People powered organisations need cohesive communications
Non-profit organisations and charities face many different challenges in comparison to commercial companies. The third sector is really special as the staff often have close ties to the organisation, and choose to work there. The employees, volunteers and trustees from varying backgrounds come for the love of the mission but they stay because of the culture.
A charity intranet has the same fantastic benefits as it does for all organisations, including hugely improving communication, collaboration and business processes, however it also strengthens and maintains the community and culture. Community is essential to ensure volunteers and employees enjoy their workplace, which reduces expensive and time-consuming staff turnover and attrition.
Charities may make great use of staff meetings and management briefings; sharing information in a timely sense is important for all organisations, but is also a challenge. Some top-down or project related communications can miss key workers, or can overlook the rapidly changing needs of front-line staff. An organisation with a mission needs to be able to direct the passion of its people, in line with its values, to create the results the service users require.
Meetings that are supported with online communications and reference materials can be instantly shared with the entire organisation, or a targeted subset. People can then react and share their knowledge and experience – more openly than with email. It’s important to provide opportunities for real participation, whether by simply adding comments on existing information or adding their own blog or discussion forum topic. A charity intranet provides a ‘bottom-up’ communication model which can highlight the frustrations and concerns of service users and the front-line staff – the people who know what’s happening on the ground.
A well-designed, charity specific intranet will reduce administration costs around processes, and the costs involved in communicating changes in legislation and governance. The intranet can be the single source for such reference materials and a platform for connecting people to the organisation and, crucially, to each other.
See more ways a charity intranet can transform processes and improve communications >>
Wedge Black will talk about the importance of cohesive communications in a charity organisation in a free online webinar which will take place on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM GMT
In this webinar Wedge Black, our resident intranet expert will discuss:
- Why people powered organisations need cohesive communications
- The cost of not providing a platform for work
- Creating change, not just doing business
Attend this event to discover how to:
- Spend less on administration and more on service users
- Empower users, reduce email strain and disseminate essential information
Reserve your place at the webinar today>>
Now you have the chance to WIN a free intranet for your charity worth £25,000 ($40,000) – not only do you get the software platform but also a complete intranet solution including:
- Unlimited user licenses
- Workflow and Forms
- Statistics and Search Analytics
- Blogging Tool and AD sync modules
- A dedicated project manager
- One year’s unlimited support and software update
- Accompanying consultancy sessions with our specialist intranet consultants, training sessions and a bespoke design – tailored for you exclusively by our in-house designers
‘Tis the season to be jolly with your intranet!
This year we wanted to share the great ways people have been using their intranet to celebrate the festive season. We asked our customers to give us their seasonal suggestions and then opened a poll where all of our customers could vote for their favourite Christmas creativity. Cate Stone from Thrive Homes was voted as the winner and she has won a fantastic Christmas hamper.
Thrive Homes ran a poll to let staff decide on the venue for the Christmas Charity and their Health and Safety office devised a Christmas Quiz to run over the festive period. Their community involvement team used the intranet to advertise for volunteers to help at a local Christmas event using the discussion forum function and then posted photos of the event on the intranet.
Affinity Sutton made great use of their intranet by opening forums asking for idea suggestions for the Christmas party and using polls for options and menu choices. They also used the blog on their intranet to announce updates and news articles to communicate the different office parties and links to who to contact. They use the free text widget and images to do a virtual advent calendar and use the festive widget pack.
Romec are offering employees the chance to use a forum to send online Christmas cards suggesting a donation to a charity for each person ‘@ tagged’ in the message. They also use unwanted Christmas presents as a way of driving the new ‘Buying and Selling’ area on their intranet.
Every year the Chair of Derbyshire County Council raises funds for a chosen charity through a Christmas raffle/auction of prizes donated by local companies. This year they are holding an online auction ‘eBay style’ via a dedicated top menu section. Each ‘lot’ is a separate discussion thread and bids are made by posting replies.
Severn Vale have used the forums for organising their office Secret Santa and other announcements including news articles regarding the customer winter party and office closure times. They are also using the calendars for Christmas celebrations and the staff children’s party and widgets on the homepage to highlight forums and events.
Waterstone’s have made their homepages festive using the gallery widget to put an advent calendar on our homepage – sharing shops’ top tips or favourite books for Christmas, or just a ‘Merry Christmas’ message. They have also set up a Christmas area, which pulls together all Christmas specific information via keywords.
HMV have a Christmas page on their intranet about the Christmas activity that is taking place in store including festive product sections, POS, trading activities and party details. They also have the Christmas edition of their internal magazine on display and festive colleague benefits.
Mosscare created a Christmas feel on their intranet using widgets and a discussion board to advertise the event. They followed it up with a photo gallery and an article. They also created festive and annual top ten lists to share the type of content staff had been viewing in a fun way!
Interact would like to wish every one a very Merry Christmas!
Interact Intranet Blog
This is the official blog of Interact, creators of Interact Intranet – collaborative and intelligent intranet software for companies with 100 to 10,000 employees.
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