» For nearly four years, I led the development of Internal Communications at MTU Aero Engines, then a DaimlerChrysler subsidiary and an international aircraft engine manufacturer with around 7,000 employees across seven locations worldwide.

» The transformation of MTU aktuell into an employee magazine capable of reaching the entire workforce with the company’s key messages began in May 1998. From then on, we continuously broadened the range of topics, improved editorial quality and design, and established a reliable publication schedule.

Beginning in May 1998, the magazine was published monthly, with combined issues for January/February and July/August. Previously, only five or six issues had appeared each year, and not on a regular schedule. The May 1998 issue was also the first to use an additional spot color. In December 1998, the first full-color issue with a cover image was published. A year later, the magazine’s visual design was updated again. The page count increased from just 10 pages in March 1998 to at least 28 pages on a regular basis. Depending on the issue, roughly one-third to one-half of all articles were also provided as an English-language supplement for locations outside Germany.

These efforts significantly increased employee acceptance of the publication. One of the findings of the 1999 employee survey, the “Situationsanalyse ’99,” was that MTU aktuell had become a leading source of information for the workforce. Overall, 55 percent of respondents ranked it among their most important sources of information.

» The MTU intranet was launched on January 15, 1999. Initially, it offered around 1,000 HTML pages. By mid-2001, employees had access to more than 10,000 pages covering a broad range of company information.

Employee adoption of the new channel grew just as significantly. Only nine months after launch, the intranet ranked third among the most important sources of information at MTU’s largest site in Munich, according to the 1999 employee survey, the “Situationsanalyse ’99,” with 41 percent of respondents citing it. During the survey period, the intranet averaged around 11,000 page views per day. Over the following year, that figure increased by approximately a factor of five, reaching an average of around 50,000 page views per day by mid-2001.

During major company events, daily traffic sometimes exceeded 70,000 page views. By mid-2001, around 3,000 MTU users, primarily office-based employees, could access the intranet directly from their workstations. To extend access to employees in production and other operational areas, nearly 20 public terminals were installed at the Munich site for employees without individual access to the MTU network. Around half of all company-wide content was also available in English, primarily for the Vancouver location.

» As DaimlerChrysler rolled out its group-wide internal communications channel “DaimlerChrysler Business TV,” the service was also introduced at MTU’s Munich and Hanover locations. To reach as much of the workforce as possible, 24 television monitors were installed at central locations across the Munich site, MTU’s largest facility, with another six installed in Hanover.

In Munich, employees also received locally relevant information through dedicated on-screen text panels managed by Internal Communications. These were used, among other things, to encourage participation in the “Situationsanalyse ’99” employee survey. The local information was integrated into the group-wide programming provided by DaimlerChrysler, which also included appropriate coverage of MTU-related topics.