Case Study: Hachette Book Group achieves centralized COVID-19 communications and improved employee engagement with ThoughtFarmer

How a publishing company used their intranet to create and share COVID-19 information

Hachette Book Group, a major U.S. trade publisher with about 1,300 employees across eight locations, was hampered by a custom-built Django intranet that was hard to maintain and relied too heavily on a central comms team. The need for an easier, more inclusive way to share timely information became urgent as COVID-19 pushed employees into remote and hybrid work and created a demand for a single source of truth.

Hachette selected ThoughtFarmer for its intuitive interface and professional services team, delivering a flawless, on-time, on-budget rollout. The intranet quickly became the hub for COVID updates, health screening and attendance forms (FormFlow), targeted news distribution, better search with “Best Bets,” forums and social features, and increased leadership engagement—significantly improving internal communications and empowering broader content contribution across the company.

Hachette Book Group

Ryan Pugatch

VP, Strategic Technology