Internal Content Alignment in a Multinational Organisation: Global Intranet Content Appreciation Within ING Group

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the appreciation and preference of content published on the intranet portals of ING Group. In a large, international organisation, successful Internal Communication has direct influence on achieving the organisation’s goals (Yates, 2006). With a new, centralised intranet to be introduced, ING Head Office in Amsterdam wanted to investigate the ways in which the published content was received by employees throughout the world. The focus of this study is on the presentation of the content in terms of the formats and the content themes on the intranet page of Global Head Office, and the content themes on local intranet pages of the individual Business Units in all countries with an ING presence. 34 participants were orally interviewed by two researchers in a total of 19 interview sessions, either in person or via a conference call. The interviews were conducted using a semi-structured approach and the participants’ answers were analysed qualitatively. On the Global Intranet, the visual presentation of content was preferred over textual formats. As for the content themes, innovation and (financial) results were preferred on the Global Intranet page. On the local intranet page, though, the people stories were most appreciated. Ideally, the internal communication of ING should make (more) use of the visual presentation of content. Still, all formats should suit the type of content and the goal of the message.