A Healthy Hybrid Workplace For 60000 Employees

Introduction

One of the world’s leading consumer goods companies, was massively disrupted by the pandemic. In need of a solution, the company turned to LTM, as its trusted partner, to create a new digital workplace. Microsoft Viva was a key component to achieving this goal, and LTM rolled the solution out quickly and on a massive scale, smoothly installing Viva for more than 60,000 employees in more than 50+ countries.

The result: greater productivity, increased employee retention, and new tools for identifying stresses before they become a problem. The new hybrid workplace will carry Unilever into the future.

The Client

Working remotely, employees had to open many different internal apps (finance, bookings, HR) to do their work. Finding key information involved going through multiple pages. The constant shuttling between screens and applications caused frustration, wasted time, and inevitably led to errors.

More significantly, the company’s workforce was used to face-to-face interactions. For many, working from home meant being “always on.” A hardworking workforce was at risk of burnout.

The solution

LTM had an excellent existing relationship with the customer for developing and supporting digital solutions and had supported the customer’s earlier installation of Microsoft 365.

LTM saw the pandemic-specific issues as an opportunity to re-envision the employee experience, creating a new hybrid workplace that could carry the firm into the future as a tight-knit digital community.

Two key problems in need of solutions were employee retention and productivity. Onboarding was a particular challenge. New employees had to work through a mass of emails and PDF documents and take courses on an array of platforms. Newcomers felt isolated and found it hard to connect to teammates and managers while trying to learn a job.

Goals

• Create a digital workplace with a strong sense of community
• Build a better online experience for onboarding new employees
• Reduce the need to jump from one app to another to complete tasks
• Increase employee retention
• Improve employee productivity

Viva rollout – By the numbers

• 60,000 users
• 50+ countries
• 49 NPS employee satisfaction with new system (“excellent”)
• 5 enterprise applications integrated – UNA, Condeco, QualityOne, Cornerstone, Concur
• 1.6 seconds for system to load on any device.

The customer’s existing investment in SharePoint as an intranet platform provided a stable, reliable platform on which to evolve new capabilities. Although it would affect every employee, the new rollout would also be an evolution rather than revolution.

LTM studied the personal needs of customer’s employees to understand the user journey, so the features could be optimized to create the best experience.

Viva was still pre-beta when the rollout began in early 2021, and Unilever was one of the first companies to roll out Viva on such a large scale. LTM is part of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP), and work closely with Microsoft to test, identify, and solve any technical issues that arose. Through weekly catchups, we were able to provide critical feedback to the Microsoft product team.

By July 2022, the first phase rollout of Viva Connections and Viva Topics Module was complete. Following these successful installations, LTM is continuing to roll out other Viva modules, and the work will continue into 2023.

Employee satisfaction rises by 61%

The new systems exceeded expectations. Employee satisfaction increased. The customer’s Previous Net Promoter Score (NPS) targets had been around 30 (promoters outnumbering detractors by 30%). After the rollout, the company saw scores soaring to 49 (considered an excellent score).

Initial results were outstanding, with the rollout achieving widespread engagement and reducing the time employees spent searching, emailing, and hunting for information.

Using Teams as an entry point, onboarding was greatly improved and streamlined. New employees were welcomed in a single integrated platform, which connected them to a buddy manager and gave them easy access to necessary documents and courses.

• Streamlined onboarding, connecting newcomers to courses and friendly colleagues
• One-click access to Concur, and easy tracking of expense claim status and claim summaries
• Link to UNA portal with active case count.
• Campaigns through Viva – Compass Org “town halls,” UniOps Learning Festival, Digital 4 Growth, ThankU

Personalized communications, using AI and Viva Engage, helped to promote leadership connection as well as other campaigns such as Compass Org, FutureFit, Digital 4 Growth, and ThankU.

Viva provided employees with greater connections, easier access, a sense of inclusiveness, and time savings. It has also helped management identify stresses before they became a critical problem.

MS products used: 

• Microsoft Viva Connections – Adaptive Card Extensions
• Microsoft Viva Topics 
• Microsoft Viva Engage 
• SPFx 
• Azure Function 
• Azure DevOps