Revving Up Communication — MAN Truck & Bus’s Successful Employee App and Intranet Launch

About the Company

Headquarters:

Munich, Germany

Founded:

1898

Employees:

40,000

Industry:

Manufacturing

man-case-study-customer-success-page-english-version-1-1

MAN Truck & Bus SE

MAN Truck & Bus SE is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of commercial vehicles and intelligent and sustainable transport solutions. In 2017, the company, which operates nine factories on three continents, introduced a local Staffbase employee app. The goal was to facilitate communication with the approximately 10,000 employees at the Munich site.

Two years later, the company-wide intranet followed, allowing the entire workforce to be regularly supplied with information.

Timeline

1. The Starting Point

In January 2017, MAN Truck & Bus launched a pilot project for the employee app myMAN for 10,000 employees at the Munich site. The app was used to reach employees without a desk workstation and served as a pure communication tool. Use cases of the app included news, forms, and pages.

2. The Launch

All these measures set the stage to achieve a critical mass of app users and paved the way for the project's success. The team worked long-term with creative gamification approaches to attract new users. For example, in December, an advent calendar was featured in the app, where users could win a trip to Bilbao for the launch of the company’s new generation of trucks, among other prizes.

3. The Major Project

In 2019, the time had come for the intranet relaunch for around 40,000 employees. The Staffbase Intranet was introduced as an extension of the app, which was easily achievable through an upgrade. Intranet content is mirrored in the app, which continues to serve as an information channel for blue-collar workers.

4. Current State

The employee experience intranet of MAN Truck & Bus is now the homepage for all MAN office employees. Via the app, employees from production, warehouse, or service have access to the same information. The communication team has successfully achieved the goal of broad and deep engagement with both channels.

"Launch is always just the first step. We've learned that maintenance is a constant process with great potential for learning and development."

Measuring successes with an internal dashboard

71 %

of all MAN employees worldwide are registered.

88 %

of users visit the channels regularly.

430000

page views per month.

More Responsibility in Local Teams

Multinationality

The decentralization of content responsibility not only provided enormous relief for the corporate team in maintaining approximately 600 pages and creating new content but also helped partially overcome language barriers.

Overall, there are 40 different spaces, 143 different user groups, 49 admins, and about 250 editors. Local content is published in the native language of the region as well as in English.

Are Intranet and App Identical Now?

MAN Truck & Bus aims to provide all employees with the same information. For this reason, the app and intranet are 99% identical. For IT security reasons, a few applications and services can be played exclusively on the desktop version.

Discover More About Our Employee App

man-case-study-product-screens-web-asset-240724-vw

Diversity

Addressing such a diverse target group is a particular challenge. It is especially challenging to address the entirety of the many globally distributed production sites and their blue-collar workers as well as the different departments with white-collar workers. "The main site in Munich often seems far away to employees around the world," says Tobias Müller.

The sales teams in many countries worldwide, with different languages and cultures, also challenge internal communication when it comes to getting information to everyone and ensuring it is understood by all. In addition, strategic messages from the company must be communicated to all employees and considered in internal communication.

Content in Three Parts

To address these challenges, Tobias Müller's team devised a content strategy. Both in the app and on the intranet, topics are played from three areas: local topics relevant to the respective sites; corporate information important to all employees; and departmental information, such as HR and sales. The content in these three areas is created according to three criteria: relevance, design, and locality.