Introduction
With their sights set on cultivating a sustainable energy future, Baker Hughes needed to unite its workforce of more than 50,000 employees working across 80 countries to achieve their ambitious transformation goal. By launching a world-class employee experience platform that would go on to be credited as one of the world’s best intranets, the leading energy technology company has ushered in a new era of work hallmarked by collaboration, productivity and connection.
Baker Hughes is an energy technology company that provides solutions to energy and industrial customers worldwide. Built on a century of experience and conducting business in over 80 countries, their innovative technologies and services are taking energy forward—making it safer, cleaner, and more efficient for people and the planet.
Baker Hughes employs more than 50k colleagues worldwide, as well as 25k contingent workers. Employees work across diverse functions, from engineering and manufacturing to field operations and sales. More than 34% of Baker Hughes’ colleagues work in the field with limited or no access to desktop devices.
Project Overview
Mission:
Launch a world-class intranet solution that can grow and change with Baker Hughes as the enterprise delivers on their strategy to develop and deploy technologies to take energy forward.
Key goals:
- Unify two legacy intranets with a powerful employee experience platform that would connect frontline and desk-based employees with the people, systems and knowledge needed to enhance their experience of work.
- To help colleagues to be more productive by providing a single point of entry to the many applications they rely on.
- To transform internal communications with a social home for stories and information that would help align employees against ambitious goals and underpin a connected culture.
The Challenge
Baker Hughes is a large complex organization with a diverse global workforce and ambitious goals for the future. As a pioneer in the energy industry, Baker Hughes is leading the charge when it comes to building a sustainable future. The enterprise has committed to reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 and reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
To turn this vision into a reality, Baker Hughes needed a way to align employees against their compelling mission and give them the tools and information they needed to play their part in making it happen. Leaders recognized that their two siloed legacy intranets were holding progress back and saw an opportunity to transform culture, communication, collaboration, and productivity with a new, centralized employee experience platform.
With a third of Baker Hughes employees working on the field, any solution designed to uplift employee engagement across the organization needed to be accessible on mobile. To unify colleagues in the way they envisioned, the company needed a powerful platform that worked as well on mobile as it did on desktop devices. It needed to deliver exceptional user experience and harness the latest innovations in employee experience technology to prime their people with a cutting-edge platform to underpin cutting-edge work.
At the core of the project was a goal to demystify a complex, global company and help employees to understand who did what, where, how and why. Baker Hughes sought to create a digital HQ that would help employees new and old to understand the business, connect with the culture, and feel part of something special.
The Solution
Following extensive vendor research, Baker Hughes engaged Unily as their chosen partner to bring their digital employee experience transformation to life. The enterprise sought a scalable solution that would grow and evolve alongside the company. Impressed by Unily’s innovative roadmap and track record of solving employee experience challenges for complex multinationals, Baker Hughes placed their trust in Unily.
Alongside having the features and functionalities Baker Hughes were looking for – including a powerful integrated search function – the organization was also drawn to Unily because it offered ample opportunity to customize the platform without the need for heavy coding.
MyBakerHughes was launched in April, 2020 at the peak of the pandemic. The platform’s value was immediately evident as it became a critical tool for managing their crisis response, acting as a trusted source of guidance and connection as the workforce adapted to new ways of working.
Through carefully applied targeting and personalization features, Baker Hughes has created a global platform with a local feel. Employees can tailor their experience to suit their role, interests and location, and still come together around shared global stories that make them feel part of something bigger
Not only does MyBakerHughes provide a home for the company’s internal communications, it also acts as launchpad to the many applications employees rely on. Through integrations, the platform simplifies access to thousands of business critical tools, from productivity and collaboration applications such as the Microsoft suite to HR and payroll systems.
By aggregating third-party tools into a seamless digital experience, employees now have one place to go for everything the need to succeed at work. With the addition of Unily’s powerful global search experience, Baker Hughes’ employees can now easily find information previously siloed in disparate applications through simple keyword searches.
MyBakerHughes also leverages a Workday integration to populate employee profiles. From the People Directory, employees can search for colleagues across the business by name, location, skills or function. In this way, MyBakerHughes is helping colleagues from around the business to connect and learn from each other, no matter where they work.
The Results
In 2021, MyBakerHughes was recognized as one on the world’s best intranets by the Nielsen Norman Group. The platform achieved the goals laid out by providing a single destination for everything employees need to be engaged and productive at work. As a result, MyBakerHughes has fast become an employee favorite, receiving 10x more average visits than the previous legacy intranets combined.
MyBakerHughes has revolutionized the company’s approach to internal communications. Not only has the platform ushered in a new era of two-way communications – giving employees the ability to interact with stories through social features – it’s also enabled the business to streamline its content production process.
Using Unily’s AI-powered automated Journeys feature, Baker Hughes developed a content manager upskilling program designed to alleviate the burden of manually onboarding and upskilling their global network of content contributors. Instead of manually training each content manager, this automated approach allows content contributors to access a self-paced training course delivered through MyBakerHughes. Each module is followed up with a quiz that ensures understanding, making sure that the company’s editorial standards are met and consistency is preserved.
Today, MyBakerHughes is integrated into the daily life of employees across the company. It is place where people start their day, where they go to find answers on-the-go, where they access their applications, and where they connect with their colleagues and leaders alike.
As the enterprise continues to innovate and make strides to reach their goals for cultivating a sustainable future, their employee experience platform continues to play a central role in uniting employees and inspiring them to achieve their full potential.