Dairy cooperative brings better nutrition to the world with a workplace built on Microsoft 365

The new way of working is a direct response to employees’ vision for the ideal work/life balance that combines the flexibility of working from home and the community-building aspect of working with colleagues in-person. “We asked employees how they want to work after the pandemic. The majority want to continue to work at home … and they don’t want to work from home all the time,” says Willemijn Noppers, Director of Organisation Development at FrieslandCampina. The new policy is supported by the use of Microsoft 365 tools, such as MyAnalytics for focus time and insights into work habits, Teams for efficient coauthoring on documents and collaboration, and Outlook and Teams for scheduling shorter, more focused meetings. In anticipation of employees returning to the office for approximately 50 percent of the work week, Teams Rooms and Surface Hub devices have been set up in several offices. The new technology is designed to help employees working from home collaborate with their office-based colleagues as if everyone were together in the same space.

Not only will Our Way of Working empower employees with more flexibility and a better work/life balance, but hybrid work has tangible benefits for FrieslandCampina as a whole. FrieslandCampina will create cost savings on office space and a reduction of the organization’s carbon footprint. Hybrid work will also help retain and attract talent at the company. “Hybrid work offers us the opportunity to hire the right people with sought-after expertise who may have been held back by travel distance in the past,” says Noppers. 

An accelerated Teams deployment to rapidly adjust to remote work

The early feedback on Teams was encouraging, and an organization-wide deployment was already underway when COVID-19 prompted the IT team to accelerate the rollout. “Because we were already experienced with Teams, we were well prepared to confront the challenges of adjusting to remote work on very short notice,” says Cetin.  

FrieslandCampina initially faced a big undertaking in delivering a new tool to more than 23,000 people across 100 countries and 40 locations. “We quadrupled our Teams usage in three weeks,” says Cetin. “We’re now running on Teams 100 percent, and the employee feedback has been very positive.” So positive, in fact, that the Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the tool improved drastically as more employees participated in the Future of Collaboration trainings and embraced Teams. 

In response to its success in enabling the company throughout the COVID-19 health crisis, the IT department at FrieslandCampina generated the highest User Satisfaction (USAT) scores for IT ever recorded at the company. “Our employee satisfaction scores for IT have never been higher,” says Cetin, who credits employees’ positive feedback in part to creating a stable, effective remote working environment. 

Business continuity inspires innovative new uses for Microsoft applications

At the start of COVID-19, FrieslandCampina focused on the crucial tasks of maintaining workplace safety and keeping its products on shelves. “Collaboration is directly tied to business continuity, and we deployed Teams to keep everyone connected and working toward our business goals at a challenging time,” says Cetin. 

Employees soon began to use Teams in a variety of new ways. “We now use Teams for factory audits, a very important part of maintaining our standards regarding safety regulations,” says Cetin. These audits normally take place in person with a designated auditor visiting a FrieslandCampina facility, something that was no longer possible because of travel restrictions and strict safety protocols. “Using hands-free, wearable tablets from RealWear and connecting with a Teams call, we were able to connect auditors with employees on the factory floor as if they were really in the same location.”

FrieslandCampina also used Yammer to help usher in a culture change in how the company communicates. Hein Schumacher, Chief Executive Officer at FrieslandCampina, took to Yammer in a recent “Yam Jam” to ask 2,000 participants how they were coping with COVID-19 and to discuss what could be learned from the remote work experience. “FrieslandCampina leaders are adopting modern workplace tools to rethink how they approach quarterly communications with the entire organization,” says Spildooren. “Instead of giving a presentation and taking two or three questions, leaders are opening up the discussion to the whole company and tapping into the knowledge inherent in the organization.”

Bringing a human element to remote collaboration with Microsoft Surface Hub

A culture change is also evident in how Hussain Farooqui, Manager of Finance at FrieslandCampina, delivered his project report to the global organization in 2020. The project, dubbed “Report for the Future,” normally involves Farooqui traveling to FrieslandCampina facilities around the world to help colleagues set up BI dashboards to gain insights and save valuable time. When COVID-19 began disrupting travel plans, Farooqui was poised to fly to Thailand to undertake the first BI deployment. “That’s when the panic set in,” he remembers. 

Farooqui used a Surface Hub device to reimagine the meeting as a virtual presentation and conversation in Teams. “Using Surface Hub to conduct these meetings, we were able to restore the human connection that’s vital for the success of the program,” says Farooqui. 

Teams and Microsoft Power Automate improve efficiency on the factory floor

For Patricia Woznick, Continuous Improvement Manager at the FrieslandCampina New York facility, a typical workday might involve discussing the purchase of new equipment with production supervisors or hosting culture survey meetings with colleagues. “I’m in Teams all day long,” she says. Even before COVID-19 shifted most of Woznick’s work onto a digital platform, technology was fundamental to her role. “Continuous improvement at FrieslandCampina is all about using technology to advance our goals,” says Woznick. “When Microsoft Teams came along, I was excited to have another piece of technology to help us do that.”

Besides moving in-person performance control meetings to Teams, saving time, Woznick is looking forward to using Power Automate in Teams to create a root cause analysis process flow. “Our previous method was very manual and time-consuming,” she says. “We are evaluating the use of Power Automate to create a flow where employees can submit a problem and the performance control meeting team will automatically be alerted. We hope to save time as we roll out the root cause analysis process flow using Power Automate.” Beyond the factory floor, the company is also exploring the use of Microsoft Power Platform and Teams to streamline claims registration, a time-consuming process that typically consumes hundreds of hours of labor every year. 

After quickly adapting to a difficult year and delivering on its purpose—“nourishing by nature”— FrieslandCampina is continuing to bring innovation to a time-honored company, perhaps for another 150 years. “We came through an intense year using digital tools like Microsoft 365 to keep our operations running while transforming our organizational culture,” concludes Cetin. “With Microsoft 365, we’re embracing hybrid work and creating a workplace culture that’s sustainable for the future.”

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