Making leadership visible, accessible and actively involved
ACC New Zealand
APAC | Viva Engage Festival 2025
Just 12 months since formally launching Viva Engage to our organisation, learn about how we’ve got buy in from our Executive Leadership Team, are enabling successful adoption of the platform and providing ongoing support to successfully embed the approach.
We’ll also share how this is helping to drive wider adoption and foster engagement, with the aim of contributing to an improved organisational culture and performance outcomes.
-
That brings us to our next presenter of the day, we're going to be joined by Sam Parker from ACC New Zealand, and Sam's going to share how Viva Engage is helping make the, to help make leadership more visible, accessible, and more actively involved. So just 12 months, I think, since the launch, ACC has secured really strong executive buy-in, they've driven successful adoption, and embedded ongoing support and all with the goal of fostering engagement and improving organisational culture and performance. And I am always keen to hear about how internal comms are able to effectively sell in those benefits of Viva Engage, and so in saying that, Sam, I'm going to hand over to you to share the story.
Thank you very much, Emily. Really great job there of setting the scene for me to, no pressure, I'll just share my screen quickly. Okay, hopefully everyone can see that now.
Hi everybody. So yeah, after attending this festival for a couple of years now, I'm really excited to be able to share our experience with you all of adopting Viva Engage as our core communications channel over the last 12 months, and in particular, our journey in leadership adoption, or as I like to affectionately call it, herding cats, something I'm sure many of you can relate to. So just briefly before I get into it, what is ACC? Well, ACC is short for the Accident Compensation Corporation.
We help prevent injuries and get New Zealanders and visitors to the country back to everyday life if they've had an accident, and our purpose is to improve lives every day through a focus on prevention, care and recovery. And just in terms of our target audience as an internal comms team, we currently have approximately 5,000 staff spread across 23 sites nationally, and 65% of our people are frontline and so on a daily basis, they're on the phone to clients. So why exactly did we choose Viva Engage in the first place? So over the past couple of years, our annual employee engagement surveys highlighted a very strong and clear desire from our people for more two-way communication opportunities and for visibility of our leaders, and we just felt that Viva Engage is absolutely tailor-made for this.
We also didn't have any analytics or a way of measuring our engagement, so we were doing a lot of our internal comms blind. So Viva Engage also provided a great opportunity to start measuring things too, but we wanted to launch it and drive adoption in the right way, so we decided to take the leader-led approach with that. And that approach for us wasn't just about making them more visible on an open and open two-way channel.
We wanted to positively contribute to our culture, one that showed a connected leadership team, one that openly communicates and collaborates with our people, and in turn just cultivate some trust and honesty. But we also wanted them to lead by example, so people could see that they were enabled and encouraged to actually use the platform. There were some really early grumbles by some that it was just a place where people shared pet photos, it was a distraction from doing work, so we really wanted to remove that stigma right away and highlight the real benefits and purpose of Viva Engage.
So I wanted to take you all on the journey with me over the past year. So I'm going to start at the very beginning and talk about how we managed to get buy-in initially from our executive team after we decided that Viva Engage was our preferred channel. So we started by pulling together a business case, essentially in a PowerPoint-style format like this, pretty simple.
We highlighted the benefits of the platform, we shared some stats from last year's SWOOP benchmarking report, as well as a couple of the case studies on other New Zealand organisations, there was one from ANZ, just to help give some more local context as well. And we really positioned it as the best solution for them as a group of leaders to meet the needs of our people that had been highlighted so strongly in that employee feedback that we'd got. We shared the document with the exec team, and then we really started pushing and pestering for some time to talk about it at one of the weekly exec meetings.
And suffice to say, not long after sharing that business case, we were invited along to one. We ran through the presentation with them, answered any queries or concerns that they had. And it was a really positive and productive conversation.
They were pretty enthusiastic about it when we came out of that session, and we were fortunate to come out of that with the full buy-in and full support. So the next step we took was to pull together a second document, which was essentially part recommended approach and part how-to guide. And at the time, the weekly chief exec update that was being shared was just an Outlook email.
So we proposed changing this to an announcement post in an all-company feed. We also recommended that the other exec members posted at least once a month to that all-company feed, as well as providing updates from the specific business areas. And we also asked the exec team to provide weekly updates to the specific business groups in dedicated communities that we would also set up.
We included lots of practical tips in there, really simple and basic stuff just to make the life as easy as possible for them. Things like how to access Viva Engage, how and where to post, the kind of things that they could post about, and even the one, two, three rule. So if everyone posts two replies, three reactions.
We didn't want to ask too much of them too soon and put them off right at the start. So we tried to make our initial approach as simple and as least time-consuming as possible. So in terms of implementing our approach, we started by rolling out the chief exec comms.
So initially, I sat down with them, ran through a one-to-one tutorial on how to access and use Viva Engage, make sure it was downloaded to all of the devices. We created delicate access as well for them. So for their exec assistant and the chief advisor to post on their behalf if needed.
I re-ran through that recommended approach document in person with them just to really reaffirm what we were asking them to do and make sure that they were happy. And then we began, as I mentioned previously, by posting the weekly update messages as announcements in that old company feed that we set up. And in the first post, we included information that outlined what our people could expect to see moving forward.
And in all of the early posts, we included calls to action to encourage engagement. And it was just things as basic as, I'd love to hear your thoughts below. Ask me a question below.
And after about a month, we pulled together the analytics from their initial posts, and we used these to highlight the benefits of Viva Engage to the rest of our executive team. And being able to use those sort of cold hard facts and show that our chief exec was reaching around 85% of the whole org was a really good boost. And by this point as well, our chief exec had also really bought into using Viva Engage and they'd begun really championing it for us.
And so that was another huge boost as well. So the next step was to help set up and support the rest of the executive. And again, it was quite a hands on approach.
So I sat down with each of them, seven in total, and similar to what I did with the chief exec. I talked them through the approach document that we'd shared, made sure they were happy and comfortable with what we were asking of them. And again, I gave them a really practical run through of Viva Engage, how to use it, bookmarked it in the browsers, downloaded the app to the work devices, delegate access, you name it, we did it for them.
And then I spent some time just answering all the questions and concerns, put them at ease, and each time left the room ready for them to launch to their business groups. So these first two steps were very, very hands on. They're pretty time consuming, pretty repetitive, but we felt necessarily so.
We felt it was important to do it like this, not only to ensure consistency of the approach, but ensure that each exec member felt fully equipped and comfortable in implementing the approach. We wanted them to really feel the love from us as an internal comms team so that Viva Engage got the love it needed from them. And that leads me directly into our next step of implementation.
So actually rolling it out to our business groups. So we created and populated specific business group communities using something called dynamic grouping, using pre-existing SharePoint groups that we had set up. And this basically meant that people were automatically added or removed from them whenever they joined or left ACC.
We launched each of these with an announcement post from the exec member, introducing the community, explaining what it could be used for, what to expect to see from them moving forward. And we also included an activity, again, to help people immediately used to engaging with the platform. So just to give an example, there was pretty sort of basic things, again, of like, share a picture of your favorite place in New Zealand and tell us why, just to get people used to commenting underneath and sharing their experience.
And then we also added a community to our internal comms team, which is basically a business partner model. So each senior advisor partner is one of our business groups, and they regularly advise and support their respective exec members on opportunities for posting. Myself and our internal comms manager also does the same for the chief exec.
And this support can involve lots of things. Sometimes it is drafting posts for them. Other times it's just a matter of getting people on board.
It's reminding them to post ahead of an event they might be attending. And sometimes it's chasing them to post up when they've forgotten to do so. There's times where this all happens organically, and it's brilliant, but there's also times where it can be really quite labor intensive on our part.
In terms of the kind of content that we encouraged our executive team to share, we wanted a really broad mix and not just purely strategic updates on key worldwide projects or just the standard weekly update messages that we advised that they shared. So whenever they went on a site visit, we got them to post a selfie or a group picture and share their experience. The same goes for any events they attended to, whether they were internal events or external ones.
We also encourage them to share any key milestones and achievements of people in their teams, you know, length of service, any industry awards, that sort of thing. And we also have seven employee networks of which each exec member is a sponsor of. So we got them to post content for things like Pride, Mental Health Awareness Week, Maori Language Week, and we encourage them to provide a more personal touch as well, where the opportunity presented itself.
So it could be personal milestones, what they did for Christmas, all of that kind of stuff. We also got them to post about their pets. Pet content is what gets the most engagement, seemingly, in most organisations.
And our chief exec is a huge dog person, so they're always pushing for pet content. And every time that they posted, we really strongly encouraged them to share a picture, a video, a gif, you name it, just to help make things more visually appealing. The more human or fun posts that they did, the better the engagement.
And it was really interesting. So the more that they could see that they were engaging with our people, the more it encouraged them to use Viva Engage. They really started to trust it and really see the value in it.
So what has been the impact of all of this so far for us at ACC? Well, over the past year, our exec team have shared 205 posts themselves, which works out around 17 total posts a month or two posts per exec member a month. And taking that leader-led approach has really helped boost the adoption across the whole of ACC. We've had more than 2,000 posts in total from more than 400 people.
And we've reached more than 6,000 people, so 100% of our workforce. And of those, more than 3,000 have directly engaged by reacting, commenting or posting. And that's given us an engagement rate of 50%.
And that's higher than 66% of similar-sized organisations to us. And we've totaled more than 63,500 engagements, 89% of those were reactions, and we're trending positive at 70%. So we're really, really pleased with the progress we're making and what we've achieved in just 12 months since launch.
But we're still early on in our adoption journey, and we certainly don't feel like it's job done. There's still a lot for us to do and achieve. We know that we're not there yet by any means, and there's still a lot of challenges that we face.
Only about a third of our exec team I would define as having fully adopted Viva Engage. Another third, again, use it sort of intermittently. And then another third, yet again, still only using it very, very rarely.
There's also, notice, a reluctance from sort of the next leadership tier down, so our heads off to adopt the platform. A common issue that's brought up to us is not having the time. And it's also not fully organic for us either.
As I mentioned, our team is still having to write a lot of posts for executives. We're still identifying opportunities for them to post, and we're still regularly sending reminders and chasing things up. We're also, at the minute, really having to work very hard to get them to actually respond and react to comments and questions that are on the posts.
And I think that really ties in with this year's benchmarking report, highlighting the number of replies proposed have dropped, and it's sort of shifted to a bit of a more broadcast style channel in the past year. But these are all things that we're really going to focus on for the next 12 months and beyond as we continue our journey with Viva Engage. So I wanted to just end, as I started, with the concept of herding cats, that element of attempting to control something that is in its very nature hard to control.
Because I think that's exactly what leadership adoption of Viva Engage is. The reality is it's not always easy. It can be a lot of time and effort.
Sometimes it pays off, and other times it really leaves you frustrated and wondering what more you can do. And it's in those sort of moments that I like to just take a little step back, do something fun like watch this GIF, which is one of my favourites. And I think it quite accurately reflects what it feels like to work in comms at times.
I just have a little smile and a chuckle to myself, roll up my sleeves, and get back to it. And that's everything from me. Thanks so much, everyone.
And I'll open it up for any questions. Fantastic. Thanks so much, Sam.
I have to agree. That GIF is just one of the best. It brings the chaos to life, right? And I really appreciate the tactical approach that you've taken with your presentation, too, and kind of really breaking it down and sharing how you can approach this with your leaders.
It's one of the key challenges that comes up time and time again. So I love how you've broken that down. We do have a few questions.
It's definitely a hot topic. And I'm sure some of these themes and questions will also flow into the panel as we get started. So let me ask a few of the questions that have come up in the Q&A.
Did you launch Viva Engage to the whole organisation at the same time? And did they already have Microsoft accounts? Yeah, so it was sort of already sat there laying dormant. I think there may have been two existing communities. One was the Pets community.
One was, I think, a Women's Network community as well. So everybody already had access. It was already sort of sat there.
We, in terms of the old company, like I said, we started with the Chief Exec. So we technically started by launching it to the whole org and sort of started with the Chief Exec. And then in terms of the rollout of the business group communities, that took some time.
It wasn't sort of all at once. It happened over the space of probably three to almost six months. So yeah, it was sort of a multi-community approach, if that makes sense.
Perfect. And then for all company announcements, did you use other channels to support? So for example, email, intranet news articles, or was it only Viva Engage for those big announcements? Yeah, we were very, very heavily reliant on Outlook emails. So a lot of sort of the more formal comms, but also anything from any executive member, it was all through Outlook emails.
Very difficult to monitor and measure anything really. We do also have a staff intranet, so there was a lot of content on there as well. But again, in terms of sort of article views, page views, that sort of thing, pretty low.
So we've seen, since launching Viva Engage, we've certainly seen a much bigger engagement rates, view rates, that sort of thing. And just talking specifically to the leadership buying part as well, and some of the forums that you're able to present in and get some time to actually share the benefits of the tool. One of the kind of key criticisms or barriers that people talk about is like, how do we get time with our leaders? How do we get this on their schedule? Realistically, how long did you actually have with the leaders to be able to communicate those benefits? Yeah, probably sounds like it happened a lot quicker than it actually did.
Like I said, it was a lot of pestering and chasing and that sort of thing. And it was sort of, we were very much fitted in here and there as and when, we didn't get to sit down and present for an hour at an exec meeting. You know, we had five to 10 minutes kind of thing.
In terms of those one-to-one sessions that I had with them, by that point, they'd bought into it a little bit more. They'd sort of signed up to it. I got a little bit more time.
So I tried to have sort of a 20 to 30 minute hands-on session with them as well. But again, that could be you completely beholden to their schedule and you've got to really be flexible and fit around them. So quite often, I might wait a month to be able to sit down with them, but it was worth the wait.
Or, you know, sometimes things change. They go, oh, can you come this afternoon and you've got to sort of drop everything and go and do that. So, yeah.
Yeah, seizing the opportunity when it's there. Absolutely. And like perhaps working with like EAs to kind of make all of that happen as well, or was it mainly directly with the leaders? No, we work very closely with the EAs and we have a good relationship with them as well.
So a lot of the time it's through them and not directly. But yeah, like I said, we've got some pretty good relationships established there. And like I said, we've provided the EAs with delegate access as well.
So sometimes the way that we have to make it work is by getting a post text signed off by an exec member and then they may be away at a meeting or on leave or whatever and the EA will post on their behalf. So there is quite a lot of work just with the EAs and a lot of sort of trust there, which is a good place to be. And just back to a few of the questions as well in the Q&A.
Did you encourage different communities, depending on the type of posts, to remove places where work content goes and where social content goes? So I guess like maybe managing that balance between the fun and the more sort of work focus. Yeah, I mean, we've been really lucky in a way that a lot of that happens kind of organically. We've got a lot of sort of, one, a lot of resources on our intranet sort of explaining what channel to use and what for.
We have a channels map that we share, but in terms of when we're out as a team working with other teams and advising, we're sort of making sure that that advice flows through. So we have a lot of sort of consistency and approach and message as a team to the rest of the org. It's not always perfect and sometimes something may pop up in the old company feed that you might sort of think, oh, actually that would work better in a specific community.
Sometimes something will pop up in a community actually that works for an old company message. So in those instances, we reach out to the member of staff and we'll have a chat with them and go, oh, okay, we think you should share this too in the old staff feed and this is why. So there's that constant sort of education piece I think as well.
We encourage sort of any and all content as well. So, especially in our employee network communities, sometimes it's work related stuff and sometimes it's more personal stuff. But in that context, both kind of work pretty well.
And I realised as well, like off the back of the session that we just had with Jordan talking on behalf of Rhys, there's a lot of commentary around storyline and community type content. I'm thinking I might just hold onto that for the panel because I wonder if Kat also has a few things to cover off from the Medibank perspective. So I might hold onto that.
I'm just wondering if anyone has like a last question or a last few questions to drop into the Q&A. Otherwise, I think what we'll do is we'll say a massive thank you to Sam again for sharing the story of how you got that executive buy-in and it sounds like you've had great success, of course. And it's one of those key things we talk about and being able to keep that momentum going with Viva Engage.
So please, everyone. Thanks, Sam.
Meet the speaker:
Sam Parker
Senior Communications, Channels & Content Specialist
