Just Eat Takeaway.com

Driving Change and Integration Communication Through a Centralised Digital Hub

Just Eat Takeaway.com (‘JET’) is a leading global online food delivery company, connecting tens of millions of consumers with nearly 250,000 local restaurants through its websites and apps. It offers an online marketplace where supply and demand for food delivery and ordering meet in 23 countries.

Headquartered in Amsterdam, the company was created in January 2020 by bringing together two of the world’s most successful food delivery firms: Takeaway.com (founded in 2000 in The Netherlands) and Just Eat (founded in 2001 in Denmark).

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Employees:

+ 10 000

Industry:

Technology

Locations:

23 markets

Supporting Integration and Change with Internal Communications

Stepping into 2020, Just Eat Takeaway.com had just announced their business merger bringing more than 8500 employees together. Coming with operational, communication and cultural challenges, the success of the business merger depended on many factors.

JET’s integration programme team, reporting to the Managing Board and CEO, looked after a number of workstreams in three broad areas: Departmental change; Markets and platforms; JET-wide activity, including Tax, Legal, Risk, and Change and Communications.

The role of the Change and Communications workstream (a cross-functional group comprising the EVP: HR, EVP: Marketing, and Head of Internal Communications) was to bring the whole business along on the integration journey: support employees going through change, enable leaders to align with and advocate the vision, and win hearts and minds to become one team.

The team focused on informing, involving and inspiring — and therefore playing a part in engaging — employees about the future:

Explaining major change, decision-making and new ways of working
Bringing to life the company’s new vision, strategy and values
Helping people get to know new management, leaders and teams
Providing opportunities for two-way feedback
Celebrating key successes
Recognising the coming-together of cultures
Giving people easy access to the information and tools they need to do their jobs
...and having fun.

While many factors influence employee engagement, the expectation of internal communications in this area was high, making this strategy not just a ‘nice to have’, but crucial during this integration journey. Successfully engaging employees gives them a sense of belonging and confidence about their role and contribution, turning them into active advocates of an organisation and its leaders… ultimately leading to better services and happier customers who come back time and time again.

The strategy was delivered across a suite of face-to-face channels (including a monthly global all-hands, local roadshows, and senior leadership team visits (where possible during COVID)), a selection of employee-led insight networks (including an ‘Integration Squad’ of JETers from all teams, countries and levels), and online touchpoints (Slack announcements channels, digital signage, podcast and global weekly newsletter) — with a global intranet at the centre of it all.

Step into ‘The Kitchen’

Moving a huge number of people to new ways of communication is a challenging task on its own. The new platform had to reunite users and information from three different sources and serve as a single communication platform to all employees of the newly created business.

Content Strategy — Navigation and Structure — Governance

‘The Kitchen’ was set up in 2018 with support from the business’ own technology team working with Lumapps and Netpremacy. Over three years it had become the ‘go to’ place for news and information for Just Eat colleagues. Given the strong user metrics, it was decided to leverage the existing set-up, functionality, security and design approach of The Kitchen for the whole of Just Eat Takeaway.com.

A project to refresh and roll out the platform across the new joint business was launched in June 2020. With a timeline of just four weeks, the team worked on several aspects:

Content Strategy

Creating new business/corporate content to reflect the organisation’s new vision, strategy and values
Developing a new content strategy to reflect and respond to the needs of new audiences, markets and teams
Conducting a complete content audit of static info, policies and processes

Navigation and Structure

Implementing tech and security procedures (Okta, IIE reviews) and enterprise integrations (including Google Cloud Search integration and translation tools)
Reviewing the platform’s overall navigation
Refreshing the design to match new brand and style guideline

Governance

Designing new workflows for content authors and editors
Updating audience groups (linking to HR and Tech platforms like Workday, Active Directory) to deliver personalised content
Setting up new insight mechanisms

With daily news stories, access to company tools, systems and policies, and an ever-increasing range of content from talent development to inclusion and diversity, The Kitchen has quickly become part of the day-to-day routine for many JETers. It’s the single source of truth for the new business, and the place to go to stay in-the-know, start a conversation and get things done. JETers can also rely on the secure mobile app to access information at any time of the day, at home, in the office or out and about.

Why Our Customers Choose Us

Members of the Managing Board and Exec Team will regularly ask ‘Can we get that on The Kitchen?’, and actively encourage colleagues to visit it as part of all-hands meetings and other messages. Support from the top of the organisation has set the behaviours and expectation that it’s everyone’s responsibility to keep themselves up-to-date — and not just the role of any one team or individual

Mark Tittle

Head of Internal Communications at JET

The Kitchen has played a key part in allowing us to drive a clear and consistent message during a time of intense change (made especially difficult due to Coronavirus). It has quickly become part of the ‘everyday’ for JETers globally who increasingly visit for news, tools and fun, and who regularly use it to share their plans and successes with others across the world.

Mark Tittle

Head of Internal Communications at JET

Key Use Cases

Change communication

The Kitchen facilitates integration of the legacy organisations by providing a single source of information about the change programme, with a dedicated space for project information, documents and timelines. Monthly global all-hands meetings with the CEO and Managing Board are streamed directly through the platform.Progress updates and executive interviews are all part of the editorial calendar.

Leadership and team visibility

Leaders have online spaces where they can directly talk to their teams, either with written or video updates. Physical and virtual teams can come together in spaces to share updates relevant to particular groups in private. In-built links to Slack groups keep top-down news and conversations connected.

Employee-centred editorial strategy

Personalised news, targeting users according to their specific user profiles, are delivered daily on the homepage, including interviews, people profiles and success stories to help JETers connect and collaborate with colleagues from different parts of the business. A large proportion of content ideas are submitted by JETers themselves, generating higher interaction and engagement.

Social connections

Social communities embedded in the platform link groups by interests, from diversity and inclusion matters like the LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans*) and BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) networks, to board games and running clubs, bringing people together from all parts of the JET world.

Task-based navigation

The Kitchen provides easy access to all business online tools through an app drawer and a ‘task-based’ navigation. Navigation is reviewed as needed based on popular content and searches. The inherent Google Cloud Search allows users to find content, emails, calendar invites, files and conversations directly from the intranet. All of this saves time and energy, allowing employees to focus on business operations and improving productivity.

Beyond Simple Connections

The Kitchen Catch Up

An accompanying end-of-the-week newsletter (70% open rate), summarises the headlines and directs people to the intranet for the full story.

The Kitchen Cast Up

Live, 15-minute podcast broadcast directly on the platform every Friday morning, looks back on the week’s stories, with interviews and games with guests from different parts of the business.

Fun and Social Initiatives

Regular quizzes and competitions every month give people the opportunity to test their knowledge, share their photos and win great prizes.

ChefBot: a Dedicated HR Assistant

ChefBot is a dedicated AI helpbot that helps JETers complete key HR tasks (such as booking a holiday or checking their latest paycheck) directly from the intranet homepage — further cementing the platform as the central hub of information and productivity.

Key Results

83%

Active users

102%

YoY increase in users after the merge

Visits on average per month

2.1

New stories per day

2000+

Reactions on average per month

In a recent Internal Communication survey:

92%

Agreed internal communications are clear and simple

86%

Agree communications helps them understand our vision and strategy

70%

Agreed communications are trustworthy

75%

Agreed communications help them feel involved and connected with what’s happening

Really cool that we have a combined intranet, which is easily accessible for everyone in JET.

Really impressed — excellent tools for keeping us up-to-date

It is a huge step forward and helps build truly one company

I've spoken to my friends who work in internal comms and shared what you guys are doing and they love it

Looking forward, JET is constantly thinking about how to make its digital hub more engaging, accessible and localised. With a business acquisition coming right around the corner, and huge growth expected over the coming year, JET’s Internal Communications Team is listening and responding to feedback — while preparing the platform to welcome and onboard new colleagues.