Does IT have to maintain ownership for intranet administration? We cover 4 basic tips to distribute intranet administration including; assigning team/department site ownership, delegating application ownership, providing intranet design rights, and simplifying intranet administration.
The intranet is often thought of as an ‘IT Program’. It is software after all, and IT is typically in charge of purchasing, managing, and maintaining company software. But considering how many employees from multiple departments rely on your company intranet, should IT really be solely responsible for intranet administration?
As a best practice, intranet administration and ownership should be put into the hands of those who actually want to do it. IT is usually so busy with their current job tasks, they don’t want to take on the extra responsibility of administering the intranet. And the rest of your employees don’t want to wait for their intranet requests to be approved when IT finally has time. Instead, with the smart delegation tools built into your intranet, anyone who wants to be an intranet administrator can have the power to do so. Below are 4 basic examples of how you can break up intranet administration and ownership to take the responsibility off of just IT.
1. Assign Site Ownership
A simple and effective way to divide intranet administration and ownership up among various employees is by assigning a site owner for each Team/Department Site on your intranet. For example; having the HR Manager as the site owner of the HR site. This allows them to be solely responsible for their Team/Department Site. Anytime an employee needs to upload a document or file, make a change or add or remove content, their request will be sent into an approval stage. From there, an automated email will be sent to the HR manager notifying them of the action their employee is taking, allowing them to either approve or reject the request.
This makes intranet administration easier as the site owners only have to manage small areas of the site. It also helps to ensure content is relevant and up-to-date.
2. Delegate Application Ownership
There are a number of features you can use to keep employees informed, such as:
- Storyboard
- Company News
- What’s New Feed
- Internal Blogs
- Discussion Forums
These features are designed to share information with a large audience. Another way to divide intranet administration is by choosing application owners rather than having IT responsible for posting this information. This gives certain users ownership rights over various applications, allowing them to share information with the whole company. A best practice for this is putting executives in charge of applications that typically have important information, news, and announcements to share. Having people that actually use key applications in charge of them makes it easy for them to be updated, rather than leaving it in the hands of IT.
Many of our customers include a CEO Blog on their intranet, where leaders in the organization share stories, general information, positive feedback, company announcements, and more.
3. Provide Intranet Design Rights
With all the other daily job tasks IT is responsible for, the last thing on their ‘to do’ list is intranet site design. However, having a visually pleasing design and intuitive intranet architecture is a key component in intranet adoption and engagement.
In order to ensure your intranet design is being updated and maintained on a regular basis, you can assign intranet design owners. This takes intranet administration off the already too busy IT person and puts it into the hands of someone who wants to do it.
At Intranet Connections, our resident Graphic Designer has taken on updating our intranet design. Every season he updates the design to something festive, such as our current Halloween theme.
4. Simplify Intranet Administration
Simply dividing intranet administration up amongst various employees makes maintaining your intranet much easier. In addition, it ensures all content on your intranet stays relevant and up-to-date. The above are just a few examples of ways you can take intranet administration off IT’s plate, and share the responsibility with employees who actually want to do intranet administration.
What do you do to make intranet administration easier for your organization? Share with us in the comments section below.
Also, if you wish to get a detailed report on where you stand and resources to help you become a stronger communicator in the workplace, you can take our Internal Communications Assessment now. To start your internal communications journey with IC, book a FREE DEMO call with us, and never stop thriving!
Note: this post was originally published in 2015 and updated in 2019 to reflect accuracy.
