Johnson Controls uses Microsoft Teams to construct a network of digital champions who drive business goals

“One of our core pillars is building digital acumen and digital leadership,” says Nathaniel Beck, Office 365 and Collaboration Enterprise Lead at Johnson Controls. “As we continue evolving from a traditional brick-and-mortar manufacturing company to developing new digital services for our customers, it’s essential that we work together to change the mindset of everyone in the company and drive that strategy.”

How do you change the mindset of tens of thousands of employees across 150 countries? For Beck and his colleagues, the most powerful way to drive change is through a group of engaged, empowered employees who use Microsoft 365 collaboration tools to inspire their peers. “Our commitment to creating a network of digital champions, who use Microsoft Teams to share their expertise, paid off right out of the gate,” says Beck. “It’s a key part of how JCI plans to power its overall transformation.”

Employee interest lays the groundwork for digital champions

JCI’s digital champions network began with Teams and a desire to help employees get the most out of the collaboration tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I was focused on helping people use Teams,” says Beck. “We created open office hours and launched an Ask the IT Expert program via Teams where people could ask questions and go deeper on certain aspects of the tool.”

What began as a necessity quickly evolved into a more strategic, expansive program. “We realized that we needed more than training sessions—we needed a repository where people could go to find information on their own,” says Flaminia Curti, Director of Digital Employee Experience at Johnson Controls. That realization led the team to launch the Modern Workplace SharePoint site, which is dedicated to making IT more accessible to curious employees of all experience levels, with updated news, articles, and guidelines.

With the combination of the Ask the IT Expert program and the Modern Workplace site, JCI had created the building blocks of a new, overarching initiative. “People were really interested in all of these topics, so we decided to create a vehicle to bring this information to employees,” says Curti. “The goal of the digital champions program was to upskill employees, unlock new opportunities, and drive digital leadership, and we’re seeing that happen today.”

Creating a platform for peer-to-peer learning

Teams has become the platform where digital champions at JCI meet, share knowledge, and connect with colleagues. One popular format is coffee chat sessions, where participants use a range of Teams features such as breakout rooms and screen sharing to present ideas and ask questions.

The digital champions Ask the Expert channel also resides in Teams. “I often check Teams for any questions that I can quickly answer in the Ask the Expert channel,” says Craig Lee, Senior Program Manager at Johnson Controls. For Lee, the informality of the Teams channel is a big factor in its success. “It’s just teammates helping teammates rather than trying to find help outside the organization, which can take a long time and seem intimidating,” he says. 

Ted Tisdall, Operations Program Manager III at Johnson Controls, joined the digital champions network after successfully creating an application in Power Apps to help streamline a complex, 13-person approval process. He also used a coffee chat hour to share details about a recent app he created with the help of a colleague in the digital champions network.

The coffee chat highlighted the network’s value. “I started by reaching out to Craig, my friend and fellow digital champion, and asked him to show me how the delegation of queries to a SharePoint list works,” says Tisdall. “I taught it to the coffee chat group and answered questions so they can do the same thing. Hopefully, they’ll also teach it to their friends.”

For more in-depth learning sessions, Lee sets up Teams meetings to walk JCI employees through Power Apps and Power Automate. “Many people are unaware of what Power Apps does, and it might seem daunting at first, so I hold Teams meetings, share screens, and walk through the tool,” says Lee. “Microsoft Teams makes it really easy to share step-by-step processes with people who are new to using Power Apps, and they can follow up later by messaging in the chat.”

New solutions to benefit customers and employees

As a senior program manager focused on JCI’s retail technology solution, Lee needed to find a streamlined way to implement antitheft systems in retail locations around the world. “What brought me to Microsoft Power Platform was a need to capture a bunch of data about given retailers and their stores—things like the width of every entrance and the height of every door,” he says. A single customer can have thousands of locations in dozens of countries, making a one-size-fits-all approach to implementing the technology impossible.

Before Lee created a Power Apps solution, gathering this essential information was unwieldy and time-consuming. “In the past, we received data about retail locations via email, PDFs, and in all kinds of formats that we had to manually move to Excel spreadsheets,” he says.

With the help of Power Apps, Lee created a solution that standardizes information collected from the field, including photos that previously would have been sent as email attachments, often with little accompanying information. JCI employees who survey retail locations now use an app on their mobile devices to take photos that are sent to Power Automate, along with additional details, which then names the photos and moves them to SharePoint. “To date, the survey app has captured nearly a half million photos,” says Lee.

The app helps JCI employees save time, which also benefits customers. “We used to spend hours sifting through the data we received and manually moving it to Excel,” says Lee. “With Power Apps, we don’t have to do that, and we get solutions to customers faster because we have the data in a much more actionable format.”

And the word is spreading. “Twice I've been asked to develop or co-write apps using Power Apps to solve a customer need outside of my business unit,” says Lee. “Both apps were requested after people had seen a demonstration of my work during a coffee talk or digital champions meeting.”

Reaching out to champions across the business

The digital champions network aims to reflect the wide range of personas at the company. “Johnson Controls is a very large organization, and employees range from frontline workers on the automation floor who build air ducts and machinery to corporate department workers who support all of our business areas and everything in between,” says Tisdall.

Curti adds that for the digital champions network, a variety of participants is a strength. “I love that we have people from every business unit,” she says. “It’s important to have champions who aren’t super tech savvy, because that helps us increase the baseline of digital acumen at the company.”

With the help of Changing Social, a member of the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, JCI launched a Microsoft 365 help app that’s pinned in Teams and designed to spread the influence of the network beyond existing participants. “The rest of the company can use the app to look up digital champions and connect with them on Teams,” says Tisdall. “That’s one way that we’ll be able to build the network and get help out to users.”

Matt Walley, UK and Europe Customer Success Manager at Changing Social, describes the app as the gateway to learning more about the digital champions network. “The Microsoft 365 help app is where people can access support, learning pathways, and sign up to become a digital champion,” he says. “We use it to open up the network to anyone and everyone who might be interested.” 

When an employee joins the digital champions network, Changing Social uses a combination of points, quizzes, and structured learning campaigns to help build knowledge and boost engagement. “We have a points system to incentivize digital champions to be engaged throughout the program and bring in an element of friendly competition,” says Caleb Spencer, Community Manager at Changing Social. Digital champions earn points that count toward a leaderboard score by doing things like participating in challenges or testing their knowledge with quizzes. “Those activities motivate people to go spread information and create a positive change throughout the company,” says Spencer.

And campaigns dedicated to specific topics—for example, process automation or change management—help digital champions develop a range of skills. ”Future campaigns are going to dive into Microsoft Power Platform more with data storytelling and visualization coming next,” says Walley. “Teaching these specific skills is crucial to helping the digital champions continue to drive change within the business.“

By investing in a successful digital champions network, JCI is investing in its people, says Kelly Orford, Head of User Adoption at Changing Social. “Networks like this show that a company cares about its people and wants to make sure they’re able to do their jobs effectively, use the tools they’re given, and grow within the organization.”

Building new solutions faster

The digital champions network and champions like Lee and Tisdall help JCI employees work more effectively by using the full range of Microsoft 365 tools, with Teams and SharePoint Online as the go-to platform where knowledge sharing takes place. The network is also working to boost efficiency for customers. “Our goal is to drive efficiency for our customers’ benefit,” says Lee. “Being able to use a tool like Teams to ask peers questions and get to solutions faster is also going to get solutions back to our customers that much faster.”

The process Lee describes is exactly the outcome that Curti and her teammates had in mind when they launched the network. “We wanted to create a community of people who could transform into digital leaders and use all the information they’ve learned to improve business processes, generate new solutions, and really drive the company forward,” she says.

Find out more about Johnson Controls on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.