How do you establish employee communication when your employees are on the road?  You could use telephone conferencing, but this form of employee communication can be costly, especially if the person is in another country.  Email is an excellent form of employee communication, but it has a serious limitation: it is not real-time.  Of course, there is the option of employee communication through an Instant Messenger, but what if you have dosens of employees on the road?  How are you going to Instant Message so many people at the same time?  And if you try to invite all of your employees to a public chatroom, you risk having private communications being leaked to outsiders, who could come in the chatroom at any time.  Therefore, the most appropriate solution for employee communication is a private website.

What is a private website?  A private website is a site that is restricted for a particular group.  A typical private website for a company would include a section with general news, a chat room for employee communication and, depending on the nature of your business and  a section where company assignments or tasks are posted.  To enter into a private website, an employee would have to be granted access.  Once they are granted permission, they enter through a designated user name and password.  This can be issued through you or by themselves; both are equally effective.  Just make sure you provide means if the employee forgets what their password is.  Most webmasters do this through the use of security questions, which are chosen during the signup process.  These questions will usually relate to a person’s private life in some way.  For example, they could ask what their mother’s maiden name was, or what school they attended.  Regardless of the type of question selected, once the user forgets their password, this question would show before they are allowed access to their password again.  If it’s answered correctly, the employee will regain their password and/or be given an opportunity to change it. 

So, how do you go about creating a private website for employee communication?  It doesn’t have to be very elaborate.  In fact, a simple message board service would do, though you’ll want something more than just Yahoo or AOL Groups, since these are quite limited.  What you will need is a message board and chatroom script.  Usually, these come as instant webpages that can easily be incorporated with your company’s regular website.