Interview With IKEA’s Hanna Lundgren, Co-worker Communication Leader
445 stores, 30 countries, 165,000+ employees
- Reminder: it’s budget season. Here’s my three-part series on how to make the business case for internal comms, published by Poppulo: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Welcome to the fourth installment of my interview series with internal comms professionals.
Hanna Lundgren is a Co-worker Communication Leader for IKEA, where she’s been for nearly five years. Although the global corporate office is in Malmö, Sweden, it remains shuttered because of the pandemic. So for now Hanna is working remotely from her home in Helsingborg, about an hour north of HQ.
The first IKEA store opened in 1958 in Älmhult, Sweden. Since then IKEA, famous for its flat pack boxes and Swedish meatballs, has blossomed to more than 400 stores around the globe, making it the world’s largest furniture retailer.
Helpful context: You may not know that IKEA is actually a franchise organization. The overarching brand owner is Inter IKEA System. Hanna actually works for Ingka Group, one of the franchisees, which operates about 90% of IKEA’s 445 stores across 30 countries. About 165,000+ employees — or co-workers as they’re called at IKEA — work for Ingka Group.
In this interview, Hanna:
- shares how she empowers communicators in 30 countries
- describes IKEA’s multimedia programs, including Flat Pack TV⭐
- illustrates how IKEA uses employee-generated content
- counts the number of IKEA items she can see from her desk
⭐ Indicates content available exclusively to paid subscribers.
Hanna and I spoke in October using Microsoft Teams, a glimpse into the collaboration tech in use at IKEA.
Describe the internal comms team at IKEA.
The Co-worker Communications team is made of 12 people who work on a global level. We are part of Integrated Communications, which includes Media, Editorial, and Digital Comms. We work very much cross-functional because the line between internal and external is fading. There is also close collaboration with our Communication Business Partners out in the organization. The content we create for co-workers is sometimes also shared externally because we want to use our 165,000+ co-workers as ambassadors for IKEA.
In each country we have a communications team where one person is responsible for co-worker communications. Germany is the largest country in terms of the number of stores, followed by the United States.
One of our challenges is getting everyone in the Co-worker Comms global network into the same meeting. Due to time differences, we hold one meeting early in the morning, so we can get Europe and Asia together, but then we have another meeting in the afternoon to get the U.S. and Canada involved too. This means that all people presenting in a meeting need to do it twice. But inclusion is very important to us and it is worth the effort.
What exactly do you do?
One of the things I do is be the global contact person for the Co-worker Communication leaders for the various countries. We meet once per month for knowledge sharing, and we inform them about the latest global campaigns, co-creations, business updates, and implementation plans. One of our biggest tasks is to empower and support them and make sure they understand that they are not alone working with Co-worker Comms; we have a whole global network spread out across the world that is ready to help and support. They are part of one big family, so we encourage them to reach out to us, as well as to their peers working in the same field but in a different country.
My closest colleague and I develop and create the Co-worker Comms strategy and make sure it’s implemented in the countries. The Co-worker Communication leaders in the countries then configure the material for local conditions and culture, but we make sure they have a clear global perspective and approach to guide them forward.
I also work on bigger global initiatives, programs, and projects, like a new television program we’re putting together called Flat Pack TV. I work high and low, which is common for our team, and I guess throughout most comms team in general.
What is the corporate culture like at IKEA?
Our CEO Jesper Brodin is the best example of entrepreneurial spirit. He is a never-ending positive machine. I have never met someone with so much energy!
IKEA is a place that is flat, not so hierarchical. In Sweden we have a corporate culture that is flat in general, different from hierarchical corporate cultures in other countries I have worked in. You can feel the Swedishness, where everyone’s opinion counts and it’s okay to make mistakes. Everyone is included; diversity and inclusion is one of our most important characteristics.
Which technology do you use to connect with employees?
We have a SharePoint intranet accessible from all devices and from outside the network. On the intranet we share news and people movements, and much more information, such as function descriptions and project pages.
Microsoft Teams is another place where people are invited to share material among different groups and this is the channel we use for our meetings. Yammer is one of our main internal channels. It contains more of the nice-to-know stuff. Some countries use Yammer a lot, some less.
Channel preferences vary by country. Spain, for example, really pushed for Yammer and now it’s second nature for them. That’s not the case in other countries. Preferred comms channels also vary depending on the digital tools that are allowed in a country. If co-workers do not have a mobile device for work, for example, it is harder to reach them with the information we publish on the intranet. In this case, we need to find new ways to connect with them. Working with 30 countries really makes you understand that there is no single solution that fits all. It really varies from country to country depending on national habits and regulations.
We have like a million newsletters. Almost every region, country, and department (of which there are many) has its own newsletter. Some teams even do PDFs and print them and distribute them physically. You have to test and try and find what works best to reach your specific audience. That said, once a week the global comms team sends out a newsletter to our matrix of communicators that provides an overview of upcoming activities. We use Microsoft Sway for that.
How do you engage 165,000+ retail co-workers across 30 countries?
IKEA is a company of entrepreneurial spirits. Our co-workers never feel finished. We celebrate but there’s a sense that we can always do more. We promote knowledge sharing. We call it “steal with pride.” If it’s a great idea, we encourage you to copy/paste the idea into your own work, literally or metaphorically.
We have a bottom-up approach at IKEA. We want to hear from all of our co-workers and make their voices heard. We need to balance, of course, because managers need to communicate too, but co-worker engagement is highest when the message comes from another co-worker.
We also have a program called Let’s Co-Report where we invite all co-workers to become journalists and to send in their stories. We help them with the article to get it ready for publication, but we stay in the background and let the employee be the protagonist. The idea is that it’s news for co-workers by co-workers.
What about translation?
English is the common language. Previously we produced news articles and communication packages only in English, but many co-workers don’t speak English. We now translate news articles to 11 languages and many times we also translate the communication packages for campaigns, everything to support our countries as much as we can. With that we cover about 80% of all co-workers. We have to serve the content in their language, otherwise they’ll never act on it. We have to make it as easy as possible and if we expect engagement, we need to serve it in a way that is digestible for our co-workers.
What is the most popular type of content?
Storytelling for sure. We see engagement spikes where people recognize themself in the protagonist. For example, if we publish an article about someone doing great things in China, we’ll see higher hit rates in China than in the U.S.
Our pets and tattoo Yammer groups are the most popular chat forums! The tattoo channel is called IKEA INK.
⭐ How do you use multimedia to connect with co-workers, especially during the time of Covid?
Subscribe to my newsletter to learn about IKEA’s internal television program Flat Pack TV, including a description of the program’s five segments.
⚡LIGHTNING ROUND⚡
How many IKEA products do you see in your room right now?
Eight. I see candle holders, chairs, the carpet…
What’s your favorite snack at the IKEA store?
The plant-based meatball is my new favorite. Even my kids love it. It’s amazing!
What’s your favorite room in the house and why?
The kitchen because I really like to cook. I am married to an Italian and we eat a lot of Italian food.
Which trait do you most admire in others?
When people are kind and ask questions because they are genuinely interested in hearing what you have to say.
What do your children think you do for a living?
[laughs] I have two boys, ages six and nine.
My older son thinks that the English word for “communication” is so funny. He laughs when I say it. He loves that word, even though he does not really understand the meaning. He also believes that I meet with the whole world when I am on a call. When I am on a call and speaking English he says, “Mom is having a meeting with the whole world.”
The little one knows I work at a place where he can play and run around and eat meatballs, the best place ever for kids and grown-ups!
