Miroglio Fashion CEO, Hans Hoegstadt tells how using Workplace is connecting frontline workers, enabling better project management and improving innovation.
Miroglio Fashion is the women’s clothing company within the Miroglio Group – an Italian industrial company operating in textiles and in fashion since 1947.
Workplace has revolutionized our way of working
The Group operates in 22 countries through 37 companies and 4 industrial sites and launched Workplace back in 2016.
Hans Hoegstedt, CEO, tells what impact using Workplace has had on the business since then.
Why did you choose Workplace?
Because it is a tool that’s revolutionized our way of working!
Over the last few years, I think the role of the CEO in a company has changed. It’s crucial for a CEO today to create culture.
To work toward removing filters and blockers so there can be a transparent and constructive dialogue between everyone.
I was confident that Workplace was a platform that would help me achieve this.
We also chose Workplace because everyone in the company knows how to use Facebook. And they just instinctively ‘got’ how to use Workplace.
So right from the first day, people began to spontaneously interact with each other with no effort and in a genuine way. No training required!
It’s a kind of mass collective intelligence
For me, it’s also a way of ‘taking the pulse’ of the company. Of getting a quick sense of how people are feeling.
And it’s just a more innovative and efficient way of working – it’s a kind of mass collective intelligence.
How did you launch Workplace?
We launched Workplace at the annual convention exactly two years ago and virtually everyone engaged with it straight away. The 1100 plus stores in our various brands swung into action along with the head office.
Workplace gives a direct, filter-free link between head office and frontline workers
We set up all the Workplace groups that we use for various parts of the business. So we have groups for visual merchandising, product, innovation, communication and so on.
The result? Instant. Within a short space of time, barriers and distances disappeared. Anyone who found it difficult to make themselves heard by head office now has a direct, filter-free channel.
How is using Workplace helping change the way you work?
I’ll give you a specific example.
At the beginning of 2017, we launched a huge initiative to restyle 300 stores in 300 days. We called it the “300 in 300” project.
An ambitious mission which came with a €17 million euro investment – so we had to get it right.
The real challenge was the speed of action required. How could we encourage healthy competition that people would engage with?
In most companies, the CEO would announce the project and launch it. Then they’d confirm a year later if they’d been successful.
That’s not how it works with Workplace!
Workplace was a peerless acceleration tool for our biggest projects
Every day the projects office posted a photo with an update on the store refurbishments. Then it was the employees of the shops who contributed by posting photos and videos themselves every day, proud of their new stores.
A genuine case of bottom-up communication that kept the spotlight on the project for a whole year. It was a real pleasure to browse through the company News Feed every day and see a renovated store and the confidence from staff in the revamp and growth plans.
By December 2017 we’d already met and exceeded the target of 300 stores. In all this, Workplace was a peerless acceleration tool.
How has the way you use the platform evolved over time?
There are functions we didn’t use at the outset which have now become core features for us.
Auto Translate is simple and effective. And it was a crucial tool during our international deployment
Auto Translate was crucial when we extended the platform to our colleagues in Russia. Everyone posts in their own language and Workplace auto translates. Simple and effective.
It’s a powerful way to create a vast international network and we’ll be relying on the translations as we deploy Workplace in Romania, Spain, and France.
We also now use Live Video whenever we present a new collection.
Live Video enables higher quality broadcast at a tenth of the cost
It’s considerably higher quality and we can broadcast a professional stream at a tenth of the cost of any other service.
Can you share an example of something you can do now that you couldn’t do before?
One of the most striking examples is the group dedicated to the creation of our shop windows.
Before Workplace, the visual merchandising (VM) team would create a model window and send it out to all the stores by email.
With Workplace, the VM team now posts the image of the model window into the Workplace group. All the shops reply with their versions, comments, and suggestions. The VM team can then provide instant feedback for the stores.
We now have hundreds of examples of how to dress the window instead of just one, and people can take ideas and inspiration from the others.
Better dialogue and smarter collaboration using Workplace that results in better window displays. What’s not to love?
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