From Daily Profile Tickets To a 7a.m. HR Sync: Froedtert & MCW’s Two-Month Workvivo Launch

A platform shutdown and “many, many tickets a day.”

Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network serves eastern Wisconsin. It’s a partnership between Froedtert ThedaCare and the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), and it operates the region's only academic medical center and adult Level I Trauma Center. Its people are spread across 10 hospital locations and more than 45 health centers and clinics. Reaching all of them? Never exactly simple.

For years, Workplace from Meta had helped the health network build two-way communication across its workforce. When the platform's retirement was announced, the team needed a replacement that could maintain the connections employees had come to expect.

The switch was also a chance to fix something that had been wearing the team down. Employee profiles weren't reliably synced with HR data, leaving Senior Digital Communications Specialist Sam Andrews and her team to manage changes manually. A name change, promotion, marriage or new email address could mean another support ticket.

“We were managing many, many tickets a day, and people reaching out to us on an individual basis: my name changed, I got married, my job position changed, I became a leader. It was just becoming very taxing on everybody on our team,” says Andrews.

The team wanted its next platform to do more than replace Workplace. It needed to make day-to-day administration easier while preserving the two-way communication employees valued.

Two months, one non-negotiable, and a partner who said “we can do it.”

The shutdown wasn’t a surprise. But in an organization this size, doing the homework takes time: evaluating alternatives, building a recommendation, then moving it through a series of approvals with budget attached. Workvivo by Zoom was the platform Workplace recommended, and the health network’s own evaluation landed in the same place.

“The battleship moves very slowly,” says Tim Olsen, Communications Manager. By the time approvals cleared, the runway to launch had shrunk to about two months, with a summer go-live while people were away here and there.

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With two months to get ready, the health network needed an implementation partner who could help bring everything together. LineZero, a global employee experience consultancy, worked alongside the communications, IT, and HR teams to prepare Workvivo for launch, with a key priority from day one: integrating employee data with the HR system.

Workvivo launched with single sign-on and a daily 7 a.m. HRIS sync.

Employees could log in without setting up another password or creating a profile. Name changes, promotions, and new email addresses now sync automatically, so the steady stream of individual profile-change requests no longer lands on the communications team.

“We didn’t have any issues with people getting in,” says Andrews. “If we had one or two people confused, that might have been the most.”

A familiar experience, backed by hands-on support.

Workvivo’s structure, navigation, and actions felt familiar to people coming from Workplace, and two-way communication had already earned its credibility.

“From a user perspective, it was just kind of instant,” says Stephanie Graham, Senior Content Producer.

The team still built adoption in layers: 

• A communications council of employee volunteers got early access, explored the platform, shared feedback, and talked it up to their teams.

• Leaders were given information so they could champion the platform.

• Contests rewarded the first activated users and the first to post and comment.

• Daily drop-in sessions, a couple each day for the first few weeks, gave people how-tos and walkthroughs.

On go-live day, LineZero’s Liza Rubinstein and her colleagues showed up in Milwaukee in person. For Andrews, that kind of support was a sharp contrast to the past, when getting help could feel like talking to a bot and waiting days in a queue.

“It’s just nice to have a partner to go to,” she says.

Every message starts in Workvivo, then cascades everywhere else.

The Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network runs a broad, integrated communication strategy across its intranet, email, and Workvivo.

Workvivo is where communication starts. A message might go to leaders first and cascade down, or go to everyone at once. From there, the team copies the link into the intranet, email, and wherever else it needs to go.

“The Workvivo features fit so well with what our strategy is,” says Olsen.

Billboards and Featured Stories elevate priority news and great stories. Draft For lets admins post on behalf of leaders with a click. The Calendar keeps events visible, and employees cheer each other on with Shoutouts.

And the content people engage with most? Graham’s videos keep topping the analytics Andrews tracks, right alongside the essentials: pay, benefits, flu shot updates.

Then there’s the fun stuff, which is totally on purpose.

Think a National Pizza Day video of top leaders revealing their favorite pizzas, or a segment featuring Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, plus regular contests with Bucks prizes.

For caregivers, it’s what Andrews calls “the respite of having fun at work.” And she hopes that connection carries over to the strategic messages that matter most.

MCW physicians now get patient care updates directly.

Getting timely information to clinical staff is one of healthcare’s toughest communication challenges, and Workvivo has made it easier.

“I firmly believe that our team members know that if they need in-the-moment information, they can go to Workvivo,” says Olsen.

A major step came at the start of 2026. MCW physicians practice in Froedtert Health facilities but are employed by a separate organization, and for reasons that had nothing to do with communication, they didn’t have access. But they’d been asking for it.

Once that was resolved, they got direct access to patient care updates and site-specific changes across hospitals and clinics.

“It was a pretty significant milestone getting that group of care providers onto Workvivo,” says Olsen.

Making two-way communication intentional.

The biggest change? How the team thinks before hitting publish.

Every announcement can spark a response, so the team plans for one by simplifying complex news, preparing FAQs, and looping in subject matter experts before sensitive messages go out.

“We have to be prepared for what the response is going to be... we very deliberately are taking advantage of two-way communication,” says Olsen.

For Graham, that’s the point. “It makes people feel we’re not just talking at them,” she says. Even the GIFs and emojis matter. They show a bit of personality and help people in an organization this big feel part of a community.

The same hub carries messages that matter beyond the day job. When tornadoes devastated communities in the health network’s northern region, an executive used Workvivo to acknowledge what colleagues were going through and share ways to donate and volunteer. Employees responded by asking how they could help.

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By automating provisioning, giving MCW physicians direct access to updates, and planning for two-way communication, the Froedtert & MCW health network turned a forced platform switch into the starting point for how they communicate with their entire healthcare community.