CIMMYT · 2014
International NGO Content Strategy
A content strategy for InSide CIMMYT, connecting employee needs across research, service teams, leadership, and regional offices to useful intranet features and editorial guidance.
An intranet needs content that supports people's daily tasks as well as their connection to the organization.
- My role
- Knowledge Management Communications Officer
- Period
- 2014
- Project focus
- Content strategy · Internal communications
At a glance
The work in context.
The challenge
Make internal information and accomplishments accessible across differences in geography, organizational structure, and knowledge.
My contribution
Authored the creative brief and communications strategy, mapping five stakeholder groups to intranet features and defining editorial products and writing guidance.
The takeaway
An intranet needs content that supports people's daily tasks as well as their connection to the organization.
The brief
InSide CIMMYT was planned as the primary internal communications tool for an international agricultural research organization. Its purpose was to make information and accomplishments accessible to employees, whether their colleagues worked across campus or across the world.
I wrote the InSide CIMMYT Creative Brief and Communications Strategy, dated March 20, 2014. The brief connected the organization’s communication needs to its intranet: who it needed to serve, the tasks it should support, and the editorial approach that would make it useful.
The institution’s SWOT analysis identified unclear roles and responsibilities, pressure from growth, and poor collaboration across disciplines. The strategy proposed a shared space where employees could understand each other’s work, find information, and contribute their own knowledge.
Design around different employee needs
The strategy mapped five stakeholder groups to specific content and features, taking their needs and technical experience into account.
Scientists and laboratory staff
Unit calendars, shared documents, collaborative writing, and scientific updates would support work within research teams. Discussion lists and shared presentations would connect colleagues working on related research. Travel and local lifestyle information would help staff moving between locations.
Service unit professionals
HR, communications, legal, and other service teams needed calendars, unit updates, shared documents, and discussions about professional practices. Accessible research updates would help colleagues outside scientific teams understand the organization’s work.
Senior leadership
The intranet would offer a central channel for institutional briefs, annual reports, partnerships, and organizational goals. Surveys would provide a way to collect staff input, while access to unit information would help leadership see work across the institution.
Regional offices
Staff in Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, India, and Nepal needed to schedule events, distribute documents, and connect with peers in other locations. Shared files would reduce reliance on emails with heavy attachments. Local bulletin boards and marketplaces would support each office’s community.
General staff and headquarters staff
Everyday tasks mattered too: finding the lunch menu, booking conference rooms, accessing the ICT helpdesk, and sharing local housing or items for sale. These practical needs gave the intranet a place in daily work and life.
Build an editorial program
The brief translated the intranet’s mission into editorial products and recurring opportunities to share knowledge:
- Make the organization visible. Department overviews, employee profiles, and program updates would help staff understand who did what and find colleagues across time zones.
- Make events and learning accessible. Videos, blogs, presentations, and workshop materials would reach people who could not attend in person.
- Recognize employees. Introductions, milestones, promotions, and transfers would help colleagues learn about each other and acknowledge their contributions.
- Support scientific communication. Guidance would cover media inquiries, interviews, presentations, and social media.
- Tell institutional stories. Project milestones, anecdotes, images, and archival material would connect current work to the organization’s history and mission.
- Invite participation. An “Ask A Question” feature would give staff a way to engage with program leaders and researchers. Homepage coverage would balance crops, programs, projects, gender, and regions.
Give contributors usable guidance
The strategy included a short intranet style guide. It established the name InSide CIMMYT, with the capital S representing “Social,” and proposed a professional but fun tone.
Writing guidance emphasized clarity for people who were not native English speakers, actionable links, and easy access to documents and related sites. The brief also identified the need to establish relevant metadata for organizing information and documents.
Read the original strategy
The original document brings together the institutional context, stakeholder needs, proposed editorial products, and intranet style guidance.