“It has been wonderful to see a rapid consolidation of our workplace tools and a clarification of our content that aligns to our business priorities of supporting growth through the client experience.”
Dominic Dow
Chief Technology and Product Officer
Employees across 31 locations globally
Visits to Connect, averaging 1-2 visits per person, per day
An increase in unique visitors to Connect to 3301
In 2024, Robert Walters, the worlds most trusted talent solutions partner, unified its three core brands and 3,300 employees into one. This bold move came with a new strategy: Winning as One. But while the business had evolved, its digital workplace hadn’t kept pace. Employees were navigating a maze of disconnected digital tools, siloed systems and inconsistent communication channels – which were hindering collaboration and reducing their productivity.
Robert Walters had grown into a global business, but its internal communications were still fragmented by region and business line. Updates were often delivered in silos, making it difficult to maintain a consistent narrative across the organisation.
“We had a long way to go before we were truly unified in how we updated the business. At that time, we stuck to our old ways—formal comms by region and business line, not as one joined-up company.”
Chief Executive Officer, Recruitment Outsourcing
The retirement of Meta’s Workplace was the spark for a broader digital workplace review. Rather than just replacing one tool with another, Robert Walters saw an opportunity to rethink their entire digital employee experience. The goal: a platform that embodies its unified brand, enhances employee engagement and simplifies daily work for every employee by bringing together Robert Walters’ digital tools into a one-stop shop.
“Before we started our digital employee experience project, I was shocked by how siloed we were—people didn’t know each other and were hesitant to reach out, almost as if they worked for separate companies.”
Global Internal Communications Lead
Robert Walters initiated a tender process in autumn 2024 to select a digital workplace partner. The project team considered off-box intranet products as well as using SharePoint and the wider Microsoft 365 services.
Following a robust multi-stage process, Robert Walters selected Addin365 products, to enhance Microsoft 365.
“We selected Addin365 for their partnership and engagement approach. With 2 Microsoft MVPs on the team we knew we would be in safe hands when it came to deploying Microsoft 365 services well. We also valued the Addin365 approach that starts from business objectives and delivers using technology. We could see that Addin365’s approach would keep us focused on delivering business value over the course of our partnership.
Addin365’s products supplement Microsoft 365 which was another key benefit for us, as we understand that our people have a range of requirements that will need to be met over time. We did not want to be penned into a platform that was unable to do more than intranet. Additionally, our people work day to day in Microsoft 365 and it didn’t make sense for us to take them away from that.”
Chief Technology and Product Officer
Robert Walters’ BA, Wreford Lawrence, had already talked to the business about their needs and frustrations with the current communications and technology experience at Robert Walters.
“With over 3,000 SharePoint sites and 55 terabytes of scattered data, Robert Walters’ digital ecosystem had become noisy and difficult to navigate. Finding the right document or resource often felt like searching for a needle in a haystack. This digital noise not only slowed people down, it eroded trust in the tools they were supposed to rely on.”
Wreford Lawrence
BA
As part of the project Addin365 spoke to the leadership team to understand their priorities, so that the design on the new digital employee experience would help Robert Walters to meet Robert Walters business goals.
During these leadership sessions we identified a broader business initiative to elevate the customer experience to drive business growth. Robert Walters aimed to ensure that every client interaction, whether through recruitment, advisory or delivery, benefitted from a more connected and informed workforce.
Practically this meant ensuring employees and clients were well informed.
“We needed a direct way to tell the business about our wins, client engagement, and new offerings so they can present our latest thinking.
For our customers, we were developing new platforms, like a client self-service data portal, and we needed to make sure these integrated with our internal systems. We wanted to cut down on manual reporting and let clients get what they needed themselves.”
Sinead Hourigan
Managing Director, Advisory, CX, and Global Commercial
The focus on business growth and customer experience also came through from other leadership interviews, making it a cornerstone consideration for the digital workplace design.
“We always aim to design a digital employee experience that delivers business enablement as this is where platform use and value comes from for both employees and the business. When we talk about delivering a one-stop shop, understanding how the business can be enabled also gives a steer on which tools and content to prioritise.”
Sarah Hughes
Consultant, Addin365
In just 12 weeks, the Addin365 team supported Robert Walters to deliver their new digital employee experience ‘Connect’ — a unified digital workplace built within Microsoft 365 using the Site Builder, Creative and Page Kit, and Addin Analytics products from Addin365. The result? A streamlined, branded, and intuitive platform that empowers employees to work smarter, easily collaborate, and feel more connected to one another.
Addin365 delivered a personalised home and navigation experience to Robert Walters, that brings together digital tools and content into an intuitive information architecture. Content that supports the client experience has been prioritised, to support Robert Walters’ growth strategy.
“It’s a lot better than what we had previously. Everything is brought together on one page, which is very convenient. It looks a lot more uniform and ties in our branding really well. It just makes me want to access it more, which is inherently useful for the business.”
Stefan Spaulding
Principal Recruitment Consultant
As part of the project Robert Walters’ internal IT team moved social platform from Workplace by Meta to Viva Engage. This combined with deep integration with tools like Teams and Outlook means that Robert Walters employees have enjoyed the new Connect experience without needing to learn a new tool.
“It has been wonderful to see a rapid consolidation of our workplace tools and a clarification of our content that aligns to our business priorities of supporting growth through the client experience.”
Dominic Dow
Chief Technology and Product Officer
With the launch of Viva Engage embedded within the Connect experience, Robert Walters has enabled community building and seamless communication across service lines and geographies.
“Employees are able to connect more easily, share insights, and work together more effectively—regardless of location or role. We are providing communities alongside our more structured strategic communications to keep our people informed about our strategic initiatives and provide an opportunity to feedback.”
Global Internal Communications Lead
Robert Walters wanted Connect to reflect the same clarity and confidence as their external identity, to underline a sense of belonging for their employees. Using the Creative and Page Kit, the Robert Walters brand has come to life across every corner of Connect. From typography and layouts to colour schemes and templates, employees now enjoy a consistent experience that feels unmistakably “Robert Walters”.
“Delivering brand alignment across Connect has not only strengthened the employee experience but also reinforced a sense of collective identity and purpose. As part of the Connect project, Addin365 has set up org assets for us, providing employees with the latest branded Word and PowerPoint templates each time they go to create a new file. This has been a game-changer for us, as we are now confident that old branded templates are not in use.”
Group Marketing Director
A month ahead of launch the marketing and communications team got to work preparing the business for change.
Employees received a ‘you said, we did’ communications campaign and were invited to attend a number of online sessions to familiarise themselves with what was coming. Guides and videos were also provided.
“Change in itself can be disruptive, so we wanted to prepare our people globally for that. Just as we gathered requirements from employees to shape the platform, we were equally intentional about how we launched it. Our goal was to ensure the rollout reflected the needs and voices that we heard at the outset.”
Global Internal Communications Lead
By engaging the wider business throughout the project, there was already an awareness of the new digital workplace that could be built upon.
“Our needs and feedback were definitely considered throughout this project. I’ve worked a lot with the technology team and had quite a few meetings with them to test different things that are important to us, and I can see that they have definitely taken our requirements into account.”
Stefan Spaulding
Principal Recruitment Consultant
The communications team at Robert Walters also designed and delivered a launch campaign for leaders. From an SLT presentation by the comms team to a ‘Top 300’ explainer by IT, leaders were engaged around their needs and how the platform supports the requirements they shared. Crucially, launch communications were delivered by marketing, communications and IT.
“The Connect project is about enabling our people to win as one, it is a project by the business to support the business so it didn’t make sense to launch the platform as a comms initiative or IT initiative – we wanted to demonstrate that it is a step change to support our business growth for everyone.”
Group Marketing Director
Robert Walters uses Addin Analytics to track engagement with Connect. Within the first 3 weeks of Connect going Live there has been:
With a personalised experience that delivers relevant, strategic content it is not hard to see why.
In autumn 2025 Robert Walters and Addin365 will look at delivering more workloads that support Robert Walters’ growth strategy on the Microsoft 365 platform.
“For the first time, I could easily find benefits, payslips, expenses—everything I needed. The people finder is also really good. It’s one click and we can find who we need across EMEA, which is great for referrals.
I think because our previous digital workplace was all over the place, I hardly ever used the intranet. I would go through various other ways to try and find information I needed, so to have it all right in front of us here is great, it reduces the previous problem.”
Savannah McCabe
Recruitment Consultant
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