Best practice retail connection and collaboration
Decathlon is a company of sports lovers made for sports lovers, with more than 1500 Decathlon stores worldwide, and a workforce comprising of over 80 nationalities speaking 40 different languages.
Why Workplace?
Decathlon values diversity and open dialogue, however aligning communications and keeping everyone engaged can sometimes pose a challenge. How does a multinational corporation with offices halfway across the world, in an ethnically and culturally diverse region as the Asia Pacific stay on top of communication challenges, engage employees, and maintain a strong sense of community? Decathlon found their answer in Workplace.
Workplace offers Decathlon’s Singapore team a simple platform for highly interactive and effective communications that is aligned with the company’s lateral organisation structure. Building upon the company’s culture of open dialogue, it now serves as a space where geographical and cultural distance seems irrelevant, keeping all employees working as a team.
Retail
93,000
Global
“I can’t imagine anyone needing to be trained on how to use Workplace, our employees pick it up instantly.”
Results
Simplifying communications
Communication delays and miscommunication was a common problem with email. In Singapore, Decathlon employees are using Workplace Groups for more instantaneous interactions and find it easier to be on the same page. They can constantly align communications ranging from translations to marketing initiatives led by the HQ in France, and get better clarifications on-the-fly by directly discussing and chatting on Workplace.
Igniting employee engagement
Workplace is enabling Decathlon to stay true to their unique company culture, one of transparency, and open communication, where every employee feels they are a part of a close-knit family. It is now the space where Decathlon employees can have open dialogue and offer feedback.
To maximize the opportunities for employee engagement on Workplace, the management at Decathlon’s Singapore office has gone a step further by launching a Workplace Employee Happiness Survey Bot on Workplace. By simply starting a conversation with the bot, Decathlon’s management can quickly get a sense of each employee’s sentiments at a store/unit level, and promptly respond to them.
Cultivating an autonomous and innovative culture
Decathlon’s lateral organization structure encourages free-flowing communications that drive innovation. And Workplace is amplifying this attribute. It is proving to be a personal yet professional community where Decathlon’s employees can freely share, contribute, and offer feedback regardless of their job title or department.
This dynamic mix of interactivity, instantaneous communications, and culture of inclusiveness, is effectively enhancing the creativity of the team, and spurring a sense of autonomy and innovation from the ground up. One of Decathlon’s employees in Singapore has effectively developed and independently managed what is known as the ‘Blue Bag Project’ via Workplace—design ideas for a sustainable Decathlon bag were rapidly crowdsourced and iterated upon, with the final idea finally hitting the stores.
