Today’s workforce is demanding a consumer-grade experience—like they enjoy in their personal lives—to access HR services, and bring about new levels of collaboration using social and mobile tools in the workplace. Some businesses are reluctant to invest more time and others to spend more money on their legacy corporate intranets, what remains of a once-painstaking effort by HR to improve service delivery. Envisioned as a single online destination to meet workforce information, transaction and collaboration needs while delivering real-time business and talent intelligence to executives, first-generation intranets didn’t fail because they were a bad idea. These intranets failed because HR and IT didn’t create a compelling and valuable user experience. Cloud, mobile and social technologies offer ways to expand the delivery of HR information to employees using a set of robust tools that provide anytime, anywhere access to organizational information, knowledge, expertise and tools—all designed with the employee experience in mind. This critical shift in providing a compelling employee experience is allowing portals to have not only a dramatic impact on productivity and efficiency, but employee engagement as well.

1. ITWELCOME TO THE SOCIAL INTRANETHR WELCOME TO THE SOCIAL INTRANET
WORKERS companies OF THE WORLDWORKERS companies OF THE WORLD

2. Some businesses are reluctant to invest more time and others
to spend more money on their legacy corporate intranets, what
remains of a once-painstaking effort by HR to improve service
delivery. Envisioned as a single online destination to meet
workforce information, transaction and collaboration needs while
delivering real-time business and talent intelligence to executives,
first-generation intranets didn’t fail because they were a bad
idea. These intranets failed because HR and IT didn’t create a
compelling and valuable user experience.
Rather HR and IT solved their own needs. They made work easier
for HR content providers, not consumers. They created a “site”
to centrally manage information, content and access to tools
with the hope that employees and executives would visit
and consume all that HR had created (or linked to),
then regularly return for more. But during this
time, HR and IT failed to anticipate how
The reasons behind their decisions
are varied.
quickly information would become stale, links would become
outdated, and processes would change.
Growing dissatisfaction with corporate intranets led some
businesses to revert to the inefficient process of employees
directly contacting HR representatives—perpetuating HR’s
administrator role and limiting HR opportunities to provide
more strategic value to the business.
Other companies still maintain their intranets to access certain
talent management functions or static workplace information
(e.g., opening a job requisition, accessing a performance
review system or looking up benefit plan details). However,
first generation sites are doing little to decrease HR burdens
and even less to increase the agility of the business.
Old Systems in a New WorldOld Systems in a New World
1

3. Today’s workforce is demanding a consumer-
grade experience—like they enjoy in their
personal lives—to access HR services, and
bring about new levels of
collaboration using social
and mobile tools in
the workplace.
the people have spokenthe people have spoken
2

4. 3
the revolutionthe revolution
Since the inception of
corporate intranets,
computing and personal
investment in information
technology has evolved.
With employees now bringing personal
expectations of what is most engaging
into the workplace, HR and IT are being
asked to do more than ever before to
drive value. HR responsibilities have
grown from process support of key
areas such as recruiting, performance
management, compensation management,
succession planning and learning to
process support, plus functional/
technology support and organizational/
business support, requiring HR and IT
to work harder, smarter and better
together to both address and lead the
transformation to greater business agility.
p
rocess suppo
rt
collaboration
Tools
wikis
social
networks
blogs
RSS
Syndicator
Apps &
Widgets
multi-
media
social
network
analysis
employee
engagement
informal
learning
customer
engagement
improve
time-to-
productivity
speed
time-to-
marketing
Groups &
Forums
RECRUITING
PERFORMANCE MGMT
COMPENSATION MGMT
SUCCESSION PLANNING
LEARNING
RECRUITING
PERFORMANCE MGMT
COMPENSATION MGMT
SUCCESSION PLANNING
LEARNING

5. 8
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