DAFA connects employees globally with modern digital tools

23. April 2023

DAFA has launched three new IT tools in record time, which have become an integral part of the employees' daily work. The tools have increased social cohesion on a global level and contributed to a more coherent organisation.

How does a global company ensure that employees feel connected across language barriers and national borders? For the production company DAFA, the answer was clear: they needed a tool to help them share the good stories, which could adapt to how their employees work.

 

DAFA is a Danish company that produces solutions for damping, sealing and protection for industry and construction. Headquartered in Aarhus, DAFA employs 320 employees in 8 countries, of which there is production in Denmark, Italy, Poland and China.

Different users with different needs

A new project in DAFA was launched to ensure that all DAFA employees feel connected to each other, no matter which country they live in or which department they come from.

"The focus of the project was to get people to be able to find the information that enables them to gain a common understanding of our company, at the same time that we can communicate together between the employees, so I feel that my Chinese colleague is just as close as a colleague here at the Aarhus office."
Line Holt Wilgaard
Head of People and Culture at DAFA

Limited resources were allocated to the project, so it was important for DAFA to find a solution that could be easily implemented in the company. Another goal was to accommodate how different employee groups work. Where the administrative employees most often sit in front of a computer, this is a rarity for the production employees. In addition, there are the salespeople, who are most often at sales meetings or on the road.

 The answer was IntraActive Intranet, in conjunction with Replay by IntraActive‘s info screens and the smart IntraActive mobile app.

The 3 solutions together gave us just what we needed. The intranet is accessible from the desktop for self-service and news distribution. At the same time, we also post the news on the info screens, where the production employees can read them. I love that I can publish news on the intranet at the same time that they also appear on the info screens. Our final challenge was that we have salespeople who are always on the go and rarely sitting in front of a computer screen. For them, the mobile app was a gift. They get notifications when there is news and they don’t need to be on our VPN system to log in. When they have 5 minutes between meetings, they can stay updated and feel connected to our colleagues,” says Line Holt Wilgaard.

Easy implementation

The project in DAFA was assigned 3 dedicated project participants and a deadline of 3 months. The project participants’ rule of thumb was that they should go live on time. It was therefore essential that the chosen solution was easy to implement. And it was.

"From an IT perspective, it was super easy. We didn't have to do the big setup and we got really great support from Fellowmind to build the intranet and get it up and running in a few days. It was easy and intuitive to work with and we succeeded in getting it all up and running in just 3 months.”
Mads Kristensen
IT Director at DAFA

Line Holt Wilgaard adds, “It was important to us that the product was user-friendly. If you have worked with SharePoint alone, you know that it can be quite complex. With IntraActive Intranet, we got a good template that means we can set up something nice quite quickly.”

An employee-driven news production

DAFA’s goal is that only 20% of the internal news must come from headquarters while the remaining 80% must be produced by the employees themselves. It may seem like an ambitious goal, but just a few months after the launch of the new intranet, it is more than feasible.

"We went live on December 12 and already in January we saw that people had really embraced the new solution and started making their own news. It has been fantastic to see how colleagues from all over the world have started to publish news and like each other's messages,"
Line Holt Wilgaard
Head of People and Culture at DAFA

Innovation at the forefront

DAFA has a strong focus on innovation and sustainability in all business decisions. With the new digital signage, the intranet and the mobile app, it has become easier to spread this focus to the entire organization.

"We can easily share our sustainability agenda on the info screens and the intranet. We wanted our focus on innovation to come through in our new solution, and it does. With the mobile access and the inviting design on the intranet and info screens, we show that we use the latest technology, also in our internal communication."
Line Holt Wilgaard
Head of People and Culture at DAFA

WATCH HOW DAFA BENEFITS FROM GLOBAL DIGITAL SIGNAGE

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