Making the business world better for people, one change at a time.

The Situation

At the start of 2020, a US Biotechnology leader with over 20,000 employees was going through a major leadership transition in their Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging (DI&B) department. When COVID-19 hit, a key platform for informal communication — the proverbial water cooler — all but disappeared, while remote work threatened to isolate the company’s workforce during an exceedingly difficult time. The new DI&B leadership needed to act fast to provide employees with a way to remain connected to DI&B and related issues all while building a new team and rolling out a new high-level strategy.

The Challenge

The events of 2020 put new urgency into the company’s DI&B efforts. What existed previously were ten employee resource groups (ERG) groups with minimal centralized support. Now, in the midst of a global pandemic and widespread social unrest, they were trying to build the plane while flying it.

The Solution

After listening to the ERGs and undertaking a deep-dive analysis, Bonavox created a multi-channel, cross-functional Change Communications plan. With the urgent need for messaging and engagement among staff, we helped ensure that all departments and functions related to DI&B became part of a new centralized messaging and strategic communications calendar. We also developed a DI&B portal on the company’s internal website to share people's stories and elevate the diversity and inclusion conversation across the company. In a related but separate aspect of the DI&B relaunch, Bonavox led the communications for the rollout of a new behavioral training course for all employees.

The Results

Bonavox wrote weekly articles across DI&B topics from Hispanic Heritage Month to unconscious-bias training to allyship for Black employees. By engaging C-suite leadership to participate in conversations happening on the new diversity channels, Bonavox helped grow the DI&B Yammer audience from 150 to over 5,000 people within just two months. Every day, hundreds of employees are actively participating in sharing their stories, connecting with each other, and finding safe spaces to process the events that have unfolded in 2020 — even without a water cooler to gather around.

The Situation

At the point Bonavox was brought into this engagement, the rollout of a Document Management System (DMS) for product information at a large global Biotech company was already over 2 years behind schedule. A key factor in this visible and growing failure was the lack of accountability to implement the new program. While it was imperative that the transition to the new system be completed, the project was without a key driver until a competitor’s challenge to the company’s intellectual property (IP) exposed how bad things really were. One billion dollars in revenue was unexpectedly at risk.

The Challenge

Across the key stakeholders — Legal, Regulatory, and Information Systems —there was a lot of activity, but little progress. Bonavox quickly identified a key element missing from the change initiative: Leadership was not visibly supporting the transition to the DMS. To compensate for the lack of a global approach, the company had resorted to hiring expensive outside counsel to track down key data to the tune of hundreds if not thousands of work hours. Staff was resisting adoption with claims that they were ‘too busy’ doing their real jobs to adopt a new way of working — a cry often heard with change initiatives. A sense of crisis emerged when it was discovered that electronic IP was housed in multiple systems, some legacy paper content had never been scanned into any system, and there was no record of which version in which system was the single source of truth. The scariest part was that locating the official IP was mostly tribal knowledge and many of those employees had been laid off in a large reduction in force (RIF) months prior.

The Solution

Bonavox started the engagement with a detailed discovery process to identify stakeholders and map commonalities and differences across departments. We evaluated the leadership structure and resistance points to build a foundation for change readiness. After listening to stakeholders, we developed and executed an integrated change plan that included key messages to leadership, key messages from leadership, training materials, and toolkits to assist in cascading the message across the company. To align stakeholders and create accountability, Bonavox helped rollout new project governance through the creation of an Executive Steering Committee and standing governance meetings to facilitate cross-department communication.

The Results

A post-crisis survey revealed that Bonavox’s integrated change management plan helped leaders and staff come together to achieve the legal and regulatory goal of protecting IP and the IS goal of retiring legacy systems. We were able to complete the rollout 15 months ahead of the extended deadline to help the company defeat their competitor’s IP challenge, ultimately protecting more than $1 billion dollars in revenue.

The Situation

When Tech Company A (TCA) agreed to acquire Tech Company B (TCB), Bonavox was hired to manage the cultural integration of the two companies in order to retain key talent from both companies, create a unified company culture positioned for growth, and reduce business costs by harmonizing back-office operations.

The Challenge

Both companies had strong and distinct cultures led by a charismatic leader. This was the first acquisition by TCA and stakeholders at both companies were unaware of the deal in advance. Finally, the salary and benefits at each company were meaningfully different. While the presenting challenges were relatively clear, they highlighted the need for direct communication.

The Solution

Throughout the engagement Bonavox strongly advocated that situational urgency be balanced with human empathy. With the goal of modeling the diverse corporate cultures, Bonavox initiated a fine-grained discovery process to hear from leaders at both companies. We analyzed audiences to create stakeholder maps and identified hidden points of resistance. After developing mitigation plans, our integrated change strategy amplified commonalities of culture and leadership between TCA and TCB. Finally, Bonavox built communication plans for all stakeholder groups and created all staff-facing communications.

The Results

The merger of TCA and TCB was successfully completed on-time and under budget to position the new company for growth. Utilizing our proprietary 180˚ pivot, Bonavox helped the new company retain 100% of targeted key staff, while separating the transitioning staff with dignity. Under the tagline “Simplified,” we helped establish a dynamic and unified culture with an expanded portfolio of services.