Digital Workplace Group Awards 2025: Adobe – Winner for Lean Digital Workplace Excellence
It’s not every day that an intranet manages to be both a technological showcase and a true enabler of business and employee success. In Digital Workplace Group’s 2025 Awards programme, Adobe earned the Lean Digital Workplace Excellence award for its commitment to delivering a unified, intuitive and highly responsive digital experience for its 40,000 employees – all managed by a remarkably lean team of just five people.
Now in their eighth year, the awards are produced by DWG and celebrate organizations and teams that have excelled in creating well-executed, high-performing digital workplace environments. Find out about previous winners in the awards Hall of Fame and our free report Celebrating the best digital workplaces: 5-year trends from DWG’s awards.
A unified gateway for 40,000 employees
Inside Adobe stands out as the digital heartbeat of the company – a single, beautifully designed entry point for news, resources and tools. Managed by a lean team of just five, this platform serves 40,000 employees, has around 1,000 pages and sees an impressive 700,000 page views each month. The team’s blend of content strategy and engineering skills ensures that every aspect, from governance to integrations, is meticulously crafted and maintained.
Inside Adobe as ‘Customer Zero’
What makes Inside Adobe truly distinctive is its role as ‘Customer Zero’. The intranet is built using Adobe’s own products, allowing the team to ‘eat their own dog food’ – a point the judges found especially compelling: “That is such an impressive bonus for the intranet.” This approach not only ensures a high-quality, brand-aligned experience but also means Adobe’s employees are the first to benefit from – and shape – the company’s latest innovations.
Personalization, feedback and rapid response
Personalization is at the core of Inside Adobe, with content dynamically tailored to each employee’s location, role and organization. Feedback is actively encouraged through Slack, surveys and forms, and – remarkably – every submission receives a response within 24 hours. As one judge noted: “They’ve got a one-day turnaround for any question people ask – you know that’s not easy to do in corporate America.”
Lockstep with the business
Inside Adobe is more than a communications hub; it’s a strategic enabler. The platform is tightly integrated with business tools like Workday, ServiceNow and Adobe Learning Manager, streamlining processes and boosting productivity. “They’re really lockstep with the business… they help the core business,” observed another judge. The team’s data-driven approach ensures that even small tweaks – like adjusting the Support menu – can have a big impact, with click-through rates increasing by 130% after a recent change.
The platform also continues to adapt, with a pilot of generative AI search results aggregating data from multiple sources/pages, bringing employees immediate, accurate and highly relevant results.
Governance and consistency
A mature governance model underpins Inside Adobe’s success. Every page and asset is regularly audited for accuracy, accessibility and SEO, while authors benefit from clear guidelines and automated reminders. “Everything’s well put together,” summed up the judges, reflecting the platform’s consistency and reliability – as well as its maturity as a 25 year-old intranet that has seen multiple iterations.
Conclusion
Inside Adobe exemplifies what’s possible when a lean, passionate team combines excellence in content strategy and technical innovation with a relentless focus on employee experience. As one judge put it: “They really are trying to help their business as well as their employees.” For its blend of agility, impact and continuous improvement, Inside Adobe is a worthy winner of the 2025 Lean Digital Workplace Excellence award.
Categorised in: → Digital Workplace Group Awards
