Intranet Governance refers to an intranet's ownership and management model. A governance policy / strategy should set out how your intranet will be managed, clearly detailing what functions will be carried out and by whom. This blog explains why a governance policy / strategy is important and what it should cover. For more information, download our free guide.
Intranet governance is crucial for ensuring the efficient management of any corporate intranet.
The aim of an intranet governance strategy is to outline what your intranet aims to achieve, how everyone is involved, how it should be used, how it will managed on an ongoing basis and the process for change. It will include, among others, the following sections:
- Intranet Objectives
- Governance Model - Central or Local Control
- Roles and Responsibilities of Management Team
- Management
- Implementation
Intranet Objectives
The intranet is a key tool in enabling your organisation to meet business aims and objectives. While you may have several overarching business aims, there may be specific areas in which the intranet will play a significant role. These should be identified in your governance strategy. Examples include:
- Generating an engaged workforce who are clear about the company's direction, goals and ethics
- Providing a platform that enables employees to work more efficiently
- Allowing more precisely targeted and relevant communication with employees
Central or Local Control
In order to achieve a single, consistent intranet, the intranet should be primarily under central control. However, some elements (such as specific pages of the intranet) may be best managed separately, by individual users or departments. This can be achieved by enabling intranet pages (and their content) to be developed and owned locally by each business unit, whilst ensuring key components of the intranet are kept under the control of a central team. This structure is something that should be clearly defined in the governance strategy.
Roles & Responsibilities
How your management team is set up will vary from one organisation to another. You may have already discussed the best way to assign roles and responsibilities when you created your intranet steering committee. The governance document will set out these roles in detail. A key point to consider is the fact that for most of the team, their role in the intranet is additional to their full-time position so any extra roles they take on will need to be supported by the intranet steering committee and senior staff.
A governance strategy gives you the chance to make intranet roles and responsibilities official. Roles might include IT support / management for the intranet as well as content related roles such as contributors and owners/approvers and editors.
Intranet Management
How your intranet will be managed is vitally important. Everyone needs to be familiar with your intranet guidelines, outlining items such as:
- Intranet security and regulations
- Legal framework/protection
- How to use the brand/image and outlining the values of the organisation
- Publication guidance as to what is and what is not acceptable to avoid offence, harassment.
- Intranet structure/information finding.
Implementation
This part of your strategy is where you specify the processes colleagues need to undertake in order to use, edit, contribute and make changes to the intranet. It’s essential that the core processes are documented in order for all of your colleagues to understand and be able to reference material when adopting your intranet.
I hope this blog has given you an insight into what intranet governance is. If you would like help producing your own governance strategy, download our free guide. To find out how we can help you directly, Lets chat.
