Context

Fremantle is a leading global creator, producer and distributor of some the biggest entertainment formats, compelling international dramas, award-winning films and high-quality documentaries, operating across 27 territories.

From Got Talent to Neighbours, Password to Poor Things, Alice & Jack to America the Beautiful, The Lost Ones to Big Mood and Priscilla to House of Kardashian, Fremantle creates and delivers irresistible entertainment. 

To support Fremantle’s creative, ambitious employees, an effective communications platform was vital. In early 2023 Fremantle used Workplace from Meta for internal communications. Workplace provided chat capabilities but lacked a strategic news function. Furthermore, employee take-up was generally low as the platform sat separate from Outlook and Microsoft Teams, where Fremantle employees were working. Workplace inundated employees with email updates from the platform, yet for employees it was challenging to find out what was happening in other parts of the company.   

Fremantle has the opportunity to deliver an inspiring platform for their connected global network of creatives. Using Microsoft 365, Fremantle recognised the potential for an integrated digital employee experience that could seamlessly blend strategic news, community and personalised content required to help employees do their work.   

In April 2023, Addin365 were engaged by Fremantle to support the delivery of a new digital employee experience, called Spotlight, on Microsoft 365. The internal communications team, led by Laura Colantuono, met the challenge with both excitement and trepidation.

“[There was] excitement in being able to deliver something that would make people’s lives easier and connect to the company more.”

Naomi Khan

Internal Communications Team

Connecting Creativity

Fremantle is the sum of their incredible creative network. The company’s culture, values, and character come from projects collaborated on across the world. Spotlight would effectively communicate about this world-class work. Focus groups before the delivery of the new Spotlight found that many employees felt uninformed about what was going on in areas of the business outside their own. “There’s so much that’s happening across the business, so much good stuff, and I don’t think we fully celebrate everything in the way that we should. In particular the people behind our productions” Paul Wood, Head of Global Research and Insight.   

Furthermore, Fremantle had an objective to standardise communications across departments and territories, to improve employee engagement and unite their global workforce, bringing to the fore their common culture.

A Place Creatives Want to Call Home

With a global network of creative professionals and a common goal – to produce the best entertainment in the world – Fremantle’s dream is to be a place creatives call home.   

Fremantle’s creativity needed to translate to Spotlight. Using Microsoft 365 provided a blank canvas, which needed more razz to capture the spirit of Fremantle. Addin365’s Creative and Page Kit – a toolset of webparts designed to deliver brand alignment in Microsoft 365 – was used to deliver an immersive brand experience on Spotlight.  

Celebrating Diversity    

Employee focus groups ran before the digital employee experience revamp emphasised the importance of a standardised communication platform for the whole business.  

“There were countries that already had some sort of routines and platforms in place that they built in-house, but the majority didn’t have anything. Everybody was aligned that something new was needed. We had to bring our people together.” Laura Colantuono, Head of Internal Communications  

Phase 1 of Spotlight launched in September 2023 and focused on the delivery of a companywide communications experience, amongst other things. This prioritisation meant Fremantle’s global network could finally connect with each other. In January 2024, work began on regional experiences.  

Fremantle wanted to go beyond companywide communications to provide all employees with personalised and relevant content, specific to their location as well. “We have colleagues responsible for regional specific communications in every market. We wanted Spotlight to be inclusive of their needs and the conversations that happen every day at a local level.” Naomi Khan, Internal Communications Team  

Fremantle have embraced Viva Engage to facilitate conversations at a local level, so that the diverse needs of their workforce can be met without restraint, whilst working within the Fremantle digital employee experience framework. 

“We want to support local conversations as the concept of community is important to us. Having grown through various means – including acquisitions – we recognise that the local relationships are as meaningful to employees as being part of the global network.”

Laura Colantuono

Head of Internal Communications 

A One-Stop Shop 

During the research phase it became apparent that employees wanted a one-stop shop. Toby Prosser, Group Head of Marketing & Creative, explained the top three things he hoped for were a “centre for messages and announcements, a place to go and get information about policies and processes, and a creative connection with the wider business.”   

With this in mind, Spotlight needed to go beyond communications to deliver content that would help employees get their work done. Policies and know-how are now part of the task-based architecture delivered to support Fremantle employees in their work.   

“Having a task-based architecture has been really important to helping our employees self-serve their needs. Using Addin365 patterns gave us a starting point in terms of layout and navigation that meant our design phase moved at pace. Using the Addin365 Site Builder tool to create sites in minutes meant we could deliver the project quickly – in 4 months. Delivering phase 1 has felt straightforward as a result.”

Naomi Khan

Internal Communications Team

Data-Driven Launch 

While a lot of qualitative data was used in deciding the project’s requirements, Addin365 and Fremantle used quantitative data, to ensure a seamless technology transition from Workplace to Microsoft 365.   

To launch the new Spotlight experience, regularly visited SharePoint sites that had mushroomed up in Microsoft 365 already were measured and the most used sites were used to tell people a new digital employee experience was coming. This was supported by launch activities that focused on employee value and benefit of the new digital employee experience.  

In week 1 of Spotlight going Live, there were 25,791 reads, averaging 4 visits per employee across the world.   

In the launch month of September 2023, on average every one of the 6,000 Fremantle employees used Spotlight once or twice a (working) day, demonstrating the user experience is intuitive and the content on-point.   

This value did not subside after the excitement of launch and currently each employee uses Spotlight 27 times a month (November 2023) – an impressive level of adoption for an organisation with a global footprint. 

Spotlighting a Global Network      

By harnessing the full power of Microsoft 365 and extending it with Addin365 products, Fremantle achieved its objectives of delivering a digital workplace environment that genuinely connected its employees and successes. The new communications platform – Spotlight – delivered in just four months, has revolutionised how the company connects its global workforce.   

“Spotlight has been game changing for us – now we have categorised news channels, structured and organised areas to post updates, and personalised feeds for ultimate engagement.”

Laura Colantuono

Head of Internal Communications

Internal communications professionals often feel a mixture of excitement and trepidation at the prospect of a new platform. However, with the right tools and support, the end product can leave them feeling accomplished and satisfied, which was precisely the case for Fremantle.   

“The feeling is that we did a really good job in a short amount of time. A really huge achievement for us coming from nothing.”

Laura Colantuono

Head of Internal Communications