Yesterday, I attended an event at Microsoft called “The Human Intranet“, hosted by Content and Code and Engage Group. Given our location, there was an understandable focus on the SharePoint 2010 solution but helpfully, the principles and ideas would be applicable to any ECM/CMS that supports social features. This post won’t focus on the benefits — many intranet commentators have covered that ground very well — but I do want to share one vital message: Going social on your intranet is not the utopian solution to all your company communication and collaboration evils. In fact, it comes with its own significant overheads.

Many intranet commentators have noted the importance of accurate employee profiles in building the enterprise human network and fostering a culture of collaboration. People are at the heart of your business and should be at the heart of your intranet.

Identifying the fields that resonate with your business is an art (and will be the subject of a future post), but encouraging your employees to complete their profile is a ubiquitous challenge for all intranet teams. Here are a few ideas that will help.