A more accessible intranet? Try offering a game, or multiple channels

Romec is a complex organization, to say the least. And its staff is every bit as diverse.

The company, which began as the United Kingdom’s Royal Mail Engineering and Construction division, now offers facilities-management services, cleaning, fire and security systems, office management and more.

Its workforce is “quite dispersed,” Nigel Williams, intranet manager for Romec, told the hosts of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum’s IBF Live program this week. In fact, 82 percent of Romec’s intranet users access it remotely, he said.

Moreover, about one-third of Romec’s employee base is 50 or older, and a good number of employees are what Williams calls “technophobic,” so it was a tough hill to climb when it came to getting employees involved.

But Romec aimed to pull together its various knowledge silos. So last year the company launched its intranet along with a game that encouraged users to do searches, find various sections and enter forums to find the answers to questions. Of some 4,000 employees, more than 1,000 submitted answers to the quiz, in hopes of winning a trip to New York.

“It is amazing how something kind of simple like that can generate a reaction like that,” said Paul Miller, CEO of IBF.