Kraft Heinz is a global food and beverage company with a portfolio of iconic and emerging brands. The COVID-19 health crisis threatened not only to disrupt international supply chains, it also upended vital communications for Kraft Heinz internally, and across its customer base. Kraft Heinz took advantage of Microsoft Teams to keep its workforce connected and products on shelves around the world. By moving both daily meetings and large-scale company educational initiatives onto Teams, the company kept food on tables. At the same time, it was able to drive a transformation inspired by its purpose: “Let’s make life delicious.”
Everyone recalls the shock of seeing empty shelves in supermarkets during the early days of the COVID-19 health crisis. But few stop to think about the people it took to get food back on those shelves. At Kraft Heinz, employees worked around the clock to restock those shelves and get food into homes around the world as quickly as possible.
Even as the company was handling its own pandemic workforce disruptions, production of key products escalated to meet the demand of more people eating at home, requiring increased work and coordination. “How we consume food has changed dramatically,” says Mitch Arends, Head of US Operations and Manufacturing at Kraft Heinz. “But panic-buying largely went away because companies like ours didn't skip a beat. Microsoft Teams was the primary tool that kept the workforce connected.”
An equalizer for meetings, a connector across companies
Kraft Heinz used Microsoft Teams across its operations to connect newly remote workers, run meetings safely within a single plant, replace site visits, and conduct equipment inspections.
For frontline workers in plants and operations centers, Arends explains that all recommended Centers for Disease Control (CDC) protocols were implemented immediately. Everyone else shifted to remote work. At the start of that shift, multiple communication tools were used in parallel. Very quickly, the IT group enabled the organization to remain connected through a personalized Teams rollout plan across the company.
According to Arends, Teams meetings have also improved the quality of meetings that used to happen through conference calls, fostering a greater sense of connection and building stronger relationships. “Using Microsoft Teams meetings, we have this dynamic of learning and sharing as if we were meeting in person that never happened before,” he says. The capabilities of Teams meetings have even proved to be an important tool for remotely sharing equipment status. For example, a worker can share live or recorded video of a pasta dryer for the company’s iconic “Macaroni & Cheese”—a machine “as big as four or five houses stacked together”—to troubleshoot in real time, with an engineer who is safely distanced or offsite completely.
For those in corporate offices, Teams has improved the dynamic of events once held in person in one geographical region, or in one office. “Teams meetings act as an equalizer, and has enabled us to have more global learning events, connecting employees from across the company, and bringing external business and thought leaders to contribute to our vibrant culture of continuous learning, bold creativity, and intellectual curiosity,” explains Pamay Bassey, Chief Learning and Diversity Officer at Kraft Heinz. “The real value we see is that Teams is inclusive and democratizing,” she adds.
A shared purpose across the company
Beyond keeping daily operations running smoothly, Teams helped fulfill a deeper purpose within the company. Before the health crisis upended business as usual, Kraft Heinz leadership had a plan in place to roll out a new company-wide strategic initiative at a large, in-person conference. The initiative was built around the company’s purpose: “Let’s make life delicious.”
The circumstances around the rollout—early in the health crisis—raised soul-searching questions. “What does it mean to have a delicious life in the middle of the most challenging human time of the past 100 years?” asks Bassey. ”What does that mean for our employees? What does it mean for our consumers?” At a practical level, how would this company-wide refresh work without having a large, core group in the same place?
Using Teams live events, the new cultural elements were communicated in a series of Global Town Halls featuring senior leaders. A speaker series was then broadcast to thousands of employees on a weekly basis. “Using Teams live events allowed us to continue our cultural transformation, making sure that people were aware, and celebrating that we were living our purpose and our values every day,” observes Bassey.
The cultural transformation continued at scale. Using Teams live events to communicate to large audiences allowed the company to democratize access to learning. Speakers presented sessions on corporate values, such as “We are consumer obsessed”; “We demand diversity”; and “We dare to do better every day.” The speaker series also included sessions on maintaining personal resilience and motivation while navigating challenging times.
As a way of exercising those values, Kraft Heinz delivered on its goal to “dare to do better every day” with its ambitious use of Teams. Bassey’s team celebrated the evolution of Kraft Heinz’s global learning platform, called Ownerversity, with a 24-hour global learning event. Sessions started in North America, and then moved hourly in a wave around the world. Although such an ambitious endeavor carried some uncertainty, Bassey relaxed as soon as she saw the active discussion boards following the first session. “It was clear it was going to be something pretty special,” she notes.
A humanized workforce
Using Teams has helped the company build a connected workforce that responds better to customer needs—and that also works together at a deeper level than ever before.
“Seeing each other in a different light has brought us together as a family,” Arends says. “Employees get to peek into each other’s lives.”
Seeing each other’s individual humanity helps the company’s employees connect to each other. Sharing this sense of humanity at scale helps the workforce connect to their mission of putting food onto shelves and into homes around the world.
“Using Microsoft Teams meetings, we have this dynamic of learning and sharing as if we were meeting in person that never happened before.”
Mitch Arends, Head of US Operations and Manufacturing, Kraft Heinz
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