Domino’s unites and engages a global workforce with Microsoft Viva

Engaging the workforce while satisfying customers 

Committed to connecting people with faster, fresher, and high-quality food, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Limited (Domino’s) is the largest pizza chain in Australia in terms of network stores and sales, as well as the largest lead franchisee in the world for the United States Domino’s Pizza brand. The company has emerged as an imaginative leader in the food technology industry, pioneering advancements in drone delivery, app ordering, and AI while striving to enhance customers’ lives, improve its products, and support its workforce.  

With more than 3,800 stores spanning 12 markets, the expansive nature of Domino’s operations across the globe has encouraged the company to continually foster a sense of cohesion within its organization and people. Team members at all levels within Domino’s are encouraged to grow their careers there, and Domino’s wants to make sure it’s providing workers with the tools to do just that. “We’re driven by this idea that leaders are grown from within our business,” says Matthew Kershaw, Global Head of Talent and Capability, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises. ”We have people that start as delivery drivers, or they start as pizza makers. They become business owners. They become executives. They become leaders in our business, and as they grow, our business grows.” 

To provide a world-class customer experience while continually innovating and supporting team members and their careers, Domino’s needed to bring its entire workforce together to both understand and contribute to its business goals and strategies, build network communities, and communicate with any team member in the world, in their own language. The company wanted to clear out the clutter of the multiple apps that team members were using on their desktops and phones and invest in a platform that contains them all. “We move very quickly. We’re a business that wants to grow, and we like to grow quickly and be agile in how we do that,” adds Kershaw. 

Driven by a deep-rooted passion for the empowerment and growth of its people, Domino’s leadership recognized the need to align its large and diverse company and cultures to its most important business strategies and goals while ensuring scalable, sustainable communications methods. The company measures success through employee engagement, feedback, and the alignment provided by objectives and key results (OKRs), a transformative approach to setting and achieving goals by fostering teamwork while driving accountability and innovation.  

The impetus for the company’s journey to implement its OKR program, while also considering the need for a more robust and inclusive communications strategy, stemmed from insights Domino’s gleaned through quarterly staff engagement surveys. The recurring observation was the need to ensure business strategy was clearly communicated and consistent across all markets, prompting the company to explore novel approaches to address the issue and ensure everyone was aligned with the strategic vision. 

Domino’s needed a tool to help all teams understand how to prioritize their goals and business priorities. Beyond goal setting, the company’s OKR program aimed to align team efforts through clear and transparent communication, which in turn would cultivate a sense of ownership and responsibility among team members. Then, by capturing input from those teams and having access to the right data, leaders could use this information to set meaningful, company-level OKRs. “The power of OKRs is to provide a North Star, a heartbeat for the whole organization,” says Matthias Hansen, Group Chief Technology Officer, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises. 

Aligning company culture with business strategy 

In the bustling world of Domino’s, where success hinges on the engagement and performance of its workforce, the company found a powerful platform in Microsoft Viva, an innovative employee experience platform within Microsoft 365 that is integrated with Microsoft Teams. Domino’s was seeking a solution—not just another tool—to tackle its large ambitions of global communications, goals alignment, and cultural connection. 

To embark on a journey of digital transformation, Domino’s took the time to consider its corporate goals, its people, and its way of communicating. While the company had already been using Viva Glint (a survey tool that’s part of Viva) to understand the sentiment of team members, Domino’s turned to the rest of the Viva suite to drive a new way of engaging, communicating, and connecting its workforce.  

Recognizing the need to align its many markets and provide strategic priorities, Domino’s decided to shift from its previous OKR tools to Viva Goals. The confidence the company has in Viva Goals is bolstered by a roadmap of features, such as creating custom dashboards and OKR templates. Key considerations included accessibility for team members, a strategic partnership for ongoing success, and the crucial aspect of language support across its markets. For widespread adoption, this new process is promoted and supported by a cross-functional team of OKR leaders and champions who are responsible for implementing OKRs in Viva Goals across different markets. They provide training, support, and expertise, ensuring that every team member, regardless of location or language, is aligned with the company’s vision. Says Kershaw, “In terms of scale and language support, we’ll be able to get to that outcome and really start to engage all of our team across our business in the process by using Viva Goals.” 

Since the implementation of the OKR program and Viva Goals, Domino’s has seen improved results in staff engagement. Micro-level success is observed through teams achieving their goals, while company-level success is reflected in key metrics like hitting their targets for sales, product quality, and profitability. The company understands that engagement is enhanced by involving team members in co-authoring the business strategy, as autonomy and empowerment lead to a more engaged employee experience. The goal-setting program enables celebration of wins, collaboration, and problem solving, and instead of spending time on preparing slide decks, users can use dashboards to access and present all the information. “With Viva Goals, we can respond quickly to business changes because we track every day, and we track live,” explains Andre ten Wolde, Chief Executive Officer, Europe, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises. 

Through the introduction of Viva Goals, the OKR program, and the integration of Viva Glint surveys (which include questions on clarity about the business strategy), Domino’s has seen significant improvement in its survey results. This initiative’s success has been reflected in goal achievements by teams across the organization, illustrating a positive impact on business strategy and how to get there. “Viva Goals and our OKR program are giving our people real, tangible input into the strategy of the business while helping them focus on the things that matter to deliver performance for the business,” says Kershaw. “With Viva Goals, we can get a clear picture of what we’re trying to achieve and how we’re going to get there. “ 

Building a stronger, more engaged Domino’s

While Viva Goals opened the door for Domino’s to enter the Viva suite, “Viva Engage sealed the deal,” says Hansen. To consolidate global communications across markets and move away from individual silos in its 12 different markets, Domino’s chose Viva Engage to serve as a hub for inspiration and connection among its team members worldwide. By providing a place to go for conversations, up-to-date information, urgent updates, community engagement, and learning opportunities, it’s a one-stop communications platform everyone can use, right from Teams. “With Viva Engage, it’s about integration; having it all come together is very powerful,” says Hansen. He adds that some features, such as Leadership Corner, have proven popular and effective at Domino’s, encouraging people in the workplace to participate and feel they’re a part of something bigger. 

Domino’s understands that communication is a responsibility shared by all, and engaged team members often have the best ideas when they’re thinking about the company and how they fit into it. To nurture that, it has created a structure of private communities within each market in Viva Engage, with each community serving a different purpose. For example, communities can consist of a two-way group for partners, one for celebrating achievements, and individual communities for support offices and Domino’s stores. There are communities for global updates, one for worldwide recognition of accomplishments and one focused on breaking records and sharing successful strategies. “Now that we have Viva, it’s so easy to connect with each other across the borders, within the teams, and with the franchise partners,” says Manon Stoutjesdijk, Public Relations Specialist, Benelux, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises. “With that connection, we can build an even stronger Domino’s which, of course, reflects the business purpose.”  

Frontline workers—pizza makers, drivers, and store managers—also have their own community, and part of Domino’s culture is to encourage its frontline workers to build their careers within the company. “Domino’s is a people business, and the magic happens in the store, where we’re making the best pizzas for our customers,” says Kemps. “With Viva Engage, we’re enabled to have a connection with all the team members to help them to unleash the best entrepreneur within.”

Amanda Mains, Corporate Communications Manager, ANZ, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises, appreciates the ability within Viva Engage to create stories like Instagram, making training and communication more enjoyable and relatable when trying to engage a young audience, especially through formats like TikTok-style videos. She also sees Viva Engage as a valuable tool for fostering relationships and ensuring team members feel more connected to the company. “People want to feel valued, heard, and informed, and with a global communications function supported by a great product like Viva Engage, this will only improve our business performance and connectivity to each other,” she says. 

Domino’s is dedicated to ensuring everyone in its organization is plugged in and feels included. With language support for 26 languages, “Viva Engage shows untapped potential when it comes to information sharing and knowledge and inspiration,” says Mains. “Because at the end of the day, while we all operate on different time zones with different languages in different markets, we are all united under the same purpose. And that is to become the most dominant sustainable quick-service restaurant by 2030. And we’re all bound by the goal that we want to sell more pizza and have more fun!” 

Strengthening culture through inclusive communication tools 

A core element of Domino’s culture is listening to its team members, placing strong emphasis on cultivating an open feedback environment, where ideas, suggestions, and innovations stem from bottom-up employee input. Domino’s understands that the value of feedback drives a commitment to continuous improvement for everyone—team members and customers alike. With its support for more than 70 languages, Viva Glint plays a crucial role in collecting valuable insights and opinions from team members worldwide. “Viva Glint is helping us to get insights from our team members—how satisfied and engaged they are within the company,” says Kemps. “In my role, it’s really important to understand what we can learn from them, where can we improve, and to make sure that the engagement will increase.” 

Domino’s is currently exploring how Viva Amplify can further provide space for team members’ creativity and connection, creating newsletters and other broad communications to publish across different channels. “Viva Amplify makes it easier for me to share a project with my leadership team, which people can contribute to and then send out,” says Hansen. “It gives you a toolbox in your hands to make it easy to communicate with your teams.” 

Domino’s is also delving into how Viva Insights (a tool to gain visibility into workplace activities) and Viva Connections (the gateway to a single, curated employee destination) can further enhance team member and franchise communications.

Revolutionizing communication with Viva 

The introduction of the Viva suite has transformed how Domino’s operates, creating a positive ripple throughout the company. “During the last two quarters, we’ve seen results really lighting up,” says Kershaw. “I genuinely believe that our teams talking about strategy on a weekly basis while capturing their data and initiatives in a single platform that can be easily accessed is a big factor. Viva Goals and the OKR program are a big part of the engine that allows us to make that happen.” Viva Goals has been pivotal in the company’s pursuit of operational excellence, while seamlessly interoperating with tools and platforms that team members use every day, such as Teams, web, mobile, and email, ensuring that everyone is staying on track with their OKR targets. “Viva Goals helps us to focus on the data that really matters and keeps us on the right course,” adds Ten Wolde. “We know where we’re at and if we’re hitting the targets that we’ve set, and we’re able to change and adapt quite quickly.” 

Viva Glint and Viva Engage have become essential to communication at Domino’s, providing insights and pulse checks for continuous improvement, while Viva Goals is helping the organization to react quickly to business changes while focusing on strategy through its OKR program. The integration of Viva with Teams has been a game-changer, revolutionizing communication by delivering work directly to individuals and bridging gaps across various roles and organizational levels. By bringing multiple communication apps under the Teams umbrella, Viva has eliminated the need for multiple downloads, making the company’s communication platform more efficient and unified. Everyone—from frontline workers, such as pizza makers and drivers, to store managers and executives—is on the same page, facilitating a smoother exchange of ideas, goals, opinions, and information. ”That sense of connection that we have amongst our teams across the world is what makes Domino’s such a unique place to come to work,” says Kershaw. 

With Viva, Domino’s team members can effortlessly share information, initiatives, and decision-making insights with its global network of franchises, resulting in a more engaged and committed workforce while nurturing a culture built on shared experience. Empowering its team members with clear, effective communication, time-saving tools, methods of meaningful engagement, and the ability to drive business outcomes is one of the ways Domino’s strives to stay competitive while continuing to innovate for both its customers and its team members. Viva has given Domino’s leadership the tools for team members to connect and participate in a more streamlined way, creating a more collaborative and interconnected Domino’s family. 

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