McCormick brings employees and information together with Viva Connections

Boosting employee engagement, connection, and collaboration

McCormick products have long been kitchen staples in homes and restaurants around the world. In addition to its iconic herbs and spices, the company manufactures, markets, and distributes seasoning mixes, condiments, and other flavorful products to the entire food industry, including e-commerce channels, grocery, food manufacturers, and food service businesses. McCormick emphasizes a people-first company culture because it knows that successfully delivering great flavors in 150 countries and territories requires a global team of engaged, connected, and informed employees.

To help foster this collaborative environment, McCormick introduced its first intranet in 2004 and upgraded it in 2011. While it initially met the needs it was designed to fill, over time, shortcomings became apparent.

“The intranet did a good job to begin with, but in recent years was no longer fit for purpose,” says Jim Smith, Senior Communications Director at McCormick. “It could only be accessed by connected office-based employees and that really restricted its reach. It was also a top-down brochureware channel. It did a reasonable job of sharing information, but there was no way for colleagues to share their views and interact with it, and no personalization to speak of.” Without a content management system, the Communications team had to ask IT for support when they wanted to update content, and it wasn’t possible to embed modern video or audio material.

Because of this, the company began looking for a more appropriate employee engagement platform. After evaluating several options, McCormick chose Microsoft Viva Connections as the basis for its upgraded intranet hub. We got more details from Jim about the benefits of using Viva Connections and the impact it’s having on McCormick and its employees.

Why was it so important to develop a new version of McCormick Connect?

Smith: As a global business, we have ambitious growth plans. We know that engaging and inspiring our teams around the world is crucial to us achieving this goal. As such, we need to be able to connect our workforce via powerful digital employee communications.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for us to be able to reach all of our people anywhere, any time, and from any device and then give them the vibrant, modern, and relevant content they need to do their jobs. We also recognized the need to be able to excite and align them behind our purpose, vision, product portfolio, campaigns, and how we’re building the McCormick of the future. Finally, we wanted to help our employees come together and collaborate with others around the world—overcoming geographical and language barriers—to solve problems, identify opportunities, and share best practices.

Why was Viva Connections the right solution for McCormick Connect?

Smith: We identified 10 different types of functionality that we needed to offer via the new portal—such as supporting mobile-first technology, promoting multimedia content, and offering instant language translations. Viva Connections came along at just the right time with just the right capabilities. It offers effective mobile-first technology with great search capabilities that the old system was lacking. Content management is straightforward and doesn’t require IT intervention, and the clear, real-time analytics were a big selling point. We also appreciated the seamless interoperation with Microsoft Teams, which is a critical business tool for us, and with Viva Engage, the evolution of Yammer, to offer two-way dialogue. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we wanted to embrace the Microsoft Viva suite and utilize it for all its advantages.

Are there any key learnings or best practices from your implementation experience that you’d share with another company considering a similar move?

Smith: Yes, I think there were two keys to our success. One was not biting off more than we could chew, to begin with. We started small with a simple trial to develop 10 web pages that incorporated lots of functionality to demonstrate to the business that we could do this. When that test-and-learn period was successful, we expanded the scope with many more pages because we had confidence that we could embrace the new technology and make it work for us.

The other key was spending the necessary time and effort to establish the right internal governance. This enabled us to develop the proper cross-functional task force to install the technology, create the content, get the right level of approvals, and excite and engage all of our different stakeholders so they knew that what was coming down the line. The result is that people really like the structure of the portal and the frequency of content updates—particularly news items, which we now publish at least once a day. 

What has employee response to the new McCormick Connect portal been like?

Smith: We’ve done surveys, and we’ve received lots of ad hoc feedback, and it’s all been overwhelmingly positive. But I would say that the primary way in which we gauge our success is through real-time analytics. We now know how many people are coming to our site every month and how many visits they’re making. We have approximately 13,500 employees, and we’re getting more than 10,000 unique users per month, who make between 250,000 and 320,000 site visits, and the data is trending upwards. If we’re getting that many visitors looking at that many pages, it suggests we’re doing something right. We’re now starting to see beyond visitors and page views and look at the popularity of different types of content. So, we’re making adjustments to the site to help people find the most popular content, which will drive higher analytics over time.

What are the advantages of having Microsoft as a technology provider?

Smith: During our Viva Connections deployment, we had great support from Microsoft, both at the strategic level and with the technical details. We were able to ask questions and get helpful responses, and all of the background materials, like playbooks and instructions, that Microsoft provided were very useful. Because all the pieces of the Microsoft ecosystem work so well together, we have channels that are complementing and supporting each other rather than competing. With Viva Connections and Microsoft, we’ve got the right infrastructure and the right technology partner whose expertise and creativity inspire us and drive us to make our employees more engaged and connected. And we know that Microsoft will expand and enhance Viva going forward, so as we’re ready to embrace new technology such as AI, Microsoft will continue to provide the copilots and other solutions we need to stay on the leading edge of employee communications.

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