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June 21, 2023

GardaWorld helps unite, empower its globally distributed workforce with Microsoft Viva Connections

GardaWorld built a customized version of Microsoft Viva Connections and called it Teams-Connect, which is helping the security company reach a long-term goal to create a sense of engagement and inclusivity for its 120,000 or so frontline security officers at customer locations around the globe. Frontline security professionals can now receive company news, find information they need, provide feedback, and communicate among their teams using the new app, which deploys on their mobile phones and connects to the broader organization through GardaWorld’s Microsoft 365 communications and collaboration infrastructure.

GardaWorld

“Using the Teams-Connect (Microsoft Viva Connections) app over the past year, I feel more involved with the company every day. I get the same news and information that management gets. Now, frontline security personnel in the field are involved, informed, and they feel part of the GardaWorld family.”

Greg Lundberg, Security Officer, GardaWorld

Communication, the key to making the world a safer place

GardaWorld places around 100,000 professional security officers with clients around the world, providing onsite risk management, safety, and security services. Success for the company depends on its people, who typically operate in dispersed customer sites building customer relationships and using their skills and integrity to represent GardaWorld, its culture, and its values. And there lies a long-recognized challenge for GardaWorld and other large, distributed companies—how best to develop and maintain a culture and values among employees whose job requirements, locations, and local management structures don’t typically bring them into daily contact with each other or with the broader organization.

A solution for a longstanding challenge

The challenge boils down to a communications problem, says Isabelle Panelli, Vice President in the Office of the CEO at GardaWorld. “We’ve always recognized the difficulty in reaching out to our frontline workers,” says Panelli. “We were doing it through posters and mailers, but finding better ways to communicate with our field employees has been a long-term requirement for us.”

The solution finally presented itself when GardaWorld looked into adopting a mobile app to publish news within the organization. It was exactly the sort of modern, socially oriented solution that the company needed, says Panelli, but the IT department had an even better idea. “Our IT people got involved and pointed out that we already have Microsoft Teams, so let’s use our existing technology to create a more powerful and scalable solution.” That solution was a custom mobile employee experience app built by GardaWorld and called Teams-Connect. The app is built on Microsoft Viva Connections, which is included in GardaWorld’s Microsoft 365 plan.

Building engagement and creating a global family

Microsoft Viva Connections helps build employee engagement with an extensible, customizable mobile environment. A small team at GardaWorld designed, developed, and deployed the Teams-Connect app in only six months. Panelli regards it as a daily one-stop shop for remote staff to get the information they need, provide feedback, and build connections among their teams and the broader organization. It wasn’t a small undertaking, and it requires ongoing attention to keep the ecosystem alive, interesting, and compelling. “Teams-Connect is our own social media, which competes with the experiences of familiar social media sites,” says Panelli. “People are used to consuming information at an alarming rate, so we need to continuously introduce new topics and opportunities to engage. Fresh content and continuous, ongoing communication are key.”

GardaWorld Security Officer Greg Lundberg is currently assigned to a hospital in Winnipeg, Canada. “I’ve been in the industry for eight years, and there was no communication where I worked before,” he says. “Using the Teams-Connect app over the past year, I feel more involved with the company every day. I get the same news and information that management gets—we’re all working together. Now, frontline security personnel in the field don’t feel like numbers. With Teams-Connect and Microsoft Viva Connections, they’re involved, informed, and they feel part of the GardaWorld family.”

GardaWorld’s People Project

As Regional Director for HR and Administration, Nicolette McLean is deeply involved in helping build and strengthen the GardaWorld family. “We’re such a big company, but Teams-Connect and Microsoft Viva Connections help us have a more localized focus and ensure that everyone feels like a valued part of the team.” McLean says this latest technology-based effort is a key part of the company’s People Project initiative, which is intended to serve the broader GardaWorld mission. “We strive to build and project a culture of excellence and inspire all of our teams to play their parts in embodying that culture,” she says. “Teams-Connect and Microsoft Viva Connections are helping us do that.”

A key goal of the People Project initiative is to empower employees by valuing their experiences and enabling them to provide vital feedback to the organization. Deep engagement for all staff, wherever they are, requires more than one-way dissemination of corporate communications. Keeping frontline staff up to date by broadcasting targeted information from corporate headquarters is certainly important, but workers must also be able to proactively find information and resources that they need. Information should flow both ways so that workers can become sources of valuable insights, providing responses and initiating feedback to help build corporate knowledge and expertise.

Legacy communications: Over and out

Lundberg says the company’s new technology is a world apart from the old system powered by radios. “With the Teams-Connect app, we can easily set up communications among one or more officers in a group, and we can stay in immediate touch all day if necessary—all without broadcasting,” he says. So, the new system isn’t only far more efficient, but it provides additional privacy and safety benefits.

GardaWorld Security Captain Valerie Fontaine recognizes greater efficiencies that easier and more available communications have introduced. “I have more immediate access to my team members, I can publicly recognize great performers, and I can help them with self-directed career planning, all via Teams-Connect and Microsoft Viva Connections,” she says. “Team members can make valuable suggestions and refer potential job candidates, and I can onboard new hires faster and with less operational overhead.”

Investing in people to benefit customers

Introducing a new communications infrastructure to a distributed workforce isn’t a one-time proposition. As Microsoft continues to enhance the capabilities of Microsoft Viva Connections, GardaWorld will also continue to develop its app and related content to better serve its workforce, and ultimately, its customers. “We’re in the service industry, and our frontline workers are our product. They’re the face of GardaWorld for our clients,” McLean says. “As we move deeper into the People Project, we’re learning more and more that we’re a team, and we all need to feel supported in serving our customers. Teams-Connect and Microsoft Viva Connections are key to that effort.” Panelli adds, “That effort isn’t a cost—it’s an investment. Everyone is talking about it and pushing for it, and the more that happens, the more momentum we’re getting and the more benefits we recognize.”

Find out more about GardaWorld on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

“We’re such a big company, but Teams-Connect and Microsoft Viva Connections help us have a more localized focus and ensure that everyone feels like a valued part of the team.”

Nicolette McLean, Regional Director for HR and Administration, GardaWorld

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