I’ll never forget the collective gasp from the audience when Leah Truitt from WW, formerly called Weight Watchers, commented that WW no longer uses all-company emails. Instead, all internal communications are on Workplace.
It was March 2018 and we were attending a Workplace from Facebook Transform event at Menlo Park, at Facebook’s headquarters, where some of the world’s biggest Workplace customers had gathered to share their stories and learn from each other.
Leah’s comment made quite the stir. People immediately began questioning her and you could see the Workplace team beaming.
Dr Laurence Lock Lee and Sharon Dawson from SWOOP outside Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, CA in March 2018.
When I had the opportunity to speak with Leah at Happy Hour, it was the first thing I asked her. At the time, WW had 18,000 users worldwide and six weeks into launching Workplace they had an incredible 93 per cent adoption rate. WW had turned off all email distribution lists, forcing its people to use Workplace.
In the audience were representatives from companies like Walmart, Starbucks, Delta Airlines, T Mobile, REI, Air Asia, Scotiabank and there was definitely a collective gasp, followed by murmurings, when Leah told us email was no more.
Jump ahead more than two years and the days of all-staff emails are history for many of our SWOOP Analytics customers and friends. The business value in removing all-company emails is rich. You can’t “like” an email, we dread the “Reply All” when an email has been sent to thousands and emails fail to invite discussion or engagement.
Transforming internal communications at Ageas
Insurance company Ageas UK was way ahead of WW, stopping all-company emails back in November 2017, at the time Ageas launched Workplace.
Ageas’ Internal Communications Manager, Kirsty Walden, said when Workplace was introduced, they took the bold decision to transform internal communications, not just add a new channel.
Ageas UK’s Internal Communications Manager Kirsty Walden.
“We weren’t just going to replicate what we did off-line and pop it onto Workplace. We stopped all-employee broadcast emails, we haven’t sent one since November 2017,” Kirsty said.
Senior leaders also stopped all-company email communication and instead posted on Workplace, ensuring employees would log on and use the network if they wanted to stay in touch.
However, Kirsty said that caused new problems, with some people not wanting to log onto Workplace every day. The solution was to do a Friday roundup each week, with links to all the important posts on Workplace from the past week. Kirsty says SWOOP data shows a spike every Friday after she sends out the Friday roundup.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ageas was the top performer for medium-sized businesses in SWOOP’s 2019 Benchmarking report of Workplace networks. The top performer for large-size organisations was Flight Centre Travel Group.
No all-company emails at Flight Centre
Flight Centre doesn’t have the option of all-company emails for some aspects of the business – it’s all communicated on Workplace.
At Flight Centre, if you want to find out about company benefits such as Healthwise or Moneywise, learn how to get trips consultants can take advantage of or airline deals for staff, you do so exclusively on Workplace.
Donna Hanson, Flight Centre’s Director Transformational Change, said if employees are not on Workplace, they’re going to miss out.
“At the end of the day, we’re at a point where the only place you’re going to find information, like benefits, is on Workplace so if you’re not active, you’re going to miss out on a lot of things,” Donna said.
Time to head to Workplace at AMP NZ
AMP New Zealand, a leading financial services company, kicked off its Workplace network when the CEO sent an all company email saying this was his last email of the kind, it’s time to head to Workplace.
Blair Vernon, CEO, AMP NZ.
Two years later, he remains the most influential person on AMP NZ’s Workplace network according to data from SWOOP. He listens to his employees, asks them questions and cheers them on. Workplace has become a place where employees share their stories, recognise their colleagues and it’s influencing company culture.
AMP was one of the first companies in New Zealand to start using Workplace back in 2017. Ben Mabon, Communications Manager at AMP, said there had been a heavy reliance on broadcast email communications, weekly newsletters and an old intranet.
AMP NZ made the decision to start using Workplace not long after Blair Vernon was appointed the new CEO for AMP, and he supported the concept of Workplace.
“The CEO sent out an email saying; ‘This is it, this is the last email you’re going to get from me. If you want to know what’s going on, get onto Workplace’,” Ben said.
“That was it and the rest is history. We basically just shut off broadcast email and other digital internal communications channels. We shifted everything onto Workplace. We thought if it worked, and people liked it, we’d stick with it.”
Ben said Blair, the CEO, immediately recognised the real benefit of Workplace and how it would improve communication, collaboration and engagement with AMP’s people.
“When you’ve got a CEO who fundamentally believes in the importance of quality communication and collaboration and embraces and encourages new ways of doing things, then it gives you a mandate to go forward and make good things happen,” he said.
Shutting down Skype and moving to Workplace at We Are Social
For global creative agency We Are Social, Workplace is the primary channel for internal global communications, having stopped sending global all-staff emails.
We Are Social France’s founder and CEO, Sandrine Plasseraud, shut down Skype for the Paris office soon after the introduction of Workplace and moved communication to the company’s Workplace network, with other CEOs later following suit.
Data from SWOOP shows Paris has some of the most active groups on Workplace and Ms Plasseraud is one of the most influential leaders, according to SWOOP.
Videos instead of emails at Service NSW
Juliette Peshevski, Internal Communications Manager, Service NSW.
At Service NSW, a government agency and one-stop-shop to access government services in Australia’s most populous state, Workplace has led to a huge reduction in emails.
Juliette Peshevski, Internal Communications Manager at Service NSW, shared the story of one executive leader who would send a lengthy monthly newsletter via email with updates from her department. She oversees about 2,000 staff so the email would literally be sent to thousands of staff.
Since Workplace was introduced, she has ditched her long, monthly emails in favour of fortnightly videos. SWOOP shows the engagement rates for these videos are soaring.
“She goes to different locations every two weeks and she talks to the frontline teams, she does different interviews each fortnight and those videos are working really well,” Juliette said.
“So we stopped the newsletters and now Jody does a Workplace post instead and it gets really good engagement.”
Unlike email, by posting on Workplace, engagement rates are clearly and easily measured with SWOOP, allowing the executive, and the organisation, to see how employees interact.
Are you still using all-company emails? Have you made the switch to Workplace or another Enterprise Social Network but still replicating your message on email? Contact SWOOP and we can show you exactly what insights to measure to improve your digital workplace relationships to reach better business outcomes.