Access points

To guard against previously mentioned publishing policies becoming barriers to gaining access to such information, the organisation must ensure that the information is not only available across all workstations but also provide access to the Intranet in all public areas throughout the organisation.

Employees gather, talk and share information in every conceivable location of an organisation - some instances are formally arranged as in the case of a business meeting, whilst others are informal and may take place in a canteen for example.

The content of the discussion may either be related to business matters, whilst others may relate more to personal interests such as inter-department sport or social events.

Regardless of the subject matter, providing instant access in the local vicinity to related information can only bolster the perceived value of the Intranet as the corporate memory and therefore help to achieve the critical mass needed to ensure its success.

Providing kiosks and workstations in areas such as rest areas, reception, canteens, meeting rooms, and near drink and snack vending machines will only help to normalise the culture of seeking information on the Intranet, whether it is checking the departmental diary in a meeting or checking the inter-departmental ‘Squash league’ during a coffee break!

Cultural aspects

Resistance to change is associated with any move to introduce new software and / or a radically different way of doing business than has gone before. The mere aspect of change and therefore imposed transition of working practices is enough to make the average employee perceive the action to be a potential increase to their personal workload. This is a typical threat perceived by the worker. A more politically sensitive aspect of change is when employees see change as undermining their responsibility or overall power-base in both the organisation and in the immediate structure of their business function.

The conventional notion that ‘knowledge/information is power’ may often be seen by departmental managers as a means of securing their position in the organisation and ensuring they maintain control over their respective subordinates. This personal position may not be conscious, but may be bolstered by a conditioning of the mind. This can be backed by over-zealous information security policies, convincing the individual that they are merely protecting the intellectual property of the organisation.

For the organisation successfully to share, utilise and create new knowledge, the manager has to be convinced that power does not lie in the protection of the information. True power lies in the ability to share and distribute information.

To nurture this mindset and encourage the sharing of information, organisations need to develop ways of rewarding such electronically-enabled social behaviour. Educational programmes highlighting the worthiness of information sharing and reward schemes formally integrated into appraisal schemes will help employees to recognise that the organisation is truly committed to supporting such a sweeping change in culture. Alongside objectives to improve productivity and business processes, personal objectives should be required to pursue initiatives to disseminate information more widely. Measures should be applied such as the monitoring of retrieval ‘hits’ to the department Intranet web site or feedback received centrally as to the usefulness of the site reported by users.

A case study: Xerox

The document management firm Xerox, is one company in which creating a knowledge-sharing culture was essential due to the company’s workforce becoming increasingly mobile. Working either at home or on the road, many of the company engineers were becoming isolated from their fellow workers and therefore denied access to the friendly advice, experiences and knowledge of others. The opportunity to solve problems collaboratively had also been dramatically reduced.

To alleviate this problem, the company created a web-based knowledge management system christened Eureka that first went Tive’ in 1997. The system was designed as a central ‘soft knowledge’ repository to enable engineers to share problem-solving tips and the kind of tacit knowledge often only stored in the heads of the individual workers.

Eureka was accessed via a standard web browser requiring nothing more than a password to gain entry to the system. This allowed employees to use it anywhere.

Indeed, later research revealed that more than half of all users accessed Eureka from home.

The company quickly realised that, in order to ensure employees continued to use the system, contributions from the engineers themselves would be needed, to help keep the contents up-to-date and relevant. The problem presented to the system managers was: How do you motivate workers to submit useful information at the end of a long shift?

Initially, Xerox offered a bonus of $25 for each piece of information submitted that was not already in the company manual. However, 35,000 tips later the company decided they needed to take a less expensive tack!

The alternative approach proved to be simply to allow employees the reward of being acknowledged. It was realised that employees would still contribute to Eureka, without the financial incentive, if they were recognised as the contributors of their respective submissions with their name appearing on the system.

Xerox claim that Eureka is now so successful that it has moved beyond the realm of the 1,000 UK engineers and 18,000 engineers world-wide, to include the analyst, finance, logistics, and finance departments. Three years on from its inception, Xerox claim that Eureka is making a 5 percent difference to bottom-line performance.

Tangible benefits gained from knowledge management or knowledge sharing initiatives are often considered notoriously difficult to measure. So from where was this 5 percent figure derived?

Chris Wise, a European technology manager for Xerox says:

From a cultural perspective, some do’s and don’ts of Intranet implementation to be considered include:

• Fully understand the employee’s expectations and requirements
• Be very clear about what the Intranet can deliver
• Take a long-term view about content delivery, but think short-term about encouraging use of the Intranet
• Look for interesting opportunities to tie the Intranet into employee’s work
• Make sure it is easy to use
• Involve everyone at all stages
• Don’t promise the earth - honesty will gain you credibility in the long term
• Don’t ever assume anything
• Empower users with the ability to contribute
• Update the system daily - it must always have something fresh
  (Intranet Academy, 1999)

At this stage of an Intranet’s evolution it is clear that the end-user’s confidence in the reliability of the content has to be gained. They will also require an interface that is easy to use. In establishing a commitment on the end-users behalf and ensuring they return to the Intranet, certain factors can be identified that may help ensure progress in these areas. These factors will include (Curry and Stancich, 2000):

• How up-to-date the information is
• The proportion of broken or non-active links that exist
• Organisation and ease of navigation
• Presence of a named contact or not
• Format and content presentation
• Whether new content is in evidence or not
• The speed at which the information loads