We have been using an intranet system that is loosely a bunch of word documents converted into html and posted up on one server. A few people have gone to the extreme of using Publisher so as to make the “pages” a little more exciting, but that is the extent of our current intranet.
Our new fancy intranet will more closely resemble a regular web page which is more familiar to everyone. Our vendor offers standard elements such as calendar tools, classified ads, employee directories, news and events, and quick polls. Adding many of these elements, some pictures, and allowing users (staff) to enter their own info into many of these tools will create a greater sense of community. We are also hoping that along with the ‘sense of community’, we will create better communication to everyone….and I’ll digress here….we were a hospital of 750 about 7 years ago, we are now at 2400 staff and growing as a new cancer centre is built as well. One of our biggest complaints from staff is the loss of the small community hospital feel and the lost/miscommunication that goes along with a larger facility. We hope that their will be better communication from the top down and amongst departments individually. The ability of the staff to enter in their own classifieds (based on acceptable standards) and upcoming events will create a great sense of buy in from our staff. Time will tell for sure for all of these “hopefuls”.
One of the first things though that our vendor will help us with before we even get adding content is to do the 80/20 rule with our Structural Site Map. This is basically the layout of our top tier categories that will be seen on the home page (i.e. HR, Directory, Education, Programs & Services, etc). Then the tiers that go under each of these are the components of these categories (HR – careers, employee wellness, benefits, etc) then so on and so on. Basically it covers all the category pages a user could navigate through.
What is nice here is that our support at our vendor LMS company will take our existing internet, and some other places to help set up this site map initially. This will then give us something to work from to build where we hope to go with the new intranet.