A+E Networks EMEA Became Internal Comms Superstars With Workvivo

Corporate restructuring

A+E Networks EMEA’s corporate structure went through some big changes a few years ago. Its EMEA branch had previously been part of A+E Networks US and reported to the head office in New York. But when Fox and Disney merged in 2019 in a $70 billion deal, A+E Networks EMEA broke off from the US side of the company and began reporting to central leadership in London.

Karl Burnett, A+E Networks EMEA’s Senior VP of Human Resources, says, “Essentially we had a group of entities that previously had not worked together that now came together. And there were all the usual challenges; the challenges of building a team and starting to have something feel like one team, what was in common, what was different. The dreaded synergies and looking to see how we could work more closely together.”

“And then the challenge of COVID coming along and making that a little bit harder than it would’ve been if we were able to go and be with each other in person.”

What were they looking for?

A social feed was one of A+E Network EMEA’s top priorities as it would be the place for employees to share images and videos, a crucial aspect of A+E Networks EMEA’s culture.

“We wanted it to be an intranet, so a place to store documents and templates and so on and to be able to search within that storage. Video was always going to be really important for us, so it needed to work well with video. We wanted a traditional newsfeed.”

“It was quite important for us that we could segment the audiences. Because we had these different teams coming together, it’s really important that if we’re updating the Hammersmith team about the new Greggs that is opening, we don’t want to offend our colleagues in Italy who would never consider eating a sausage roll.

“But more seriously, being able to target the messaging was really important. And I guess as we then got into the tender process, we were finding out more and more about the capability of these platforms. And so suddenly it was things like podcasts and live streams, live feeds, survey tools, poll tools, org charts – all of these other functionalities that we could see were available to us.”

Why A+E Networks EMEA chose Workvivo

When it came to deciding on the right platform for their people, Karl and his team chose Workvivo. The app ticked all of their boxes, he says, and they were sold on the look and feel of it.

“I wouldn’t be sitting here having this discussion if I didn’t really, really feel that Workvivo is a terrific product. Our Workvivo account manager feels like an extension of our internal comms team really. And so we also liked the team very much.”

“But it was really that there was synchrony between what Workvivo wanted to achieve in organizations and exactly what we wanted to achieve in our organization. There just seemed to be a lot in common. And whereas some of the other platforms had ideas that somewhat jarred with what we wanted to achieve, Workvivo was very much in harmony with what we were looking to deliver for our teams.”

Bringing the A+E Networks EMEA way to Workvivo through the power of video

With content and communications making up some of the core projects at A+E, the company wanted to make the most of Workvivo and bring its own style to the app; it wanted The BASE to be a place where employees could visit an emotive feed and bond over stories that matter, such as the company’s BELONG diversity and inclusion program.

For A+E employees, Karl knows that messages land much better with video than text. Workvivo helped them capitalize on that.

“It’s a cliché, but communication is everything. And I think for us, as a creative organization, being creative with the way in which we do that is super important.

“So all of our messages, whether it’s our CFO giving a quarterly update, that’s a video. But it’s not just the leadership team; it’s for anyone that wants to get a message out there, get a group of people together for a reason.”