By Gregg Apirian, Managing Director, Vignette.
What A Great 3 Days!
We recently had the honor of chairing the ALI 7th Annual Intranet & Digital Workplace Summit in San Francisco. It was great to meet all the attendees, but even greater to have walked away knowing that everyone thought the three days we spent together were incredibly useful. Some of us attended to find inspiration and others to provide inspiration, but we all walked away inspired and learned not just one but many things that we can take back to your companies.
While we discussed many topics, we all noted what our top takeaways were and to help; I’ve highlighted the top 10 key insights to help you communicate what you learned back to your peers at your companies.
Top 10 KEY INSIGHTS ALI 7th Intranet & Digital Workplace Summit
- Leadership Support
Having your executive leadership buy-in and participate is integral to your success. Get this right form the start. - Building Community
Just pushing content out doesn’t offer as much value to the community as thinking about how to build that community and correlate your content to the behaviors we want to see the community display. - Launch and Learn
While there is a good amount of time spent planing, designing and building digital solutions, remember your true learning about the effectiveness of your solution doesn’t start until you first launch. Take an iterative approach to launching, measuring and optimizing. - Don’t Overpromise
It is hard enough to get Leadership to buy in, support and participate with your new digital and technology initiatives. Start by recommending and committing to what is possible, not what they must have as these two things don’t always add up. - Understand Your Audience
Use varying research methods to understand what employees want, need and prefer so you can communicate with them the way they want and expect. - Learning Style
Are your employees visual learners? Auditory? Tactile? Other? Know how they prefer to consume content and communications. - Have A Change Management Plan
No one likes change, but when adding new digital tools or technology, change management is necessary. Find the right way to evolve your culture through change management. - Digital is a Team Sport
Working in Digital requires bringing together multiple people with specialized skillsets, at minimum ranging from strategy, design, development, QA, project management, and content creators and managers. - Measurement is Power
Define what success looks like and find modern ways to measure effectiveness. Working in digital provides great opportunity to measure and learn. - Brand Matters
Branding is more then a logo. Look to extend your employer brand narrative and visuals into your digital tools and technology.
This article was originally published on Vignette’s blog, The Watercooler.