Benchmarking Social Intranet adoption

This blog is the second part of our series on the adoption of social intranets. In part 1, we explained what adoption really means, how to measure it, and why it’s a continuous process. Now, we take the next step.

In this blog, we will discuss:

• Why benchmarking is important for adoption.
• How to compare your organization with others.
• What you can learn from the scores of different sectors and types of organizations.

Read Part 1: How to Measure and Improve Social Intranet Adoption
Read Part 3: How to Make Internal Communication More Strategic

Benchmarking

Another interesting way to assess where you stand is by comparing your organization with others. As mentioned earlier, benchmarking is now possible because we have successfully broken adoption down into 5 components, with values ranging from 0 to 100.

When we group the data from our existing clients, for example by sector, you can compare similar organizations with one another.

In the example below, the benchmark for construction organizations is shown on the left. It shows that Contribute is low, and Interact is certainly not high. View is quite good. This profile aligns with the "Informing" approach, or top-down broadcasting.

To the right of that is an anonymized example of a construction company, an existing client. The light-colored section shows where the client’s graph overlaps with the benchmark. The dark green indicates that the client performs better in that area, while the light green shows where the benchmark scores higher. It is noticeable here that Contribute and Interact are lower than the benchmark, while View and Visit are higher. This indicates more top-down communication than the benchmark. If the client wants to increase adoption, the first logical step would likely be to encourage staff departments to share more actively on the platform.

Another example: the Childcare sector. Contribute and Interact are clearly higher here, while View is much lower. This is a profile that fits much more with Engaging. The client 'Childcare Y' scores fairly similarly to the benchmark.

The benchmark below for the Healthcare sector is quite similar to that of the Childcare sector. On average, a broader range of content is shared, but there is less interaction. 'Healthcare Organization Z', shown in the right image, performs much better than the benchmark. This is a platform where active collaboration and widespread knowledge sharing take place. A clear example of Co-creating.

Finally, here is an example of a very different use of Plek as a community platform. This has a direct impact on all the scores. Visit is much lower than on an intranet, which makes sense, as people don’t come here daily to work. Contribute and Interact are low in relation to the potential of Reach, but high compared to Visit. So, the people who do visit are relatively active. 'Community Q' in the image on the right has a large inactive community. Our advice here is to consider a reactivation campaign or clean up the membership list.

Improve adoption

We support clients who want to improve their adoption by starting with an analysis of where they currently stand:

• Are the goals and ambitions clear, and are they still relevant?
• What is the current ambition level of Internal Communication?
• How does the organization score on the 5 components of the Engagement Score?
• How does this compare to a year ago?
• How does the organization score compared to others?

The result of this analysis leads to a more concrete goal, such as "We want to increase Visit to..." or "We want to raise Contribute to...".

A more specific goal makes it easier to choose a concrete approach. To do this, it’s smart to use an impact-complexity matrix to distinguish between quick wins (e.g., "stop the email newsletter") and more complex projects (e.g., a new way of working for team leaders).

Curious about the possibilities?

One of our consultants would be happy to tell you more about what Plek can do for your organization. For more information, visit plek.co  

or book a free demo here.