Over a quarter of employees don't know company protocol for sharing business info
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There is a plethora of tools for information sharing in the workplace, yet these tools no longer seem to be effective for employees. Employees are drowning in data and are unable to find what they need, according to a new poll.
The survey was taken by Kitchener, Ont.-based Intranet platform Igloo. It polled over 1,000 full-time employees to gauge the state of the digital workplace in the US.
Read also: 5 easy tips to improve your company's intranet - TechRepublic
The survey showed that although almost a quarter (23 percent) of employees say that it takes five to 10 minutes to find and access company documents, and almost a third of employees (32 percent) have avoided sharing a document or other asset with a co-worker because it would take too long for them to access it.
Even finding something simple -- like the company logo -- proves cumbersome to find, with 31 percent reporting that they would use a Google search to find it.
Even when a document has been retrieved, there is uncertainty. Less than half (48 percent) of employees who work in the retail vertical and 57 percent of marketing employees are confident that the document that they have retrieved is actually the most up to date version.
The average knowledge worker spends nearly 20 percent of their time at work looking for internal information or finding the correct colleague to help with specific tasks.
There should be an easy way for employees to find the latest information -- whether it is policies, procedures, documentation, or the company logo.
Read also: New rules at Google tackle trolls in the workplace - CNET
They should easily be able to access the security guidelines for sharing company information, yet 27 percent of employees are not familiar with their organization's security policies.
What is going wrong?
Organizational systems tend to have grown organically. In many organizations, there is no centralized location for guidelines, resources and governance documents.
Having a centralized zone where employees can access their brand assets and relevant information will speed up productivity.
Having a social hub will allow employees to keep in touch without the need to resort to other social platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn, although none out of 10 employees will connect with co-workers on Facebook anyway.
Read also: Most tech workers would ignore a call from their boss outside work hours
Managing these intranet-based resources will ensure its security and raise employee confidence about the intranet (less than half of employees feel that intranet information is secure).
Having correct information accessible for employees will make sure that confidential information remains safely within the firewalls.
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