Intranet quandary: Is home access your employees’ only access?

It’s a frustration point that CVS Caremark’s 170,000 retail employees don’t have in-store access to the company intranet, said Stan Dorsey, director of corporate communications for the pharmacy chain.

Bandwidth in stores has to be used for pharmacy work and sales, Dorsey said. On the list of priorities, getting floor employees onto the intranet is pretty low, he said. Plus, in-store workers don’t really have time for it.

“It’s more the nature of the work environment that’s the hurdle,” Dorsey told listeners to the Internet Benchmarking Forum’s monthly IBF Live (formerly Intranets Live) program.

CVS faces a challenge that lots of retail outlets, manufacturing companies and other businesses have trouble with, said Mike D’Angelo, a usability benchmarking expert with IBF.

“In other corporate intranet spaces, there are issues with people in large call centers who don’t have access to the intranet,” he said.