Aligning & enabling a global workforce

In this case study

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SITUATION

Supporting a global team with diverse technology needs

For over 100 years, Steelcase Inc. has helped create exceptional workplace experiences for the world’s leading organizations. With over 12,700 employees worldwide, Steelcase leads the way in creating great experiences by offering a range of architecture, furniture, and technology products and services designed to help people reach their full potential.

Stephen Goetzinger is the chief product owner of Steelcase’s Workplace Experiences team. He leads the group responsible for all electronic communications systems within Steelcase, from video conferencing hardware to project management software and everything in between.

CHALLENGE

Transitioning to hybrid work

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted Steelcase’s ability to collaborate in person. With everyone working remotely — and later, transitioning to a hybrid work model — they needed to adapt the way they communicate and work together.

This was especially challenging because so much of Steelcase’s work is visual. Teams needed the ability to collaboratively brainstorm, ideate, design, capture, and present information in a visual way, even when they couldn’t be in the same physical space.

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Stephen and the Workplace Experiences team observed these collaboration challenges across the organization, both with client-facing projects and internal collaboration. To overcome these challenges, Steelcase needed a way to:

Collaborate visually from anywhere
Work together in real time and asynchronously
Collaborate cross-functionally in one shared workspace
Keep a digital record of work as it progresses
Support a wide range of collaboration needs at scale

Visual thinking is so important, especially for designers. We used to use slide decks and spreadsheets to communicate and track our projects internally, and it was so much slower and less flexible. Now, we use MURAL to collaborate and generate new ideas. I don’t know how we managed without it.

Alexa Burke

Sr. Designer

SOLUTION

A flexible digital workspace for visual collaboration

That’s where Mural comes in. Some teams at Steelcase were already using Mural's digital collaboration platform, but the pandemic accelerated adoption across the organization. Today, they use Mural to create a flexible environment for collaborating with remote and hybrid teams. Here’s how.

Visual thinking

For teams at Steelcase, Mural provides a flexible space to work visually. They use murals to organize research and data, brainstorm and problem-solve, lead client meetings, facilitate design reviews, visualize their processes, and more.

"Mural makes it easy for us to communicate visually and get aligned with other teams. Instead of just explaining what we’re working on or how we got to a particular solution, we can show them," explained Susana Cantú, senior designer at Steelcase.

Facilitation Superpowers™ features
Steelcase employees use Mural's Facilitation Superpowers™ features to keep everyone engaged and aligned during meetings and design reviews. For example, they can facilitate anonymous voting sessions, timebox activities, and use the summon feature to focus attendees’ attention.

‍Customizable templates‍

Steelcase teams use Mural's library of 300+ templates to jumpstart collaboration with proven methods and activities, from icebreakers to Agile workflows. They can customize these templates and create their own. Templates are also an easy jumping-off point for teams that are new to visual collaboration.

Physical whiteboards are challenging in a hybrid work environment. Mural allows us to collaborate in a visual workspace that’s persistent, flexible, and easy to use. Then, we can go a step further to templatize what’s working and scale it across the organization.

Alexa Burke

Sr. Designer