FULL DISCLOSURE, I’m a bit obsessed with The Walking Dead. As I was catching up on the past two episodes the other night, I came to the realization that zombies or “walkers” and the environments they inhabit metaphorically resemble unengaged employees and traditional Intranets.

Bear with me on this because I swear you’ll start seeing my point.

Now, I want you to picture a horde of zombies in your head. They’re basically just lifeless creatures lingering about abandoned cities and towns that once thrived. Their sheer presence alone forces the living to seek alternative means for survival. Starting to see the parallels?

In the real world, the walkers are your employees, and unfortunately, there’s a global pandemic of unengaged employees and teams inside the workplace. Like walkers, the majority of employees are not engaged, lack motivation, and are less likely to put in extra time/effort to contribute to the goals of an organization. What’s harboring their continued detachment are outdated systems that do little to foster workplace engagement.

The small sliver of engaged employees (aka breathers) are having to seek outside means of communication and collaboration when their traditional systems fall short of expectations and don’t meet their needs.

Metaphor, crafted! Now on to the takeaway and really the whole point of this article.

Luckily, for us here in the real world, we’ve begun to see the rise of Intranet alternatives that SMB and Enterprise leaders (Operations & IT) can utilize to help their teams approach and turn the tide on this growing issue. Navigating the various options in Intranet platforms can be intimidating at first; however, I have provided three survival tips that will help guide your thought process and save you from losing your brains.

1) Mobility Matters

Mobile is a topic that is stressed everyday but it’s vital to individual and collective survival. With 7 billion people in the world, over 5 billion (75% of the world’s population) carry a smartphone. Mobile is transcending personal computing in terms of reach and is defining (through new interfaces) how we will transact with each other collaboratively, financially and socially.

2. Social Engagement & People Profiling

In a recent post, I addressed Social Scale and the importance of engaging at the individual level with those individuals who physically sit within your working space (Sets).

True social engagement isn’t possible without Intranet software that dynamically contributes to updating a user’s profile. It should monitor what the user publishes, what they interact with and even what they like and promote to others. Active user profiles are important as they drive collaboration and social engagement. Accurate user profiles underpin the following requirements:

• The frequency of good and relevant content at your fingertips
• Identifying people based on their knowledge and expertise can be used to quickly assemble project teams
• Employees searching for the contact details of other employees within the organization
• Discovering content based on what other people are viewing, liking and sharing

3. Resource Discovery

Many Intranets fail because they provide poor content visualization and search experience. We know that our brains are hot-wired to focus on things beyond text (images, videos, documents, etc.) and our communications are simplified and increasingly visual by the day. As content grows exponentially, the ongoing indexing and classification of content is fundamental in allowing users to identify the content that can satisfy their needs contextually.

Relevant and accurate information empowers employees to make more informed decisions. The quality of search results will also reduce the time an employee spends looking for information and therefore increase productivity and throughput. Intranet softwares should provide the following search functions:

• Indexing of document content at the time the document is uploaded
• Application of security to the search index
• Ranking and relevancy of search results based on key search terms and phrases
• Highlighting of key search terms and phrases within the document
• Metadata presentation — the author of the content, the date it was created and modified, versions, associations, etc.

These survival techniques simply scratch the surface of aspects to consider when choosing an Enterprise Social Network. Thankfully, freemium membership models are available that allow you to sign up and trial before having to commit to implementing throughout your entire organization. Use your brain and explore your options carefully. For those who continue to settle on outdated technologies and dormant systems, I’ll leave you with the following quote from Max Brooks:

“That’s the thing about zombies. They don’t adapt and they don’t think. Literally, you could have a zombie on one side of a chain link fence and you could be on the other side and they could be trying to get to you and six feet down could be an open door and they will not go through that door in the fence. That’s why they’re so scary.”

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If you have any questions about your next Intranet endeavor, please feel free to comment below or email me personally: cliff@zeroagency.com