Miroglio and Workplace keep collaboration in fashion

Miroglio Fashion is the women’s clothing arm of Miroglio Group – a 71-year-old Italian conglomerate operating in 22 countries. The group joined Workplace in 2016. Since then, says chief executive Hans Hoegstedt, it has “revolutionised our way of working”. Here he explains how.

“Over the past few years, the role of the CEO has changed. It’s crucial for a CEO today to create culture, to remove filters and blockers so there can be a transparent and constructive dialogue between everyone. I was confident that Workplace was a platform that would help us achieve this.

“We also chose Workplace because everyone in the company knows how to use Facebook. And they just instinctively ‘got it’. Right from the first day, people began to spontaneously interact with each other in a genuine way with no training required.

“It’s crucial for a CEO today to create culture, to remove filters and blockers so there can be a transparent and constructive dialogue between everyone”

Hans Hoegstedt, Miroglio Fashion

“We launched Workplace at our annual convention two years ago. Over 1,100 stores in our various brands swung into action along with the head office. We set up all the Workplace groups that we use for various parts of the business, like visual merchandising [VM], product, innovation, communication and so on.

“The result was instant. Within a short space of time, barriers and distances disappeared. People who had found it difficult to make themselves heard by head office suddenly had a direct, filter-free channel. It’s given us a more innovative and efficient way of working.

Ideas and inspiration

“I’ll give you a specific example. Before Workplace, the visual merchandising team would create a model window and send it out to all the stores by email.

“With Workplace, the VM team now posts the image of the model window into a group. All the shops reply with their versions, comments and suggestions. The VM team can then provide instant feedback for the stores.

“We now have hundreds of examples of how to dress the window instead of just one, and people can take ideas and inspiration from the others. We have better dialogue and smarter collaboration that results in better window displays.

“There are functions we didn’t use at the outset that have now become core features for us. Auto Translate was crucial when we extended the platform to our colleagues in Russia. Everyone posts in their own language and Workplace auto translates. Simple and effective.

“It’s a powerful way to create a vast international network, and we’ll be relying on the translations as we deploy Workplace in Romania, Spain and France. We also now use Live Video whenever we present a new collection.

“For me, as a CEO, it’s also a way of ‘taking the pulse’ of the company. Of getting a quick sense of how people are feeling. It’s a kind of mass collective intelligence.”