast
  • balance
  • hierarchy
  • non-breaking spaces
  • responsive design (making pages adapt to mobile/tablet/desktop smoothly)
  • taxonomy and information architecture.

But don’t be fooled into thinking this is all technical stuff: it’s vital for all communicators to understand if you’re living and working in 2023.

If I can help with your intranet project this year, please drop me a line at andrew@andrewhesselden.com.

Rehearsing events

Rehearsals are a great opportunity to give presenters the feedback they need to help them get the outcome they want from face-to-face communications activities.

If I’m working with business leaders to produce an internal staff conference or a leadership town hall event, I like to organise a rehearsal for presenters to attend if they want to.

Continue reading “Rehearsing events”

Eliminating overwhelm by paring back

I’ve often eliminated comms activities by asking the question “What would happen if we didn’t do that or communicate that?”. In change comms I think you’d be surprised how often the answer is “not much” or “nothing at all”.

View post to subscribe to site newsletter.

My thoughts on modern employee communication…

I’ve never been a fan of employee newsletters. I think they are sometimes just communication for the sake of communication.

I studied UX design back in 2016 and my focus on comms in recent years has been about minimising overwhelm for staff and looking closely at the user experience of the Comms we push out or that employees consume.

And so I’ve often eliminated comms activities by asking the question “What would happen if we didn’t do that or communicate that?”

In change comms I think you’d be surprised how often the answer is “not much” or “nothing at all”.

I think our job as communicators of change is to make the complex feel easy and pumping out loads of push-comms on a topic tends to do the opposite. But it’s vital that anxious employees can find information if they want it.

I like to publish non urgent news on the intranet —as it happens— and then, as needed, send around an email pointing to recent intranet stories which has the dual effect of encouraging people to make good use of the intranet where invariably they’ll stumble across other things I want them to see or be aware of.

If I can help you reduce the overwhelm in your organisation and set your employees free to do their best work, then please get in touch with me.

Want to receive alerts when I add new blog posts?