How do you engage and train your global workforce? The Magic Memories story
Tags: Distributed Workforces, Intranet Best Practice, Employee Engagement, Customer Examples, Intranet

How do you capture the engagement of your globally dispersed workforce? Specialists in Global Tourism, Magic Memories, defied the odds and turned their intranet into a system that grew their employees as well as their organization.

Founded in 1995, Magic Memories is an organization with a mission to capture once-in-a-lifetime moments across the globe.

As a global leader in “making people smile”, Magic Memories is always striving for innovative ways to personalize the experiences of all their customers, but with rapid growth and an increased need for company-wide collaboration, the crusade for engagement grew challenging.

The challenge: meeting the needs of a growing workforce

Because Magic Memories hosted a small staff of roughly 500–700 employees at the beginning of implementation, problems did not arise with their legacy intranet until they acquired another organization in the US In 2016 and grew by 50%.

This rapid growth drew attention to the deficiencies in their legacy system, especially since it was only meeting the needs of around 40% of their 2,500 person workforce. They quickly realized that when they initially launched their old system, they did not launch with a plan in mind. Because of this, the system ended up being used mainly as just a document storage site with the odd news story being published.

Lack of engagement was rampant, and ultimately, the company and its mission suffered.

A collaboration based solution

Recognizing the need to cater to their entire organization in their pursuit of a globally connected workforce, Magic Memories began to look elsewhere. After performing extensive research and talking to organizations across the globe. Magic Memories decided to partner with Interact to achieve its company-wide collaboration goals.

For me, after I narrowed my search down, Interact was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of what they could offer. By that I mean look and feel, accessibility and also ultimately value for money we were able to get 2,500 employees onto the internet for the same price we were getting 500 to 700 for the old provider right, so to me that’s a no-brainer. Nick Holmes — Group Learning & Development Lead, Magic Memories

From the beginning of the process, Magic memories set the design of their new intranet, “Click”, as a high priority. Teamwork was key. Magic connected their design teams with Interact’s to develop an intranet system that was tailored to the needs of their brand as well as that of their entire workforce.

Collaboration was readily available, the support of the Interact team making the process easy. “If we want to add or change or remove certain bits it’s literally just an email away,” says Nick. “If you’ve got anything you want to update, change, move they’re really receptive to helping us on the design.”

A single source of truth

Click became the single platform to connect every single Magic Memories employee. Access was frequent, and the information was current and relevant.

Employees now have a place to go to find out what is actually going on within the organization, a significant change since their massive 2016 growth. With Click, brand new materials on the intranet are getting seen for the first time by more than 70% of all their workforce.

Magic Memories tailors the employee experience even further by using Click regionally. The homepage is kept global so that everyone, regardless of location, can be connected to the business in the same way. However, they also created different pages for different members of the organizations. The information is split regionally and they can provide employees with exclusive and relevant news.

Before integrating Interact technology, the hundreds of venues that they housed across the world were largely unsynchronized; without a clear idea of what fits their brand. Now, employees have the option to go onto the intranet and see a video, how-to guides and first-hand instruction on what the proper practices are for their organization.

Virtual Learning College

The organizational improvements did not stop at intranet design and collaboration. Magic Memories put a lot of effort into creating a global learn leadership program on the intranet that not only connected their employees, but also enhanced them.

Stats have shown that companies that use e-learning technology receive an 18% boost in employee engagement and Magic Memories is an example of e-learning done right.

Magic’s legacy internet system hosted little to no training documents, so when Click launched in October, their priority was developing a training toolbox. Every tool that was established as best practice became available with the click of a button.

From this, a leadership development program was developed, and Click was transformed into a virtual learning college (VLC) that proved to be highly productive and cost-efficient.

In terms of cost saving now, for example, we have essentially saved 50 percent in terms of switching to Interact because previously we had probably half the amount of staff and we were spending the same amount of money on the old provider. Also, anytime you get a great LMS or learning management system you’re looking at a cost of 50 grand upwards, but we don’t need that now because we can drive our learning through interact, through being creative and using the different options in there. Nick Holmes — Group Learning & Development Lead, Magic Memories

A private team page was made for each group going through the program, and the functionality in that was made to resemble a VLC. For employees going through the leadership program, the first module is done in-house, where a program can be custom-made for their needs. The remaining modules are completed through distance learning at the pace of the user. All modules are video episode learning and accessible from any location via Click.

This unlimited access gives employees a chance to learn alongside their colleagues, at any speed, from any location.

Magical results

Building a powerful intranet that can reach your distributed staff goes beyond the software or design. In order to fully engage employees and deliver value, it needs to be tailored to the unique needs of employees and the organization as a whole.

Magic Memories’ efforts were widely appreciated by their staff, garnering positive feedback that far surpassed their legacy system.

“Finally, we have a place where we can actually talk to people and ask the questions that we’ve wanted to ask and get the information we wanted to get,” says Nick.

For Magic Memories, evolution is the goal, whether it be in the form of professional development for employees or providing employees with a deeper understanding of their role in the company.

We’re not perfect by any means, but we’re getting there, and Click is definitely the first step into getting people engaged. If you’re a global organization of people across different markets and different sites and different locations, or if you’re a small to medium-sized organization with everyone in one place, I couldn’t recommend Interact highly enough. It connects your people; they give you the tools to be able to manage the intranet yourself, but they’re also there and support you when you need it most, which is absolutely critical. Nick Holmes — Group Learning & Development Lead, Magic Memories

Want to hear more about Click? See the full video case study on Magic Memories’ journey here.