Ineffective websites harm productivity

A two part article by Gerry McGovern that focuses on intranets, but the principles apply equally to any website or online tool that staff are expected to use as part of their day-to-day work.

Gerry talks about the hidden cost of doing nothing. It's pretty obvious that making things easier to use will increase staff efficiency and speed things up. But more than that: doing nothing to improve things that are blatently poor affect staff morale and this is closely linked to levels of customer satisfaction.

When you make life harder for your employees you reduce efficiency and affect morale-a double whammy. Employees hate these clunky, horrible processes that make their worklife a drudge... Employees are not dumb. They get the message of what senior management really thinks about them and their time.

In this piece, Gerry draws on a couple of short research papers:

• The High Cost of Doing Nothing - Ken Blanchard
• Saved Time, Saved Value - Celerant Consulting

Both can be downloaded as PDFs at the end of Gerry's articles.

Increasing employee productivity: Time is (still) money (Part 1) - article by Gerry McGovern

Time for intranet leadership: Time is (still) money (Part 2) - article by Gerry McGovern