Johnson & Johnson — Enterprise Internal Communications Experience

A secure employee engagement experience built for enterprise collaboration and cross-departmental participation.

Project snapshot

  • Client: Johnson & Johnson (Multi-Department Enterprise Initiative)
  • Year: 2020

Services

The Opportunity

The client sought a simple, inclusive way to connect employees across multiple departments and geographical regions—driving sustained engagement and visibility of a multi-year organizational initiative. The goal was to create a frictionless experience for employees to participate and see their contributions reflected at enterprise scale.

The Challenge

This was an internal-only initiative requiring coordination across multiple organizational levels:

  • Multi-level stakeholder alignment (department leads, executive sponsors, and IT governance).
  • Tight integration with standard enterprise tools (Office 365, Yammer, SharePoint) without custom infrastructure.
  • Frictionless participation: employees across time zones and departments needed to contribute with minimal friction and clear workflows.
  • Enterprise scale: the experience needed to serve thousands of users, support asynchronous contribution, and maintain engagement over extended campaigns.

What We Did

1) Defined the MVP experience (what “good” looks like)

We shaped the minimum viable version around realistic employee workflows:

  • Simple, guided contribution flow with clear content requirements
  • Optional integration with controlled brand and content libraries
  • Multiple display modes and content organization patterns
  • Asynchronous contribution model supporting distributed teams

2) Coordinated with IT to validate enterprise platform integration

To reduce friction and ensure IT governance alignment, we validated Yammer and SharePoint integration patterns. We documented the practical requirements, constraints, and workflows for embedding content feeds into internal channels. This created a realistic, IT-approved path to deployment within standard enterprise tools without requiring custom infrastructure.

3) Built a functional prototype and tested with multi-level stakeholders

We produced a working demo environment to validate the end-to-end contribution and distribution workflow. Testing included department leads, IT governance teams, and representative users across regions. This proved the mechanism, identified implementation nuances, and built confidence in the deployment plan.

4) Developed interaction patterns and design directions

To accelerate stakeholder decision-making, we explored multiple approaches for:

  • Content presentation modes optimized for discovery and engagement
  • User contribution flows balanced between simplicity and governance requirements
  • Content organization and filtering strategies for enterprise scale
  • Visual identity options aligned to organizational branding

Deliverables

  • Functional prototype demonstrating end-to-end user flow and integration patterns
  • Yammer and SharePoint integration specifications and requirements documentation
  • MVP scope definition (contribution workflows, content governance, display modes)
  • Design exploration across multiple interaction and presentation approaches
  • Multi-level stakeholder alignment plan supporting executive, department, and IT governance review

Outcome

  • A validated, IT-approved activation path using Yammer and SharePoint integration, supported by documented requirements and a functional prototype.
  • Clear design recommendations aligned across department leads, IT governance, and executive stakeholders.
  • Detailed scope definition and phased buildout plan informed by multi-level testing and feedback.

Why It Matters

Internal communications doesn’t fail because teams don’t care. It fails when participation is hard, governance is unclear, and tools don’t connect. This project focused on lowering friction, respecting enterprise constraints, and designing an experience people would actually use—so belonging isn’t just a statement, it’s something employees can see and contribute to.

"The integration approach reduced friction significantly and got immediate buy-in from IT governance."

Stakeholder feedback validated the direction: strong alignment from executive sponsors and department leads on moving forward with buildout.

Results

  • Global IT-approved SharePoint App
  • Integration
  • End-to-end internal experience designed
  • Prototype
  • Stakeholder-approved creative directions
  • Global activation path
  • Photo/video support, tagging, simplified upload
  • Roadmap Approved