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February 08, 2023

Carlsberg improves digital employee experience to reach 29,000 employees using Microsoft VIVA

Since 1847, Danish brewing company Carlsberg Group has been serving customers with great tasting beer to accompany great experiences. But being a truly global organization has its own set of challenges, particularly when it comes to growing its employee base and global presence through internal communications and fostering a culture of inclusion. To overcome these obstacles and unite its workforce, Carlsberg built a custom centralised platform using Microsoft VIVA Connections integrated with Microsoft Teams. The new intranet, CarlsNet, has improved internal reach and engagement, becoming a useful tool to find news and resources at the desk or on the go. Most of all, CarlsNet has connected teams from across the organisation’s three regions, and in every company function helping Carlsberg on its mission to create a great digital employee experience.

Carlsberg

“We have a 175-year legacy of providing our customers with high-quality beer and a great experience. We have had a lot of focus on the digital customer experience in the past years, so that had us thinking: why not apply the same user-centric focus when it comes to our internal digital employee experience.”

Anne-Sophie Strandmark, Microsoft Office 365 Service Owner at Carlsberg Group, is reflecting on the journey of digitalization that the organization has embarked on both internally and externally over the past few years. 

“We don’t ask our customers to go into various apps when ordering beer, so why is it that we require our employees to open a lot of different applications to start their workday?” says Anne-Sophie. “That’s where VIVA Connections and Teams comes into the picture. It allows us to use Teams as a one-stop-shop for our employees.”

But for the Danish company, this ambition proved initially challenging. Communication among its markets relied on cascading information through various disconnected channels and in some cases, local communication tools, meaning that there was no one-source of truth when it came to communication.

To tackle the issue and foster inclusion and employee engagement, Carlsberg partnered with Microsoft and its partner Open Communication Group to build a branded single platform, enabling a dashboard containing news, adaptive cards and resources integrated directly into the organization’s most-used collaboration app: Microsoft Teams. 

“It’s a solution that has really helped us to unite and engage our workforce,” says Strandmark.

“While we are connected in our purpose of brewing for a better today and tomorrow, we certainly are a modern workforce that needs to be connected with each other.”

Emily D’Alterio, Communications Manager, Carlsberg Group

Modernizing a brewery business steeped in history

Carlsberg is a Danish brewing company with a proud rich heritage and strong purpose: to brew for a better today and tomorrow. In fact, its headquarters still sit on a hill in Valby, Copenhagen, where its founding father built the first brew house. Nowadays, its employees are distributed among many markets and geographies, adding local flavour to the famous brand.

“One of the most exciting aspects of working here is being part of the global Carlsberg community,” says Strandmark. “It’s a real melting pot of cultures, languages and ways of viewing the world.”

“At Carlsberg, we are proud of our global employees,” says Joris Huijsmans, EVP Chief Human Resources Officer, Carlsberg Group. “It’s extremely important to us that we provide the kind of environment where each person can feel a sense of connection, belonging and is empowered to be a part of our high-performing workforce. Whether it's by staying up-to-date on company information and resources, or by connecting with colleagues across the globe, mastering our digital connections is one way that we can support our ambitions."

Another ingredient that defines the company culture is Carlsberg’s desire to embrace digitization. “Over the years, we’ve maintained our identity, yet stayed relevant because we’ve embraced new ways of working – including technology,” explains Strandmark. “From monitoring beer levels in kegs with sensors, to automating service in the brewery, digitalization has become embedded in everything we do.”

But despite this progress, Carlsberg’s ethos of ‘always burning’ and always striving for perfection has meant that the company set new, higher ambitions for its internal operations. 

“Being such a big company has so many benefits, but it also has its own set of obstacles,” Strandmark says. “It’s a challenge we were excited to overcome”

Siloed ways of working hinder communication

“Our editorial teams were making great content that employees weren’t seeing, largely because the previous intranet wasn’t accessible via mobile,” says Emily D’Alterio, Communications Manager at Carlsberg Group. “We needed a technology-driven strategy with a centralized approach that honoured the different needs of each local market.”

Until recently, Carlsberg’s markets and functions – from HR, Italy to Singapore had their own local language intranet sites that didn’t allow the users to interact with or translate the content, making the experience less engaging, but also heavily reliant on local markets to cascade the information. This made it challenging for the organization’s internal communications to reach and engage employees.

“With CarlsNet, employees can now easily translate content into their local language as well as like, tag and comment directly from the Teams app on their mobile phones,” adds Anne-Sophie. 

The organization conducts biannual employee satisfaction surveys measuring how happy the workforce is using different digital tools. Our surveys revealed that our colleagues feel confident in using Teams,” says Tim Lauridsen, Director of Global Digital Workplace at Carlsberg Group. “This is backed up by our usage data. Around 70% of our employees use Microsoft Teams, conducting around 8,000 meetings each day,” he adds. “So we settled on using Microsoft Teams as the key app to build on because we knew it met workers’ needs.”

Alongside Microsoft and partner Open Communication Group, Carlsberg held workshops to brainstorm what the ideal modern employee experience looked like and what role an intranet should play in building inclusivity. 

“Our discussion led us to create an internal communications strategy,” says D’Alterio, “One element of that was the use of Microsoft VIVA Connections to build an intranet directly in Microsoft Teams that would improve our efficiencies, respond to employee needs and build a sense of togetherness.”

The brewing company prepares for the big reveal

On Monday 19th September at 8am, 29,000 Carlsberg employees gained access to the organization’s brand-new intranet, CarlsNet.

In true Carlsberg style, the company launched its new employee experience with a big bang in facilities across the globe. “We had cupcakes adorned with edible QR codes which automatically took people to CarlsNet on Microsoft Teams when scanned,” explains D’Alterio. “We also installed a global screensaver to promote the launch and offices around the globe had their own celebratory activation campaigns. It was an exciting moment for us all.”

The IT team didn’t want to overwhelm employees with too much change, but they needed to create a sense of urgency. “We had to encourage around 100 content creators to migrate their content ready for the launch,” says Strandmark. “It wasn’t just about running an awareness campaign for CarlsNet; we were signalling a cultural transformation within Carlsberg.”

The new solution brings benefits on tap

Built using Microsoft VIVA Connections, the new dashboard easily allows Carlsberg employees to access work tools, see what’s on the menu in the canteen and find critical information. “It’s a seamless experience where users rarely have to leave the app. Its integration capabilities allow us to add a personal touch too,” says Lauridsen.

Microsoft conducted workshops to help Carlsberg employees use Adaptive Cards – a tool for customizing the intranet’s UI. The interactive cards show content, tools and resources on the dashboard, encouraging them to explore and discover news and updates. 

“Since the launch,” says Strandmark, “there’s been a 50% increase in reach for global news within the business and 27% more views on the new intranet compared to its predecessor.”

Users are also able to locate resources and tools that improve their working experience, such as the editorial team who have saved time when editing and uploading content. “The technology we’re using for CarlsNet is something we can build on to keep improving the employee experience to retain and attract top talent,” says Lauridsen.

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