Orkla brings its dispersed employees together with communities in Microsoft Viva

What Astrid Tvedt, former Senior IT Advisor at Orkla, likes most about the fast-moving consumer goods company is its complexity. “It’s really interesting to learn how the business is built with all the various units and countries,” she says. But with 90 business units and 300 brands under the Orkla umbrella, sales in 100 countries, and operations in 22, that interesting complexity presents a major challenge to employee engagement. “We know that internal Orkla employees want to engage more and communicate across business units and countries,” she notes. 

Until recently, Orkla’s intranet was the main tool for company-wide communication, and it wasn’t used broadly. Orkla rolled out Microsoft Viva Engage, the latest app in the Microsoft Viva platform, to address employee expectations, boost employee engagement, and help employees strengthen hybrid work relationships. “We want people to share more and get to know each other throughout the company,” says Tvedt. “We’re excited about using Viva Engage to help employees build relationships and have a voice, no matter where they are.”

Bringing dispersed employees together for improved engagement 

In the days before Viva Engage, Orkla was much more siloed, with dozens of smaller intranets and little opportunity to communicate across the barriers of departments and roles. That reality was at odds with Orkla’s intention to foster connections between employees. “We want to enable people to find like minds within the organization and use technology to support spontaneous collaboration and problem solving,” says David Konrad Abramowski Aurtande, Lead Employee Engagement & Hybrid Work at Orkla. Following its introduction of Viva Engage, the highly dispersed company now feels smaller. “With Viva Engage, people now get insights into what’s happening across our many different business units and areas,” says Aurtande, who shares an example of an Orkla designer using the application to reach out to designers from other countries for advice on a project. Other typical Viva Engage posts might document factory visits or celebrate a colleague’s promotion. Says Tvedt, “People within Orkla now go to Viva Engage to share highlights across, rather than within, teams. It opens up communication to a wider set of people.” 

Orkla leaders consider Viva Engage an ideal solution for reaching more employees and fostering a culture of inclusivity and contribution. “We’re refocusing internal communications from static articles on the intranet to Viva Engage,” Aurtande explains. The move has already influenced engagement. Adds Tvedt, “More people are reading more posts now that we’ve embraced Viva Engage for sharing content.”

Boosting direct connections between leaders and employees with storyline

The opportunity for Orkla leaders to participate in two-way conversations is crucial to the success of any employee engagement tool. Says Tvedt, “With Yammer, we saw that the most successful communities were the ones where managers and leaders were active.” That experience informed how Tvedt and her colleagues approached Viva Engage, especially the storyline feature, which employees can use to share their interests and post content that showcases their vision. “We’re looking forward to using the new storyline feature in Viva Engage to help leaders share and connect with employees even more,” she says. Tvedt notes that one-way communication was a major stumbling block to community building in the days before Orkla revamped its intranet and started on an employee engagement journey. “The biggest change we‘ve experienced with Viva Engage is that it’s now easier to communicate and have two-way conversations across business units and countries,” says Tvedt.

And, for employees who fall outside of the leadership category, Tvedt thinks storyline in Viva Engage has great potential to help people build networks and have a voice. “Storyline is a wonderful tool people can use to share, especially content that might not have been easy to categorize and share in a particular community before.” Storyline is now available in Viva Engage.

Meeting the future with tools that make hybrid work more effective and fulfilling 

Tvedt’s role at Orkla requires her to be constantly on the lookout for tools that employees can use to do their best work. “I think most companies understand that the future means hybrid work,” says Tvedt. “We use tools like Viva Engage to work together in the best way possible—no matter what country you’re in or whether you work in the office or at home.”

Today, Orkla is focused on creating digital spaces where employees can share insights, answer questions, and promote company culture. This is part of a strategic effort to reach the full collaborative potential of Orkla as a whole. Through the company’s adoption of Viva Engage, its organizational complexity is becoming easier to navigate. “We’re creating a company that’s a lot more transparent than it was in the past,” says Aurtande. “We want our employees to be curious, grow, and develop. With Viva Engage, you can always take a peek at what’s happening across the company, and it’s a lot easier for engaged employees to find each other. This helps bring new ideas to life a lot faster throughout the company than before.” 

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