Feature
Generative AI is bringing significant change to workplace tools and platforms, and for some more than others, the facelift is a welcome change.
That's namely the case of the intranet, a tool that has been a staple of the workplace for decades. And for Mike Rothe, senior in-house consultant at Staffbase, this means finally being able to lift these internal communications portals out of the 90s.
A Modern Upgrade
The world is moving extremely fast, and organizations have to be nimble to adapt and navigate crises. This, Rothe said, makes strategic communication and content creation highly important, "but it has to be done right," he said, "and that takes time."
Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2023, an annual report on internal communication trends globally, found that the top challenge for communicators today is lack of time and capacity to develop strategies.
And that's exactly where Rothe believes generative AI can help, as the perfect companion tool to save communicators valuable time so they can focus on the tasks and strategies that drive the most value for their company.
“Often, the content strategy is neglected because communicators are too busy dealing with ad-hoc comms requests or repetitive tasks,” he said. “Instead of time spent formatting or summarizing text, generative AI can now help communicators focus on their comms content strategy and invest their time in staying at the forefront of what is important to their audience.”
Rothe believes integrating generative AI to the intranet can help create clearer, crisper communications and ensure brevity and clarity across all channels, thanks to AI-powered content optimization. In his view, an intranet strategy that embraces the benefits of generative AI leads to:
- Gold standard content creation and editing
- Increased efficiency
- An end to writer’s block
- Ability to focus on driving change and transformation
“The future of communications and intranet administration is here now, and it is augmented,” he said. “AI systems should be designed so that humans and AI can work together, not against each other, to create best-in-class content."
Related Article: How to Develop an Internal Content Ecosystem
3 Approaches to Using GenAI for the Intranet
Generative AI is helping revolutionize intranets in several ways.
For Alok Shankar, engineering manager at Oracle, the technology is enabling the development of new intranet strategies through more efficient content management, automatic content updates and greater accuracy of reporting. GenAI can personalize the employee experience by tailoring content to individual roles and interactions and streamlining information retrieval by condensing lengthy documents into succinct summaries for quick and effective access.
He categories the way companies are tapping into generative AI for their internal communications into three main approaches:
Approach 1: The Ban
At this point in time, there is a large proportion of companies concerned about their IP and banning any external or internal use of generative AI. These companies, Shankar said, are disabling major generative AI websites or resources from their intranet, so employees or users within the intranet cannot access the tools.
Approach 2: The Private Model
Tech giants such as Meta, Google and OpenAI, among others, have, of course, a different approach. They've developed their own models, so their intranet more likely has policies that allow only internal generative AI tools. It enables employees to take advantage of the technology, while still protecting their IP.
Approach 3: The Public Model
The third approach entails taking public models and adopting them internally, while not allowing the tool to store data outside the confines of the intranet. Many companies have used LLMs to develop internal code generation helpers or other generative AI features specific to their needs by taking a public LLM and training and running it internally, without having it access the internet.
“It is understandable that the adoption of generative AI raises questions about strategy, integration and ethical considerations,” Rothe said. “To develop an efficient strategy the approach should be holistic, focusing not only on technological implementation but also on transparency, data security and continuous learning.”
He said in deciding how to utilize GenAI for their intranet, companies should consider the following:
- Needs-based strategy: Start by understanding the unique needs and challenges of employees, paving the way for a tailored AI implementation.
- Bias checks and accuracy: Regular content reviews and feedback loops ensure the accuracy of AI-generated content, mitigating biases and maintaining trust in the strategy.
- Training and onboarding: Comprehensive training sessions will help employees adapt more easily to the augmented intranet experience.
- Transparent and ethical AI: A commitment to transparency and ethics ensures data privacy and builds trust among employees.
Related Article: The Best Intranets Today Are Swiss Army Knives
Fundamental Strategies and Questions
In principle, GenAI and LLM technologies offer the opportunity to significantly enhance the effectiveness of intranets, which for the longest time have been plagued by challenges such lack of engagement, clunky search features and difficult to use and manage.
Maulik Bhagat, executive vice president at management consultancy AArete, said the solution to this isn't simply to integrate new technologies but to first go back to the basics: what purpose do intranets serve?
If the organization mainly relies on the intranet to disseminate corporate communications, he said, it might be more interested in content-drafting and content-filtering capabilities (based on user preference and relevance). If the organization relies on the intranet as a significant source of knowledge management, then it might focus on effective use of GenAI and LLMs to allow for seamless and natural language-based search and summarization capabilities.
“In any intranet strategy, the two aspects that would be most essential for an organization to plan for are managing data privacy, confidentiality and security risks and monitoring ROI for this technology, both initially and an ongoing basis,” Bhagat said.
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Like with any other technology, how it is implemented and governed will determine whether GenAI and LLMs improve or ruin any use cases.
“A well-architected enablement of the intranet through GenAI should drive higher employee engagement, seamless and intuitive content search, and next-level knowledge management and sharing, while reducing inefficiencies and effort redundancies," he said. "This will essentially make the intranet serve as the organization’s collective brain and memory bank."
Rushing to adoption isn't necessarily recommended. Bhagat said there is a very good chance that organizations will experience negative implications if the strategy lacks governance on the content that is being fed into these LLMs of if there is a lack of controls on protecting and accessing confidential or private information.
“If the best practices on 'what to do and how' with the information provided by the GenAI-supported intranet aren’t defined and adhered to,” he said, "and if one of these negative implications ends up resulting in a breach in the use of confidential data, then it certainly could lead to reputationally and financially disastrous consequences.”
Related Article: What Purpose Does Your Intranet Serve?
The Role of the Enterprise Business Strategy
Building a strategy, as organizations would do for any other endeavor, is key. And Iliya Rybchin, a partner with consulting firm Elixirr, believes this one should not be merely an intranet strategy. Before even considering developing a new intranet strategy to meet the challenges of generative AI, organizations need to answer a simple question, he said: Is the intranet is a collection of content or a collection of knowledge?
"The distinction may seem subtle but in reality, it's significant,” he said.
Most intranets are merely content collections, with a lot of company documents and information organized, stored, indexed and archived. Employees look for what they think they need and pull off various content assets, which they then convert into knowledge. Generative AI offers the opportunity for the intranet to be a repository for knowledge, Rybchin said. So rather than simply collect the content assets from the internet, users can actually pull insights and conclusions based on that knowledge.
Yet, he said, that doesn't mean developing an AI-specific strategy.
"Companies have gone a bit overboard in creating strategies for everything. A company should really have only one strategy, which is the overarching enterprise strategy for the entire business, set by the senior leadership team and approved by the board. Everything else is merely a collection of tactics that are in the service of the enterprise strategy," he said.
Unfortunately, he too often sees companies take the multi-strategy route, particularly with new technologies or innovations or areas that are outside their core. Meanwhile, he said, generative AI is just like the internet, cloud or digital tools that exist to deliver value to the business in support of the overall strategy. It needs to be looked at through the lens of how, independently and collectively (with the other enablers), it delivers on the mission, vision and goals outlined in the enterprise strategy.
The best way to develop an AI strategy, Rybchin said: Start with the enterprise strategy and develop tactical solutions that enable the enterprise to achieve its stated business goals.