15+ Intranet Design Examples and Best Practices for the Manufacturing Industry

The US manufacturing industry is facing a people problem. Roughly 76% of manufacturing leaders who participated in the National Association of Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey stated that attracting and retaining a quality workforce was their main business challenge.

Solving this challenge requires a deeper focus on systems and processes that support the growth and development of each employee. An intranet is a critical tool that’s needed to make this happen since internal communication impacts how people work with each other and get their jobs done.

This article highlights 15+ intranet designs that will help you create an environment that attracts qualified professionals and retains your existing employees. 
 

Having an intranet is great, but how the intranet is designed impacts the outcomes you can expect from it. Here are a few examples of intranet designs that will help you achieve six powerful outcomes relevant to your manufacturing company.

1. Provide ongoing health and safety training

In the UK, the manufacturing industry had the third highest work-related fatalities in 2020/21. These deaths arose from one of three causes — falls from heights, being struck by moving vehicles, and moving, falling, or flying objects. The results are similar in other countries with the manufacturing industry in the US experiencing 341 work-related fatalities in 2020 and 373,300 recorded nonfatal injuries and illnesses. 

These shocking statistics highlight the importance of ongoing health and safety training. But challenges with managing training, ensuring training meets compliance standards, and helping workers find time for training often arise. A well-designed intranet can help you make training content easily accessible and track the learning outcomes of your team. 

Idex used LumApps to design an intranet that provided information and resources to support health and safety training. 

“Idex operates in high-risk environments, making the safety of our employees a priority. The employee experience is customized on all devices based on their position, department, or region. Safety-related information and resources are highlighted and always available on the home page. In two years, we saw a 23% decrease in the incident rate.” ~The Idex Team

Employees got the information they needed on the go with the mobile app which also made it more likely for them to engage with the content and apply their new knowledge. 

Your manufacturing team juggles many responsibilities daily — managing logistics, quality assurance testing, equipment maintenance, deliveries, and the list goes on. Some of your team members are deskless; they’re constantly on the go and they don’t have time to read long emails. This means that they need a mobile-compatible intranet that adjusts to the sizes of their screens and provides all the critical information they need at a glance. 

“The flow of information has improved. In the past, we informed people via email. Now, everything goes through the intranet. People are well-informed and respond quickly.”  ~Khalid Rauf Khawaja, IT Administrator, Jebsen and Jessen

 

Providing a mobile-compatible intranet is also important for meeting the needs of a new group of workers in the manufacturing industry — GenZers, the tech-savvy generation that has high expectations for speed and accessibility. It’s expected that there will be a shortage of 2.1 million manufacturing jobs in the US by 2030. To fill this gap, manufacturing companies must look for innovative ways to create a tech-friendly environment for GenZers. 

A mobile-compatible intranet design that provides GenZers with all the relevant information they need at their fingertips is a step in the right direction.

 

The manufacturing industry has one of the lowest levels of employee engagement with only 34% of manufacturing employees being engaged at work. Lack of proper recognition is one of the reasons cited for these low levels of engagement, and this is concerning since employee recognition is included in the ISO 45001 and ESG reporting standards. Employee recognition is also important for creating a safe and healthy work environment for your team to thrive. 

Yet, 35% of frontline workers and midlevel managers who participated in a survey conducted by the Manufacturing Institute indicated that they were dissatisfied with their employer’s recognition practices. Employees should be recognized for the work they do to ensure the health and safety of all staff, as well as for the contributions they make to the overall growth of the company. Employee recognition tools make it easier to track how your team is being recognized, but your company’s intranet can also be designed to highlight key contributions of your team.

You can pin posts that spotlight the contributions of your best employees. 

 

Intranets can also be designed to feature posts on their home pages. You can use featured posts to put the contributions of your employees front and center.

Your HR page can also become a space for highlighting employees who’ve made great contributions. With this design, you can include links to blog posts that explain each employee’s contribution and how those contributions have impacted the company. Comments and interaction features help other employees express kudos and support which further improves employee morale. 

You can also create a section on your intranet’s homepage that showcases stories of progress. Here, you can write a snippet that briefly explains what your employees have been able to achieve. You can also publish pictures of some of your best team members with captions that describe the work they do. 

You can also create a kudos community where team members can post commendations and support for their colleagues’ work. 

Research by Zippia shows that employees are, on average, 17% more satisfied with their jobs when they engage in collaboration at work. For teams to collaborate effectively, communication must be seamless. Yet, 41% of frontline workers in manufacturing companies are dissatisfied with their employer’s communication practices. 

Your intranet design should make communication and collaboration among everyone in your manufacturing company seamless and efficient, regardless of where in the world their divisions are located. In this intranet design example, teams can access content and collaborate with each other across divisions. 

 

This was a major concern of one of LumApps’ clients, Jebsen & Jessen. Their intranet is called JJConnect. 

“When we launched our intranet, JJConnect, it was important to us to create a central communication platform that unites all our diverse divisions. The platform should bring transparency and provide a knowledge base for all colleagues.” ~Hannah Kristin Priebe, Department Manager, Corporate Communications and Marketing

Read the full case study to learn more about how JJConnect helped Jebsen & Jessen connect all their employees regardless of time zones. 

Another critical intranet feature the Jebsen & Jessen team loved was the ability to support a smooth onboarding process. New hires need opportunities to communicate and collaborate with team members as they learn how your organization works. 

Here’s what a Jebsen & Jessen’s trainee said about how JJConnect helped create a good onboarding experience for him.

“I’ve liked the intranet since day one. Through the intranet, you always have new information and you know which company is doing what. When you arrive to a new department, you can know beforehand what they actually do.” ~Malte Noldt, wholesale and foreign trade trainee

Ulrike Matthay, management assistant at Jebsen & Jessen, explained how the company directory in JJConnect supports the onboarding experience.

“The intranet helps with onboarding because you can find all the information you need as a new employee. It is also very important to understand how the company is organized. You can also use the company directory. All of us are listed out with our names, job positions, and titles. You can even see how a person fits into the organizational chart.” ~Ulrike Matthay, Management Assistant

A company directory makes it easier for new hires and existing employees to find and collaborate with coworkers regardless of location.

 

Here’s an example of an intranet design that makes collaboration and communication for new hires easy.

Your team is already using some critical tools to keep business processes flowing smoothly. From compliance GRC tools to IT and analytics tools, your intranet should support the key integrations your team needs. 

A good intranet design allows your team to see the integrations that matter to them on their dashboards. It also allows you to utilize integrations that provide a connected and seamless user experience.

“The Hub is one connected site fully integrated together with LumApps as the platform. That led to a connected experience, seamless common user experience, personalized content which was very new and different to us and we found out to be very important. It has news, tasks and interaction all in one place and it's really easy to collaborate and get work done together as one company.” ~ Beth Ann Bayus, Global PR and Communication Director at Stellantis

A well-designed intranet allows users to access the key integrations that matter to them directly from their dashboards. 

Many manufacturing companies have multiple divisions spread across numerous locations nationally or internationally. This makes it important for your intranet design to facilitate a multi-site environment. An intranet that facilitates communication across multiple locations helps create a more efficient way to centralize knowledge management.

Your intranet should also be a space where tacit knowledge can be captured and shared. Tacit knowledge specifically relates to the expertise and experience of an individual, and there are multiple ways for you to capture this knowledge in your intranet. 

 

Lauren Calvert, Group Marketing Manager at Welding Alloys, explains how their intranet powered by LumApps helped facilitate knowledge sharing among her team. 

“LumApps has provided an easy-to-use platform in which to connect all of our employees and improve our communication globally. The communities are particularly beneficial in facilitating the exchange of information and ideas amongst our technical experts and sales staff located in different parts of the world.” ~ Lauren Calvert, Group Marketing Manager at Welding Alloys

Learn more about how LumApps helped Welding Alloys fast-track their digital transformation by reading the full case study. 
 

An intranet improves internal communications and creates a better employee experience. Designing your intranet to address the specific needs of your manufacturing company will help you provide ongoing health and safety training for your team, reduce safety incidents, and improve your processes and employee engagement. 

LumApps is a trusted intranet solution used by more than 400 companies. With LumApps, you get an intranet designed to your specifications with fully customizable layouts that align with your branding. The best part? You don't need coding knowledge or experience to use it!

Schedule a demo today and discover how LumApps can help your manufacturing company excel.
 

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