Is anyone actually reading this?!?

The folks have been in town for a couple of weeks…and I’ve been a bad blogger…but I got to go lava hiking, beer tasting, and touring Central Oregon. So no complaints.

And actually…being away from the keyboard and the fact I didn’t really miss anything, got me thinking. Well, this and some stats that have been swimming around my brain. More than 50% of our employees have their own company issued PCs. Yet, most of the stories we publish on our intranet, get about 17-33% readership. On wildly read stories (those about money) get up to 90%. These are approximate numbers…even so, most of the time we’re only reaching a fraction of employees…and still the business does just fine.

Do employees need to know everything about the business to be productive, happy, and intelligent employees? Probably not. And the information they do need to know, they’ll find when they need it, or be told by their managers.

So what to do?

I may be writing myself out of a job, but I suggest paring back on the amount of information communicators put out. Improve the quality (most of it is pretty bad…a lot of marketing, buzz words, and limp writing). Organize the intranet so information is easy to find. Use RSS so employees can opt into the information they need to do their jobs well (…and trust that they’ll figure out what they need to know). Then reserve the right to push important information to employees through their managers…that way it’s more likely they’ll get the info, and do something with it.

I think this is especially relevant to big organizations that get bogged down by too many, redundant comms. So before you set out some elaborate comms plan, ask yourself: Is anyone actually going to read it? And if they don’t, will it be a big deal. If the answer’s no. Don’t write it!