This coming weekend, my family is going to dive into our annual spring cleaning ritual.  My teenage and tween daughters have been rolling their eyes and sighing since we brought the topic up this past weekend but with warmer weather and a year full of dust bunnies and clutter to deal with, its time to purge and get the house in shape.  Don’t tell my daughters, but I’m also not looking forward to the task but once it’s done, there is something satisfying to see all that trash at the curb, the excess clothing bagged for the local charity and the chance to again park my car in the garage.

This got me thinking about spring cleaning for internal communicators.  Now don’t roll your eyes and start sighing.  Take a moment to think about all those great communications you wrote and posted this past year that are now out of date and cluttering your intranet, video server and other repositories.  Purge that organizational change memo from two org changes ago or the communications that promoted annual benefits enrollment in November.  Think of the continuing employee complaints of searches returning old and dated results and not the information they need.  And, think of it as a time to reflect on the great communications you created this past year as you purge and delete.

I recognize many of you are taking advantage of the tools provide by your CMS to regularly, and in many cases automatically, clear out the aging postings. But, from the conversations I’ve had with many communicators this past year, I hear that clutter is still a problem and one must choose to put off until another day.   On behalf of your organization, I plead with you to schedule time in the coming month to purge all those out-of-date communications that have accumulated during the past year.  And, while you are at it, take advantage of the features your CMS offers to automate this task and free you from this annual task next year.  You’ll feel better once it’s done and your audience will thank you for it.

Sunday evening, my family will celebrate with a trip to our favorite burger joint with the satisfaction of a job well done.   Clean out your intranet and treat yourself to your favorite indulgence.