How Fennies Nurseries built a mobile-first hub for 800+ educators across 24 sites
Fennies Nurseries launched Workvivo as a centralised, branded communications hub – helping 800+ frontline educators stay informed, share ideas, and celebrate wins together across 24 geographically dispersed locations.
360+
users engage with the platform weekly
80%
of non-office employees use the mobile app
65%
of employees completed onboarding within the first month
Staying Connected Across 24 Nurseries
Fennies has operated for over 33 years – and today supports 24 nursery locations across London and the Southeast, with plans to expand further. But being a multi-site organisation comes with a familiar challenge: when teams aren’t in the same building, communication can fragment quickly.
For Fennies’ frontline educators – many without desk-based access to laptops or company email – it was critical to have an easy, mobile-first way to:
- reach every employee consistently
- share ideas and best practices between sites
- keep culture visible day-to-day (recognition, celebrations, fun challenges)
- ensure the right messages reach the right people, without noise
As Billy White, Fennies’ Marketing and PR Executive, puts it, distance between some nurseries can be “up to 50 miles”, making a shared digital hub essential for smooth operations and a consistent employee experience across every site.
People
800+
Industry
Early Years Education / Childcare
Location
UK
Category
Mid-Market
[Workvivo] eradicated the need for different platforms to use for communications. This is where you're going to find out all your information. You know where to go, and it's a lot easier
Billy White
Marketing and PR Executive at Fennies
The Approach: A Mobile-First Platform Designed for Frontline Teams
Fennies chose Workvivo to create a single, mobile-first place where employees could stay informed, collaborate, and feel connected – without relying on email or scattered tools.
Three platform capabilities stood out:
Mobile-first experience for deskless teams
Fennies needed something educators would genuinely use day-to-day – not a tool that worked best from a laptop.
Targeted communication through Spaces
With four age-group “rooms” across each nursery, Fennies created Spaces to help educators share activities and ideas with peers across sites – without important updates getting lost in a generic feed.
At our nurseries, the rooms are split into four different age groups… We created Spaces for each of those groups for them to share ideas and activities. – Billy White
Recognition that matched their culture
Shout-outs gave Fennies a visible, real-time way to celebrate employees – an important lever in a high-turnover sector.
Rollout & Launch: Turning Adoption Into a Team Effort
Fennies delivered the rollout in around six weeks, bringing multiple internal teams together to keep momentum high and make the launch feel easy – and genuinely enjoyable – for frontline staff.
Key launch tactics included:
- A town hall announcement to build awareness ahead of launch
- A network of Workvivo Champions (one per nursery) to support onboarding locally
- Branded launch boxes sent to every nursery (including purple sunglasses, chocolates, and confetti)
- A 75-minute livestream Q&A timed for lunch breaks to maximize attendance, walk through features, and answer questions live
One small detail had an outsized effect: the sunglasses became a playful, low-pressure way for employees to upload profile photos – boosting visibility and familiarity across sites.
A lot of people have got their profile picture of them in the sunglasses… it gave them a nice opportunity… still in their uniform, still at work – but fun. – Maisie, Marketing Lead
The Wins: Strong Early Engagement – and a More Connected Culture
Within the first month, Fennies saw strong early adoption and usage across the organisation:
- 67% activation rate
- 80% mobile app usage
- ~140 daily active users
- ~360 weekly active users
- 60% profile picture uploads, helping employees put names to faces across sites
But the deeper impact was cultural as much as it was operational. Educators in specialist roles – like baby room leaders – gained a practical way to connect with peers across the entire group, sharing ideas and support beyond their own location.
Workvivo also helped make connection more consistent through simple, automated prompts – like birthday and work anniversary posts – that nudged employees to reach out and maintain relationships built during training and induction.
Workvivo has become our centralised hub for everything Fennies. It gives everyone a chance to use their clear voice… and celebrate as one. – Billy White
The Ripple Effect: A Foundation for Scale
As Fennies grows, Workvivo is becoming part of how the organisation scales its culture – giving new starters a clear “home” for information, updates, and community, and helping ensure every nursery feels like Fennies.
Early on, the team is already seeing practical benefits:
- fewer messages lost across email and multiple platforms
- more immediate engagement with key comms (like surveys)
- less manual chasing, with more automation and consistency
And as they mature their use of the platform, Fennies plans to go further – using analytics, surveys, badges, and livestreams to support learning, feedback loops, and engagement over time.
Fennies has built a digital home where every voice has a place to be heard, celebrated, and remembered.
I think there are endless possibilities… The more you use the platform… the more you can learn and develop as a whole. – Billy White