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CanvaMaking 30+ companies feel like one global team
How Jennifer Hughes and Argano’s Culture team are creating thoughtful ways for a global workforce to connect, build relationships, and feel part of something together.
Jennifer Huges
Over 15 years, she’s watched Argano grow through nearly 30 acquisitions. As Chief Culture Officer, she’s found that the little things, like a coffee chat, a World Cup cheer or a well-timed hello, are what make a global company feel connected. ☕
CHAPTER ONE · THE WELCOME
Making “welcome to Argano” actually feel like one
For Jennifer Hughes and her team, creating a great employee experience starts before someone even has their new Argano email address.
There’s a funny little in-between moment Jennifer Hughes knows well.
A new company has officially joined Argano, its employees are officially part of the team, they’re starting to hear about the company, meet new coworkers, and figure out what being part of Argano really means. There’s just one small detail: they might not even have an Argano email address quite yet.
Jennifer has been part of Argano’s story from nearly the very beginning. She recently celebrated 15 years with the company, having joined through its second acquisition, and has since watched the organization grow by bringing together 30+ independent companies. Today, as Chief Culture Officer, she and her team get to help shape what joining that growing company actually feels like for the people experiencing it.
And they don’t wait for every system to catch up before they start.
With Workshop, Jennifer’s team can communicate with newly acquired employees before they’ve moved into Argano’s email environment, which means their introduction to the company can already look, sound, and feel like Argano.
“Immediately we are able to provide them with an elevated experience,” Jennifer said. “Like, ‘Hey, welcome to our company,’ and you already get this enhanced level of communications.”
Templates make it easy for the team to move quickly and consistently, but the part Jennifer cares about most is what happens on the other side of the send. Someone who is already navigating plenty of change gets one more signal that says, you’re here, we’re excited you’re here, and you’re part of this now.
It’s a relatively small moment in the middle of a much bigger transition, but that’s kind of Jennifer’s superpower: noticing all the places where you can make work feel a little better for someone.
And once you start looking at Argano through that lens, those moments are everywhere.
CHAPTER TWO · THE WHY BEHIND IT
The “fun stuff” is doing some pretty important work
Behind the communities, recognition, and reasons to connect is a bigger idea about how great work actually gets done.
Ask Jennifer what she’s ultimately trying to accomplish and she has a refreshingly simple answer.
“My whole objective waking up is, how can I help the company achieve its objectives by creating a better experience for our people?”
That idea runs through just about everything Jennifer and Argano’s Culture team does. They lead internal communications, create opportunities for people to connect, think about recognition and community, and pay attention to all the experiences that shape what it feels like to work at Argano.
Some of that is the stuff people might casually file under “culture.” The fun stuff, the people stuff, the things that can look a little softer from the outside.
Jennifer sees a much bigger purpose underneath it.
“We create communities for people to build relationships, and build trust, so that collaboration comes naturally.”
It makes sense when you think about it. Give two people a reason to know each other before they ever need something from each other and, when their work eventually crosses paths, they already have a relationship to build on.
For a global company that has grown by bringing together so many different organizations and areas of expertise, that kind of connection can have a pretty big ripple effect.
So Jennifer and her team keep finding reasons for people to meet, talk, celebrate, recognize each other, and build relationships beyond the coworkers already sitting in their next Teams meeting.
And every once in a while, one of those reasons happens to involve a whole lot of soccer balls.
CHAPTER THREE · THE WORLD CUP
Sometimes, culture strategy looks like a soccer ball ⚽
Yes, it was fun, that was kind of the point, but it wasn’t the only point.
When the World Cup rolled around, Jennifer and her team saw something their global workforce already had in common. So naturally, they ran with it.
The team created World Cup-themed communications in Workshop, gave employees different soccer balls to collect, added gamification and recognition, and built plenty of little opportunities for people across Argano to join in.
It was colorful, playful, and genuinely fun!!
Jennifer will also be the first to tell you that the fun was very intentional.
“We’re not doing World Cup stuff because it’s fun,” she said. “I mean, it is fun, but it’s very much connected to our larger objectives.”
For a global company like Argano, the connection was almost too perfect. The World Cup was already about global community, people coming together, shared excitement, a little friendly competition, and having something everyone could rally around at the same time.
Rather than inventing a reason for employees to connect, Jennifer and her team found something people were already excited about and made it part of the Argano experience.
There’s something worth borrowing in that idea, especially for internal communicators. Culture doesn’t always have to come wrapped in a big company initiative, sometimes the most natural opportunities are already happening around your people – you just have to notice them.
“How can I help the company achieve its objectives by creating a better experience for our people?”
— Jennifer, Chief Culture Officer
CHAPTER FOUR · KEEPING THE CONNECTION GOING
There’s always another way to bring people together
Virtual coffees, local meetups, shared communities – Jennifer and her team keep finding new reasons for people to connect.
The World Cup is one big, colorful example, but most connections at Argano happen in smaller, everyday ways.
Argano’s workforce is largely remote, with people spread across locations, teams, and time zones. That gives Jennifer and her team plenty of room to get creative about what bringing people together can look like.
- Created virtual coffee chats that introduce coworkers who might never otherwise meet.
- Offer regional opportunities for people to get together when geography allows.
- Create opt-in communities where employees can find people around shared interests and experiences.
- Pay attention to what people enjoy.
Jennifer describes the approach as “constant evolution, constant learning,” which might be one of the most useful things about the way her team thinks about culture, and a fitting philosophy for someone who has spent 15 years watching Argano evolve, too.
They’re not trying to land on one perfect program and declare the connection challenge solved. People change, companies change, and what employees want from their work experience changes right along with them. So the team keeps creating opportunities, listening to what people respond to, and using what they learn to make the next one better.
There’s a nice freedom in that approach. A virtual coffee doesn’t have to transform the company, it just has to introduce two people who might be glad they know each other someday.
And that same curiosity about how people want to experience work has shaped the way Argano communicates with them, too.
CHAPTER FIVE · THE “TIKTOK APPROACH”
More ways to stay in the loop? Yes, please.
Argano gives people the freedom to find the format that works for them.
Some people love a quick video, others want the written version, and sometimes you don’t have time for either right now, but you absolutely want to know where you can find that information again later.
Jennifer and her team have embraced all of it.
Rather than deciding there’s one “right” way for employees to consume information, Argano shares the same important information in different formats and across the places employees already use. Their monthly newsletter acts as a one-stop shop, weekly updates can come in both video and written form, and their intranet gives people a reliable place to come back to when they need something later.
“We’re trying to provide the same information in different formats so that people can consume it in a way that is meaningful for them."
She jokingly calls it their “TikTok approach.”
And once you hear her explain it, the name makes a lot of sense.
The point isn’t to communicate more. It’s to make it easier for people to connect with the information in whatever way works for them. One person watches. Another reads. Someone else finds it on the intranet three days later when they actually need it.
Workshop helps make those different experiences easier for Jennifer’s team to manage, too. Communications can flow into Argano’s intranet without creating another manual publishing task on the other side.
Jennifer’s review of that particular integration workflow was wonderfully simple:
“It’s just one less step.”
And when your team is thinking about acquisitions, communications, recognition, community, connection, and everything else that shapes the employee experience, one less step is a pretty great thing.
CHAPTER SIX · THE BIGGER PICTURE
Jennifer speaks fluent people and performance
Creating a great employee experience is the goal, understanding its impact helps make the next one even better.
Jennifer can tell you why a virtual coffee matters. She can tell you why a World Cup campaign matters. She can tell you why the way someone experiences their first Argano communication matters.
She can also connect all of those things back to something leadership cares deeply about: how the business performs.
“When you speak to executives, you have to speak their language, which is data, performance, KPIs.”
Over time, Jennifer and her team have been able to bring more of that story into conversations about the value of Culture and Communications. Workshop gives them visibility into how employees are engaging with their communications, which means the team can pair the experiences they’re creating with data about what’s resonating.
But Jennifer isn’t interested in an open rate simply because it’s a number she can put on a slide, what makes the data useful is what her team can do with it.
What connected with people? What got their attention? What can they learn from this communication that makes the next one more useful, more relevant, or more meaningful?
That shift turns measurement into something much more interesting than reporting for reporting’s sake – it becomes another way to listen.
And for a team whose whole job is built around creating a better experience for people, listening is a pretty important part of the work.
CHAPTER SEVEN · THE LITTLE THINGS
The little things turned out to be pretty big after all
Because making a big company feel connected happens in all the moments people experience.
Bringing nearly 30 companies together was never going to come down to one perfectly planned culture initiative. For Jennifer and her team, it happens in much smaller, more everyday ways.
It’s making someone feel welcome before they even have their new Argano email address. It’s introducing two coworkers over virtual coffee who might end up working together six months later. It’s giving people the freedom to watch an update instead of read it, or making sure they know exactly where to find something when they need it. And sometimes, it’s turning the World Cup into something coworkers around the world can get excited about together.
None of those moments feel monumental on their own. But that’s the beauty of Jennifer’s approach – culture gets built in the moments people experience.
Give people more of those moments and they have more reasons to connect. Those connections become relationships, those relationships build trust, and when it’s time to work together, collaboration has a much more natural place to start.
It all comes back to the question Jennifer asks herself when she wakes up:
“How can I help the company achieve its objectives by creating a better experience for our people?”
At Argano, there isn’t just one answer. Jennifer and her team keep finding it in all the thoughtful ways they bring people together, make work feel a little more human, and help a global company feel connected.
And maybe that’s the biggest little thing of all.
