Companies Adopt Employee Portals, Not Portal Best Practices

The concept of employee portals — internally facing sites that serve workers' information and self-service needs — reached its eighth anniversary by the end of 2006. In the Employee Benefit News/Forrester Research 2006 Benefits Strategy And Technology Study, of 800 benefits executives surveyed, one-third say they currently offer portals to their employees. This overall percentage didn't change much in the past year: Companies of different sizes deploy employee portals at different rates and for different business purposes — but a surprising percentage failed to adopt fundamental best practices around portal sponsorship and governance.