inTrust Project Meeting

Date: 13 October 2005

Joint meeting hears intranets can be fun for staff and good for business

Our meeting on 13 October, ‘ inTrust project, a study into the level of trust in intranets’ was held jointly with both the Chartered Management Institute and the Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Jon Baptista from the London School of Economics set out to show his audience how an organic, behavioural approach to growing a technically good Intranet can reap business benefits. Using the example of research carried out at a large, local business, he persuaded us to leave our clinically clear but austerely boring intranet pages, packed with corporate documents, for a warmer, fuzzier world of gossip and personal chat. It seemed a good exchange to me, going to work to read the latest gossip! But there was something more subtle taking place among the users.

With the help of audio clips, we heard from staff who were now happily using their intranet because they found it interesting, not because they had to. And by implication, that meant they were reading more than just the gossip.

Did a warmer, behavioural approach really equate with trust? It had been crucial in improving communication between staff and senior management and the level of trust seemed to have improved from there on. How to achieve this warmth? That wasn’t so obvious but I detected some good intranet page design and copywriting in the background of the slides. If you’d like a closer look, please contact Audrey Philbrooks of the CMI for a copy of the talk handout.

Next meeting? – see our programme of events.