An employee Gateway is a set of applications, probably having a common entrance point, that provides a set of services to the employee from the company they work for. These services may be items that make communication with management easier and more democratic, or they may be tools that allow the employee to more readily interact with HR. The gateway will provide a means of organizing these applications, ensuring security of employee information, and providing a means of managing both information outflow and information return.

The types of applications that would fit into an employee gateway might be viewed to fall into two groups: those that offer personal information to the employee (like 401K, benefits, etc) and those types of applications that allow the company to monitor and improve its internal processes that drive its business (feedback on sales, calendars, knowledge base, sales vision, etc.)

An employee gateway must offer the users access in a number of ways, there must be in-office access (typically PC's or devices spread around the office that provide information); mobile or out-of-office access that is done through wireless systems; and possibly by some more traditional mailing options like Fax and postal mail.

Businesses have more remotely distributed employee work bases, these need to be kept informed of the latest internal developments in the company. The tools to do this have traditionally be office centric (Notes, or Mainframe based items like OfficeVision), which don't help more externally situated employees. The business upside of keeping employees informed is based on two tenets: informed and aware employees are more likely to stay with the company, and the company needs to be aware of, and control how its employees are implementing the business plans. The longevity of employees cuts invisible costs of doing business by reducing turn- over and the resulting HR rehiring costs, it also has the upside of making employees ever more proficient in the company product. The second feature has to do with making sure that the cost of doing business is not diluted by inappropriate activity by employees, that all employees are being given the correct information, their questions are being answered with valid and pertinent detail, and that the company acts as a team to promote its business efforts. Without this concerted, planned, and controlled effort no plan will succeed, the gateway brings the possibility of providing the vision to guide the employees and also the feedback to make sure the vision is being carried out and being effective.

There are a number of business and technical issues that have to be overcome. Principal among these is the true worth of building a system the so vastly democratizes the employee position and could potentially generate so much feedback data that making sense of it all could derail the whole effort. The perceived value is in the ability to implement new policies effectively, in a shorter time, at less cost, if these are offset against increased infrastructure costs to keep the whole thing working then it will fail. Some of the technologies that will be required are still in their infancy (i.e., wireless communication of textual or visual data) this will increase the risk in implementing this, and if the technology fails to deliver then a large group of employees will not be included in the system - reducing system effectiveness. Employees may also find the system intimidating if they don't like the concept of providing their say in the proceedings that will be projected by the system, alienation of employees in this way is counter to the whole concept of the system.