Michelle Ghandour
AVP Corporate Affairs, Canadian Tire Company
SuperNova Award Category:
- Future of Work – Social Business
Canadian Tire Corporation (CTC) is a family of businesses that includes a retail segment, financial services division and CT REIT. Our retail business is led by Canadian Tire; founded in 1922, it provides Canadians with Living, Playing, Fixing, Auto and Seasonal products designed for life in Canada. PartSource and Gas+ are key parts of the Canadian Tire network. The retail segment also includes Mark's, a leading source for casual and industrial wear, and FGL Sports (Sport Chek, Hockey Experts, Sports Experts, National Sports, Intersport, Pro Hockey Life and Atmosphere), which offers the best active wear brands. The nearly 1,700 retail and gasoline outlets are supported and strengthened by our Financial Services division and the tens of thousands of people employed across the Company.
With five distinct business lines in locations across Canada, we needed a way to build a more connected workforce – one that would connect employees on a single platform, facilitate collaboration across our family of companies, and break down geographic and departmental barriers. Within each business line, we had separate intranets and instant messaging platforms for communication, but no single connection point for all employees. There was a clear need for a streamlined platform that would elevate internal communications, engage our employees, and provide opportunities for idea-sharing across the CTC family. A previous attempt to get organization-wide alignment on a single company-wide intranet had not moved ahead, as business lines couldn’t come to an agreement on a platform. At the same time, existing intranets were in dire need of upgrades and infrastructure improvement to better reflect the brand, and there was a strong desire to introduce enterprise social media.
We reached out to Facebook at Work after hearing about the pilot opportunity. After an initial conversation, it became clear this platform could fulfill our needs. We were especially interested in a social platform that would replace multiple intranets and an instant messaging tool while cutting down on email traffic to support the changing needs of our employees. This was especially important to us, as our vision of being among the world’s most innovative retailers required tapping into great people and offering great products. The fact that many of our employees were already familiar with the Facebook platform, so it would require very little training, was also a fact in Facebook at Work’s favour. We knew that our employees would be excited to use a modern, innovative platform, and our leaders would support the resulting productivity improvement and strengthened collaboration.
Facebook at Work.
One thing we’ve heard repeatedly on our Facebook at Work roadshow across the business is how proud (and surprised!) employees are that our 94-year-old company would embrace this social platform. Employees are proud to be among Facebook at Work’s first 300 pilot users. As one employee posted: “In the same week that my wife's company ‘bans’ Facebook usage during work hours, we encourage its usage to increase collaboration across departments and corporate banners! Exciting to say the least.”