Why communities win: How culture & connection fuel productivity
Eli Lilly and Company
AMER | Viva Engage Festival 2025
We’re slowly seeing Viva Engage become another broadcast channel, but one-way broadcast messages aren’t enough to engage, inspire, or drive action. True connection happens in communities—where people share, learn, collaborate, and remember they’re part of something bigger.
This session, Ray takes us through why communities at Eli Lilly reach beyond broadcast communications to drive engagement and innovation and spark imagination.
-
Again, another great presentation. You're all in for another great treat with Ray. I'll hand over to you, Ray.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Carla. Some great information there, as all the information I've heard as I've been able to tune in and out during a very busy day here at work, but I have to say this.
Carla started in communications as a kindergartner with a really advanced project, because I just don't see it in the camera view that she's been doing it as long as she has. However, I, yes, you definitely see me. My name is Ray Gonzalez.
I am from Eli Lilly and company in Indianapolis, Indiana, where I am part of the tech at Lilly team. No, I am not a communicator. I just play when I'm Viva Engage.
So, please bear with me as I try and share some of the things that we did always keeping in mind that you don't have to be a trained communicator, but it is great to work with your communicators as you raise your community, reach out to folks and create those conversations. It's been said multiple times and you've heard the data. You've heard the comments.
It's about connection and conversation and I'll show you how we use it here at Lilly. Said the IT guy. There we go.
I've been just sitting here on this deck for so long. It kind of went to sleep. So, real quick breakdown of what we're going to cover.
We're going to talk about our culture. I want you to get to know a little bit about Eli Lilly and company before we start talking about how we do what we do. We've got the philosophy behind how we use Viva.
It's amplification of an established work philosophy that we use. Flagship key communities that the entire company uses. Tiny compared to Siemens, we're only 45,000 full-timers, another 20K of partners.
But, hey, we'd like to connect across and the Viva engaged community for our 45,000 full-timers is a great place to do that globally across our enterprise. Humor and campaigns and engagement drivers. Careful.
It might seem really funny to you. You have to have that group to make sure it seems funny to more than you. And then we'll talk about one particular campaign that we ran.
Our co-pilot's birthday party. Yes, we have co-pilot Microsoft 365 here at Lilly. We use it a lot.
I have an interesting relationship with it. I like to get off the blank page, but I like to make things my own. So, you can tell me whether or not I'm doing that well.
And then a few key takeaways and insights. Lilly and company 150 years next year, tiny little place in Indiana started by Colonel Eli Lilly from the American Civil War. He was 21 years old when he walked into the governor's office and said, I know I could lead an artillery battalion.
I'd like to get that done. And he raised the folks and got it together and actually did pretty well after a war was over. He decided to pursue pharmacy.
Which was organized degree before the war, and then came back and opened up not a pharmacy. 1 of his mentors said, you'd be better doing the supply side because medicine in that state was so hot and cold quality was a problem. He trusted Eli to be able to give him supplies that he could rely on.
And that's what started Eli Lilly and company. Since then, we've had a couple of things that we've done work with Canadians Carla to bring about insulin back in the 1920s for folks to use and made a big impact in diabetes. And in 2020, we helped with coven.
We've done a bunch of things from them. So hopefully you heard about us and want to learn more about how we communicate. Our biggest challenge is distance time difference that diversity piece important.
What Carla was saying about the words that people use and how it could be their 2nd, 3rd, 4th language. We have some very smart people at Lily, and as they're reaching for those linguistic tools that they're not always familiar with, you have to be careful with that. But what we share across that huge community of folks is a common culture, a common commitment to making sure that we are taking care of patients.
If you saw in the previous slide in the lower right, Lily unites caring with discovery to create medicines that make life better for people around the world. I'm not going to read all the slides to you as you can tell, but that one's worth really underscoring because that is who we are. We make life better when here in tech at Lily, my side business capabilities, helping people get to know their tools better.
It's about making their lives better every day. And we hope that by communicating and use the tools we have, we can do that because connection gives you propulsion. It gives you wind beneath your wings.
It gives you that sense that, you know what, I'm not doing this by myself. Although some days when the tech doesn't treat you right, it can really feel that way. We are a global workforce, and every year, a couple times a year, we love to have a party.
We love to have something called Lily Connect, which is where our CEO steps up to a stage and does a global webcast. That's carried on Viva Engage. For those of you who don't use Viva Engage in that way, think about it.
It is a bold choice, and I'll tell you a really quick story. Had a CIO, chief information officer, head of tech, step into our company a couple of years back. Shortly after the pandemic, we were still some people at home, some people in the office, trying to establish a culture.
He was brand new, straight from a different company, and he wanted to have his first town hall in his group of tech folks. He wanted to use a tool, and he was trying to figure out which one to use, and they called me to come and talk to this new person and say, hey, listen, you've got two choices. You can do a live event, a Teams live event.
Very much, you're talking, and they're listening, and we can control the questions through a Q&A, and there's no chat you have to worry about, and the cameras and microphones are off. Total control. It's all you.
What do you think? Okay, cool. What else do you have? Well, we have Viva Engage. We use it for small town halls, executive committee-level folks like you aren't quite comfortable with it just yet.
What it is is a Teams live meeting, except you don't have Q&A or chat. You can if you want to, but we use our live interaction is the actual Viva Engage channel, so you're taking the Q&A out of a very moderated space, and it's Wild West. People are just going to raise things, and then you can come back and talk to them later, and that way we get some interaction.
Haven't used that a lot yet. What do you think? His response, and I still remember it. Let's do that.
That would be fun. And that's when I knew I really loved this new guy who came in, and he stole our hearts. He was great on stage.
He communicated with people, but that's not important. The important thing is the bold choice, the courage to connect, the courage to converse, the back and forth. Yes, it's safe, and it's quick, and it's easy.
I'm going to grab a microphone and go, but I'm dying to hear from you guys. I'm muting, and I can't see over here what everyone's saying. Please say stuff because otherwise you're speaking to an empty space.
So courage is important. Sometimes it takes coaching and partnership with leaders to get them on that stage, but once they do, it's amazing. So I am not going to read the slides, but I do put words in my slides so that when we share them later, you can kind of say, oh, that's what he was talking about.
So here in this community that we have, we have a global Team Lilly community. We also have one called All Company. All Company, it's our webcast.
We're the bad people there. We just throw things out. Everybody should know this.
Everybody should know that. Everybody should know this. And that's fine, but Team Lilly is where the conversations happen.
Team Lilly is where the connections happen, the recognitions happen. We love to share news on there of new manufacturing sites that we've done. We expanded a manufacturing site in Puerto Rico, which is where my folks are from, which is a big, big smile on my heart.
Oh, I've got to tell you, Eliana Vega, you reached out about metrics for Viva Engage in Latin America. Our OLA group, it's our Employee Resource Group for Latin Americans, is crazy on fire. I mean, we can't stop talking.
So yeah, there's got to be some analytics out there that you can use to be able to use this platform to connect with folks. Team Lilly is our global online community. Lots of chatting back and forth.
That one is run by our internal comms folks, really hardworking folks who are very careful in moderation, watching what they say. If you see it on Viva Engage from the corporate office, you know it's been well vetted. From everybody else, they're just so excited to share.
But the corporate comms folks are keeping an eye on it. So that's kind of information with buzz and flair. Bringing the flair is all the employee resource groups that I just discussed.
This is just a small snippet of them. This is a screenshot. I wish I could do more online stuff, but too many names and things that I don't really want to share.
I'm not comfortable sharing. So here I'll give you just a slice of a few of them. Enable is for our accessibility folks.
Be at Lilly is our black employees at Lilly. We have a long, long relationship with supporting minority groups, no matter where they're from. Just the minority, the fact that the whole rest of the room went to Purdue University and you went to IU.
Nice football team, but hey, you know, everyone can be different in a certain perspective. So we honor everybody. Let's just take care of everybody all the same.
And if there's more than a couple of you, then do an employee resource group and create a Viva Engage channel. Every one of those groups has a channel that they use to communicate with each other and to send news out and to host their annual events. I just finished supporting Hispanic Heritage Month, and that was a huge basket of fun.
It's not all work. Yes, we have puppies. Our most one of our most I think it actually someone's is our most popular site by the analytics.
Gemma, you're gonna have to help me out and see. Check that for us. It's Pets at Lilly.
It is a place where the fur parents just brag. This is my puppy. This is my kitten.
This is a new gerbil we got. Everyone's sharing all over the world, taking a walk with their best friend and just wanting to grab a sunset with the puppy. And there it is.
And it's shared. And we love it. It gives us a smile.
It feeds our soul, has nothing to do with pharmacy other than it makes life better for us. So that's really handy on the more practical side and yet not directly related to work. Somebody was very brave and said, what if we create a marketplace? I've got Colts tickets.
I want to get rid of them. There's no one I trust more than the people I work with because we're Lilly and we do things right. And no one's going to take advantage of each other.
So this one is specifically U.S. because it's tough to drive a car to Australia because you want to buy my car. So this one's U.S., but then other affiliates around the world have done the same thing. And this is curated and has a wonderful banner.
The first post is these are the guidelines and that's pinned for more than a week. Sorry, but it's there to let folks know that this is how this works. So, again, that safety net right out of the gate and you get everything on there.
I was looking for a car for my 18 year old. It's not the path I followed, but boy, I learned a lot about cars and it was a lot of fun. So you're building culture.
You're building connection. You're amplifying what already exists, which for us is working out loud. It's the way we approach our Microsoft 365 products.
I can work on this slide all by myself until it's finally done and I shine it all up. And then I go, what do you think? And then everybody slices it all to pieces and we have to start again. So the best thing you can do is share it in teams, invite your team to take a look at it, work on it together.
You got the bones there. It's still yours, but it's getting better as you go. It's quicker and it just brings more quality because you got more eyes.
If doing a team's chat is talking to each other, Carla, what we call Viva Engage is yelling down the hallway. This is I'm going to tell the whole office this is what's going on with me, whether it's my puppy or I've got tickets to sell or my team is incredible. We use it that way.
Now I am in. Oh, excuse me. I want to show more puppies because I forgot this one was great.
This was you saw the cupcakes. Not sorry. I ate the cupcakes.
They were great. Then, of course, here in the U.S., Halloween, a lot of countries do Halloween. But with flair, look at this.
They took a Viva Engage site and turned it into their own contest to honor Halloween and their fur babies. And turned it into a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Humane Society. So hand it to the cheese has to do it right.
That particular affiliate did it that way. And it was awesome. So there's just so many things you can do with it.
It boggles the imagination. Literally, it's awesome. Each region has their own Lily engage Viva Engage communities to connect it.
Lily Canada, Calgary. I love this is my favorite expression of this is who we are. This is where we are.
Look at this. It's awesome. So a lot of folks just show their lobby at Lily or the door that says Lily.
Hats off to Calgary. Just beautiful. This is storylines.
If you happen to have a moment, sometime Google Bryce Williams, just the way it sounds really straightforward spelling. Because in 2022, this engaged festival, Bryce was invited to speak about storylines, which were brand new. And he started at Gemma by singing.
He's a singer sang through college. He's good. And so I'm not gonna tell you what he's saying.
You're just gonna have to check it out because it was killer. And I am not singing because that would just end the meeting right there. Teams would collapse.
But take a look at this. We're reading here this together. And you can see that this does not have to do with pharmaceuticals.
It's not a formula. It doesn't have to do with for babies. It has to do with taking care of yourself, because this is very true in my own experience.
Toughest part of the day is not starting. You get a cup of coffee and you go. There's emails waiting for you and you're responding and trying to do your own thing all day long.
It's the when do you stop? Which email is the last one? And she shared that. I didn't put her name in because I couldn't track her down to ask her. And I just wanted to honor this because it could be anybody.
But she said, this is me and this is what I'm dealing with. And maybe you are to take a look at it and see if this helps you. This is the big team.
Lily site. I'm just going to throw this out. Take it.
Awesome. I love it. So storylines sites.
You can do what you do. Now, we also have looking at the clock. We also have an example of how we use what we how we use Viva engage to do what we do, which is communicating Microsoft 365 tools really dry, but very important.
And so we do it with flair. That is Bryce D. Williams. He is my team lead my partner in crime.
Awesome guy. And together we do a lot of the posts in our Microsoft copilot community, which is that's our baby for the last 2 years. Trying to get that up and running and having folks see the productivity in it.
I think about it. It's we're bringing into the office. There's all kinds of minor notes playing in the background and people get kind of worried.
So, what we try and show them is the productivity. It's going to help you do things. What we want to do in this particular space is.
Show and announce that we have taken the Microsoft 365 journey. If you have copilot, you have folks not familiar how to use it. Google the Microsoft 365.
Copilot 365 great learning journey, and it is 30 activities. Super tiny, super simple, and you can do them each a day, or you can knock them out all. You could do them all in 1 day if you wanted to think about 5 minutes apiece.
But what we did our folks in learning and development who are geniuses took that experience and brought it into a learning tool. Many of you might know called arcade and they gamified it. So now I could do it by myself, or I can invite my teammates and say, hey, here's this link.
Put your name in. Let's see who scores higher. When you go on the site, you'll see people with 30,000, 40,000, 57,000 points because you do each of your activities within a certain heading, like productivity, creativity.
And then at the end, what Christie did was she put a quiz in between each of them. So you get more points as a kind of reminder of all the things that you learn. So she took this experience and raise the volume.
We did talk to Microsoft, making sure it was OK to use their stuff and they were totally fine with it and they think it's incredible and we do too. So we had to do the pinball wizard thing because it's arcade and that was what we did in that post. We had a lot of fun, a lot of uptake.
All we're doing is pointing to something awesome. So if you want to make sure that people are seeing things, talk about it. We got questions and responses.
It was great. This is our most fun, I think, Viva Engage moment. I don't know.
If you took a look, you saw Bryce. Yeah, he's got 5,700 people looking at what he does. I have a mere 33, so I have homework to do.
But anyway, this particular thing is our copilot anniversary. One year, what we decided to do was make announcements true. You don't want to rain announcements and we don't.
So that when we did put announcements out, eyes were turning at us and seeing what we were doing. We did a post every day of that work week of July 22nd, Monday, Tuesday the 22nd and so on. And each day had a copilot activity.
And if you're reading as I speak, you can see that this one is off the charts crazy. We want you to use copilot to take a particular song from a musical that everybody seems to know and turn it into copilot, how you use copilot. And then we're going to take the best one and Bryce is going to sing it.
So, yeah, you can do anything crazy with Viva Engage. And people, it just lit up. People were excited.
People were stopping in the hallway. It was a lot of fun. No, you can't Google that one.
That was just ours. You can see the points there that we did and how our reactions were and our uptake. Our community went from a bad picture to show with data.
We went from 3500 members to nearly 5000 in the course of 2 weeks. So, word got out that we were sharing good knowledge in an interesting way. I got to share puppies with you.
I love the Harry Potter and the kitten, of course, for the cat folks. It's about culture. You're taking who you are and you're letting people know about it.
So, shape it, share it. It's awesome. Be organic.
It's great to have the safety net, but don't try and force it. You're having a party. Nobody wants to go to a party and say, you're going to stand here.
You can talk to this person and you're going to have this cocktail. That sounds crazy. So, what you want to do is have just a forum that you sprinkle every now and then work the room with some things and you can see balance of personal and work is great and leadership.
It's really key when you get a leader in there doing something fun. It's awesome. So that is what I have for you today.
Meet the speaker:
Ray Gonzales
Lead, Tech@Lilly, Business Capabilities
