How to make the most of the 10 minutes employees spend on the intranet

How can you capitalise on the small window of time employees spend on the intranet to get eyes on your key messaging? We probed the world’s premier intranet specialists and thought leaders to get their advice on how to make the most of the average 10 minutes employees spend reading news on the intranet each day.

The key advice is to ensure employees can easily navigate the intranet, while content must be written and presented in way that is easily digestible.

SWOOP Analytics’ benchmarking of SharePoint intranets found employees spend, on average, 17 minutes a day visiting the intranet, while the average time spent reading news pages ranged from 4-16 minutes a day. News page editors can therefore expect to have an average 10 minutes per workday of an employee’s attention.

Susan Hanley, Microsoft SharePoint and M365 specialist.

Microsoft SharePoint and M365 specialist Susan Hanley says with only 10 minutes of employees’ attention per day, news articles need to be written in a way people can easily understand, and they must be targeted to the right people, with a call to action if needed.

Achieving this may require news authors to have specific training.

“I firmly believe that we need to make sure that all news authors understand how to write a post so that it has a chance to get read – which may mean additional training,” Susan said.

“I still see corporate comms publishing news articles that start with; ‘Dear Colleagues’, or have vague titles or images that have nothing to do with the message of the post, or where you need to read the entire article to understand the main message.

“If we want to encourage people to read news posts, they need to have the summary up front and they need to be much shorter than what I typically see. 

“If we only have 10 minutes of attention – and I think that is very generous – we need to make every minute count and write and name articles that will drive action and leverage personalisation and targeting so that the most relevant messages are prioritised for readers.”

Chris Harrer, Assistant Vice President, Internal Communications, Comcast.

Chris Harrer, Assistant Vice President, Internal Communications – Digital, at US-based technology and entertainment giant Comcast, also thinks 10 minutes a day of employees’ attention on the intranet could be on the generous side.

Which is why, Chris says, it’s important for intranet managers to work with the communications team to make sure content is easy to digest and quickly accessible. That way, news items will have an impact on employees and gain their attention.

“Tone and writing style have a huge role to play with capturing employees’ time and attention,” he said.

“Creating engaging and visual content is key to content success.”

Sharon O’Dea, co-founder, Lithos Partners.

Sharon O’Dea, co-founder of Lithos Partners, a UK-based digital communication and collaboration consultancy, agrees the key to making the most of the small amount of time employees spend on the intranet is to make news easy to digest.

Sharon says there’s often a huge disconnect between the way content is written and the finite time employees have in their day to consume it. She says internal communicators need to use their 10-minute window wisely and always keep their user front of mind.

Sharon says intranet pages need to be written and designed with the end user – the employee – in mind.

“Communicators are often guilty of an excessive focus on making it easy to publish, rather than easier to read,” she said.

“But there are vastly more readers than there are producers, so from a productivity perspective alone that has an impact.

“Comms that work for how people work – that fits into the time and space in which it’s consumed – tends to have more impact.”

Sharon recommends thinking about employees’ work practices to shape intranet content to suit.

“These help define the opportunity window for reading news and therefore the optimal length of an article,” she said.

“Is 10 minutes best as 1 x 10 minutes read, or 10 x 1 minute reads? Understanding real world work practices will help define this.” 

Jamie Stokes, Director, Digital Communications, Cox Enterprises.

Jamie Stokes, Director, Digital Communications at Cox Enterprises, America’s largest private broadband company, says the way to make the most of the 10 minute window is to understand the most popular areas employees are visiting on the intranet and push important information in those locations.

“For example, we noticed employees would go to a profile drop down menu on our intranet to clock in/out,” Jamie said.

“We added a news link in that drop down menu to expose our content in that key area.”

Jonas Bladt Hansen, co-founder of Next Level IC.

Keeping in mind you have about a 10 minute window of time to capture an employee’s attention, Jonas Bladt Hansen, co-founder of Danish internal communications consultancy Next Level IC, says news needs to be communicated in a way employees can skim, and if they want more information, they can find it.

“Having the 10-minute window in mind, I would suggest making sure they design the news in a way that serves all their audiences, which are the skimmers, swimmers and deep divers,” Jonas said.

“Often, the content is primarily designed for the deep divers which I believe make up around 2-5% of the readership. Often, you must read everything, or watch a full video, or read through a 50-page long presentation to understand the message.

“We must see our roles as curators, helping people to get the most important news and messages fast. And if someone would like to know more, they can dive deeper. But not the other way around!”

Jonas also flags that the more time employees spend on the intranet does not necessarily equate to success.

“In general terms, I would say that it’s not a success criterion to get people to spend more time on the intranet. It all depends on what they do when they are there,” he said.

“If they are spending five minutes searching for something that should take 10 seconds to find, that’s not the kind of ‘engagement’ we would like to see.”

James Robertson, owner, Step Two.

James Robertson, owner of Australian-based intranet consultancy Step Two, says the focus should not be about how much time employees spend on the intranet but how useful it is.

“The goal must be to make the intranet more useful, and then as long as employees know about the improvements delivered (a step often missed), then usage should naturally follow,” he said.

It makes sense, James said, to capitalise on the time employees are using the intranet by ensuring some of this time is spent reading company news.

“A balance will clearly need to be found between writing longer, more engaging news items, versus a larger number of shorter messages covering a wide range of key topics,” he said.

James said the user experience is also key to a successful intranet, to reduce the time taken to complete tasks on the intranet.

“This can be achieved by providing navigation that makes sense to people, and publishing pages that quickly give clear answers to the questions at hand. In this world, reducing time spent on the intranet is considered a mark of success,” he said.

Suzie Robinson, consultant, ClearBox Consulting.

Suzie Robinson, consultant at specialist intranet consultancy ClearBox Consulting, says to make the most of the 10-minute window, publishers should ensure news is presented in a suitable manner. This could be short videos, or the use of images, podcasts or plain-speaking articles. And don’t be afraid to tap into other communications channels to reinforce key messaging.

“Ultimately, learning from what format works best for your organisation’s audience is as important as learning when is best to publish,” Suzie said.

“There’s no harm in trying new ways of communicating effectively using different delivery styles, as long as it’s being done with your audience in mind.

“The relevance of other communication channels shouldn’t be ignored here, too. All communication channels should have a clear purpose, which will help people decide where they are going to spend their time and see certain types of messages.

“So, while the intranet can (and, in my opinion, should) be a central news repository, that doesn’t mean that messages shouldn’t be reinforced elsewhere.

“Many intranet platforms can now help with managing a multi-channel approach, but there are likely to be channels that are managed outside of the intranet. These channels can direct people back to the intranet for more information but will also help to reinforce key messages.”