Stay connected: Adapting intranet needs at RETAL

Effective internal communications for a global company brings many advantages but can be hard to implement and maintain. With various stakeholders and their differing needs, creating an engaging communications strategy is an opportunity for commercial and organisational goals to be met. Following their intranet launch in 2019, global plastic packaging manufacturer RETAL shares how developing its intranet has been both more difficult and more rewarding than it expected – and how they had to adapt in response to Covid.

For traditional manufacturing companies, the understanding of what effective communication is and why it’s necessary can be the first hurdle in developing a communications strategy. Different stakeholders can see the value of communications in opposite terms, with the ROI hard to quantify, especially in the short term. Yet the cost of poor internal communications may only be seen when it’s too late, so proposing, agreeing to, and, crucially, getting the budget for, a corporate intranet is the first hurdle.

RETAL develops and manufactures plastic packaging solutions to customers in over 60 countries worldwide. The business was founded in 1994 and currently employs around 1,500 employees. Today, RETAL has locations worldwide including Eastern and Western Europe and the US, so its wide range of cultures both internally with employees and externally with customers and other stakeholders means that communication is key. Having historically relied on separate communication within each of its locations, the company realised that integrated internal communication could add considerable value to both its employee engagement and its bottom line – as long as it was done right.

In 2019, the organisation invested in a new corporate O365 intranet. The project was focused on delivering enhanced communication across its 15 factories.

Using an Attollo Intranet out-of-the-box package, RETAL built its internal communications platform to allow for closer cooperation between colleagues and departments in a more efficient and effective manner.

However, the unprecedented changes that the spring of 2020 brought meant that the dedicated communication platform has more than earned its keep, highlighting how staying closely connected even when colleagues are working from home around the world supports a profitable modern workplace.

In this article, RETAL explains how its newly designed intranet had to quickly evolve to meet the needs of its employees in the face of Covid.

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