As a globally renowned provider of smart energy system solutions, CHNT Group was founded in 1984. Its operations span over 140 countries and regions, with a global workforce exceeding 40,000 employees, and it has been listed among China's Top 500 Enterprises for 21 consecutive years. Over decades of development, CHNT has cultivated a comprehensive corporate culture system encompassing operations, systems, knowledge, management and philosophy. Seizing the opportunity presented by the "Digital China" initiative, the Group became a pilot unit for "Digital Zhejiang" and completed a digital transformation across all sectors, including R&D, manufacturing and human resources. As digital transformation extends into the realm of corporate culture, the challenge for CHNT Group's digital upgrade has become how to translate abstract cultural concepts into tangible actions that all employees can perceive, participate in and put into practice. To this end, CHNT Group has partnered with CDP Group to create the bespoke "Tai You Fan" digital cultural platform. Through comprehensive, scenario-based and interactive digital methods, this initiative brings corporate culture out of the handbook and into daily life, realizing the visualization, dissemination and implementation of cultural values, thereby establishing a benchmark model for the digital implementation of corporate culture within large-scale manufacturing enterprises.
I. The Challenges of Cultural Development in a Global Enterprise with Tens of Thousands of Employees: Four Major Barriers Hindering the Realization of Cultural Value
As a large-scale multinational enterprise, CHNT Group possesses a mature corporate culture system; however, implementation scenarios are diverse and stakeholders are dispersed. Prior to digital transformation, traditional cultural development models were no longer suited to the company's cross-regional and multi-sector operational characteristics, and the transmission and implementation of cultural value faced four core barriers.
1. Fragmented Communication Channels: Difficulty in Coordinating and Integrating Cultural Resources
The Party, Trade Union and Youth League organizations, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Human Resources Department and various business divisions all play a role in cultural development. However, their cultural activities and promotional content are scattered across different offline channels and fragmented online platforms, lacking a unified, group-wide digital communication platform. This fragmentation prevents the Group's core cultural values from achieving a unified voice, whilst employees must switch between multiple channels to access cultural information, significantly reducing communication efficiency.
2. Monotonous engagement formats, with passive employee participation and a lack of resonance
Traditional corporate culture building has primarily relied on "one-way communication", conveying concepts through cultural handbooks, offline meetings, posters and display boards, whilst lacking practical scenarios where employees can engage deeply and interact. Employees remain passive recipients of the culture, finding it difficult to truly integrate into the cultural development process. Consequently, cultural identification and implementation remain low, preventing the formation of a cohesive cultural atmosphere across the entire workforce.
3. Disconnect between culture and business operations, hindering conversion into practical driving force
There is insufficient integration between corporate culture and business operations, technological innovation, industrial development, and social responsibility. Core values such as "innovation, collaboration and accountability" have not been deeply embedded within frontline business scenarios. Cultural development remains confined to the level of ideological advocacy, failing to translate into tangible productivity that drives technological upgrades and industrial development, and making it difficult for employees to perceive the value of the culture in relation to their own work.
4. Lack of documentation of achievements; failure to replicate and promote best practices
CHNT Group lacks a unified digital platform for documenting and disseminating internal innovation achievements, exemplary employee stories, and cultural practice cases. Consequently, outstanding cultural behaviours and practical experiences cannot be rapidly replicated and promoted across the Group, nor can they be incentivized and passed on through standardized methods. The outcomes of cultural development struggle to accumulate sustainably, preventing the formation of an iterative and upgradeable cultural development system.
In the digital age, CHNT Group urgently requires an integrated digital cultural platform to break down the multiple barriers to traditional cultural development. This will enable the realization of cultural development objectives centered on "resource integration, full staff participation, business integration and the consolidation of achievements", thereby making corporate culture the core driving force behind the enterprise's high-quality development.
II. Tailored Digital Cultural Solutions: Building the ‘Tai You Fan’ Holistic Cultural Ecosystem
Addressing the pain points in cultural development and the digital transformation needs of CHNT Group, CDP Group has tailored the "Tai You Fan" digital cultural platform to the company's specific characteristics and cultural essence, covering over 40,000 employees across the entire group. Centered on the principles of "holistic integration, scenario-based empowerment, business convergence and value consolidation", the platform establishes a multi-dimensional, integrated cultural interaction section and creates diverse operational scenarios. This facilitates a comprehensive transformation of corporate culture from "one-way communication" to "two-way interaction", and from "abstract concepts" to "concrete practices".
1. Holistically Integrating Resources to Create a Unified Group Cultural Communication Hub
The platform breaks down cultural communication barriers between departments and business divisions, establishing a group-wide, integrated digital cultural communication hub that enables the centralized consolidation and efficient dissemination of cultural resources. It flexibly incorporates core sections such as "Tai News" and "Tai Honours", comprehensively supporting the Group's multi-dimensional needs—including cultural content, event promotion and recognition of achievements across various themes and business sectors. This allows employees to access the Group's cultural information via a single platform, thereby completely resolving the issue of fragmented communication channels. It also supports the customized creation of dedicated landing pages. For major cultural events such as the Group Cultural Season, Fun Sports Day and Book Sharing Sessions, bespoke online landing pages are developed to facilitate synchronized online and offline promotion, enhancing the interactivity and reach of these events and ensuring that the cultural atmosphere permeates every aspect of employees' work.
2. Creating Diverse Scenarios to Stimulate Internal Motivation for Cultural Participation
The platform moves away from the traditional, one-dimensional approach to cultural development, establishing over 20 operational scenarios spanning culture and business. It features distinctive interactive sections such as "Tai Warmth", "Tai Life" and "Tai Learning", transforming employees from mere recipients of culture into participants and contributors, thereby significantly enhancing cultural engagement and a sense of belonging. The "Tai Learning" section establishes an online platform for learning and exchange, promoting knowledge acquisition and cultural interaction across the organization through initiatives such as the Spring Festival Book Sharing Session, thereby translating the core value of humble learning into concrete action; the "Tai Warmth" section focuses on employee welfare, creating diverse interactive scenarios to strengthen employees' sense of belonging and well-being, making culture an emotional bond connecting the company and its staff. The "Tai Life" section integrates staff well-being with corporate development, creating warm and caring lifestyle services that weave corporate culture into daily life and bring it closer to employees.
3. Deepening the Integration of Business and Culture to Achieve Mutual Empowerment Between Culture and Industrial Development
The platform closely aligns with the company's development strategy, deeply integrating corporate culture with core business areas such as technological innovation, social responsibility and industrial development. It establishes distinctive sections such as 'Tai Excellence' and 'Tai Charity', transforming cultural concepts into a practical driving force for business development and realizing a virtuous cycle where 'culture empowers business, and business showcases culture'. Centered on the corporate core value of "Innovation", we have launched the "Innovation Makes Me Shine" Three Gold Awards initiative, establishing an online platform for the evaluation of technical case studies. All employees across the Group can participate in voting and discussions to identify innovative achievements and nominate innovative talent, thereby fostering a strong atmosphere of technological innovation throughout the organization and injecting momentum into the Group's R&D and upgrading efforts. Leveraging the 'Tai Public Welfare' section, we will integrate CHNT Group's public welfare initiatives and social responsibility practices into the cultural platform. Through public welfare campaigns and online participation, we will instill the core value of Responsibility throughout the organization. Simultaneously, by incorporating public welfare practices into the organizational culture and talent incentive system, we will reinforce the company’s social and cultural value. Using the "CHNT Life" section as a bridge, the platform showcases organic products from the Group's ecosystem companies. This not only provides employees with healthy lifestyle choices but also allows them to gain a first-hand understanding of the Group's industrial layout, thereby supporting the Group's industrial development and achieving mutual empowerment between cultural development and industrial growth.
4. Digitizing Achievements to Establish a Long-Term Cultural Heritage System
The platform facilitates the comprehensive digital archiving and standardized promotion of CHNT Group's cultural development achievements, transforming exemplary cultural behaviours, innovative outcomes and practical case studies into a replicable and sustainable system. Outstanding technical case studies and the achievements of innovative talent from initiatives such as "Innovation Makes Me Shine" are digitally documented and disseminated across the Group, enabling excellent innovative practices to be rapidly implemented, replicated and promoted across all business sectors. The platform systematically documents the Group's various cultural activities, charitable initiatives and exemplary employee conduct, creating a comprehensive repository of corporate culture development achievements. This serves as a reference for the continuous optimization and iterative upgrading of the Group's cultural development, ensuring that the value of the corporate culture is continuously accumulated and elevated.
III. Remarkable Achievements in Cultural Digitalization: Establishing a Benchmark for Digital Cultural Development in Large Enterprises
Since its launch, the "Tai You Fan" digital cultural platform has rapidly achieved full coverage across the Group's 40,000+ employees. Within a year of going live, it has recorded over 200,000 cumulative visits, successfully addressing the digital challenges faced by large enterprises in cultural development. This has enabled CHNT's corporate culture to truly move beyond the pages of manuals and take root on the front line, yielding impressive results across multiple dimensions.
1. Enhanced Cultural Communication Efficiency, Fostering Group-Wide Cultural Consensus
The platform has achieved the comprehensive integration and unified dissemination of CHNT Group's cultural resources. Cultural activities and content across departments and business segments have created synergies, ensuring the Group's core cultural values are disseminated without exception throughout the organization. The creation of over 20 distinctive operational scenarios has driven deep integration between online and offline cultural activities, significantly boosting employee engagement and interaction. This has fostered a cultural atmosphere across the Group that is vibrant with innovation, imbued with a sense of well-being, and characterized by shared consensus among all staff.
2. Comprehensive Stimulation of an Innovative Atmosphere, Transforming Culture into a Driving Force for Development
Through corporate-culture integration initiatives, exemplified by the "Innovation Makes Me Shine" Three Gold Awards, the core value of innovation has been successfully translated into concrete actions by all staff. Innovation enthusiasm across the Group remains high, with outstanding technical case studies and innovative achievements emerging continuously. This has injected strong momentum into the company's technological R&D, product upgrades and enhanced market competitiveness, enabling corporate culture to truly become the core productive force driving the enterprise's innovative development.
3. Enhanced Cultural Identity Among Employees, Demonstrating Employer Brand Value
Through warm and engaging interactions and diverse cultural experiences, the platform has enabled employees to participate deeply in corporate culture building, significantly enhancing their cultural identity, sense of belonging to the company, and job satisfaction. Thanks to its outstanding performance in cultural digitalization, talent development and the enhancement of the employee experience, CHNT Electric was honoured with the "China Top Employer" certification by the Top Employer Institute in January 2023, significantly boosting the industry recognition and reputation of the company’s employer brand.
4. Deepening the Practice of Social Responsibility, Elevating Corporate Brand Value
The implementation of the "Tai Public Welfare" initiative has deeply integrated CHNT Group's social responsibility practices with its corporate culture, fully igniting the enthusiasm of all staff to participate in public welfare. This has not only brought the core value of responsibility to life on the front lines but has also further strengthened the company’s social image. CHNT Group ranked first on the "2021 Top 100 Chinese Private Enterprises in Social Responsibility" list; the deep integration of its social responsibility practices with corporate culture development has become a key pillar supporting the continuous elevation of the company’s brand value.
IV. Conclusion: Industry Insights from Cultural Digitalization – Harnessing Digital Intelligence to Make Culture the Core Driving Force of Corporate Development
The "Tai You Fan" digital cultural platform, jointly developed by CHNT Group and CDP Group, represents a successful implementation of cultural digitalization for a large-scale global manufacturing enterprise. It offers valuable, replicable and actionable insights for the digital transformation of cultural development within similar enterprises: The digitalization of corporate culture is not merely a matter of "moving offline activities online", but rather involves using digital means to achieve the systematic integration of cultural resources, the in-depth creation of engagement scenarios, close integration with business operations, and the long-term consolidation of outcomes. This transforms abstract cultural concepts into tangible actions that all employees can perceive, participate in and put into practice, enabling culture to truly become the core driving force for the enterprise to attract and retain talent, drive innovation and empower development.
As a leader in digital human resources services, CDP Group has accurately identified CHNT Group's cultural development needs and business characteristics, creating a bespoke digital cultural platform tailored to the company's specific requirements. This once again demonstrates CDP's professional capabilities and practical experience in the fields of corporate culture digitalization, employee experience enhancement, and organizational culture development. Moving forward, CDP Group will continue to deepen its expertise in the digital transformation of corporate culture across various industries. Centering on digital and intelligent innovation, it will create bespoke digital cultural solutions for more enterprises, enabling culture to unlock greater value in the digital age and helping businesses achieve high-quality, sustainable development.
