Leadership engagement and top-down communication in driving adoption of Viva Engage.
Nuveen
AMER | Viva Engage Festival 2025
Discover how harmonising real-world communication practices with workplace tools transforms leadership engagement. Dan shares lessons from a decade of internal communications, exploring the shift from traditional email and town halls to dynamic, community-driven conversations. Learn practical strategies for leaders to foster transparency, dialogue, and everyday connection, making digital engagement work for everyone.
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Let's kick off the Viva Engage Festival for 2025. Dan, Chris and Chris, are you there? We are here. Yes, amazing.
So what we're going to do is going to get Dan to take over. Dan is going to share his screen and I'm just handing over to Dan, so with great pleasure. Dan, Chris and Chris from Nuveen and they're going to share their incredible story.
Thanks, Dan. Thank you, appreciate it for being here and thank you everybody for coming and hopefully we can, by the time this presentation is over, leave you with some real actionable things you can do, especially for those that are still trying to get adoption going, drive operational excellence with Engage or even just get leadership buy-in. We've got it all covered here.
So before we dive into the specifics, just a quick intro for us. We're going to have three presenters, as mentioned, Chris Dickey and our team, Chris Martin and myself, each of us having different roles here, adoption, operations and strategy. We're from Nuveen, part of TIA, largest non-profit retirement provider in the US.
We're the asset manager for the business, 1.4 trillion in assets and Fortune 100 company in financial services. So before we get into the details of our journey, my colleagues and I, Chris and Chris, were talking this morning about what are some of the greatest hits of reasons we don't adopt Engage at companies. This is a favorite of mine.
So let's see if any of these resonate. I know we're virtual. If we were in a room, I'd do a raise, share hands, but maybe some reactions would be great.
My leaders love email. That's number one. That has to be number one.
Doing the opposite of the old David Letterman list. They won't see my message if it's on Engage. People might make weird comments.
Too much noise. Leaders won't post. And another favorite, too many channels.
We're going to cover all of that today. And I assure you, those are all fallacies. Yes, your leaders may love email, but they love it for all the wrong reasons.
So on a personal note, got here to Nuveen four years ago, and this is what I walked into. So 2021, I used Engage in the past. Other firms, overall, I've used it for about a decade.
Obviously, it was Yammer at that point, but came here, and we were really relying on these two channels all of you are familiar with. Email, a 30-year-old tactic, plus events, goes back to the caveman days, literally the first communication channel to reach all of our audiences. So as you can see, my first year here, there was a significant volume increase.
I was not the driver behind that. All the while, I was trying to make the case for moving to Engage. We saw a huge volume increase and a 7% open rate decline.
We were also at the same time hearing from executives that they wanted to do more events. The problem with that is twofold. One, of course, is there's only so much time in a communicator's day.
And number two, everyone wants to go home at the end of the day, and they don't need more email, and they don't need more events necessarily. To add on to all of the other layers of town halls they have, especially in large organizations. So we're having more email, less views.
We have more events, still not reaching in a large organization, even a small percentage of employees. In an hour town hall, you get a 20-minute Q&A, two minutes per question, that's 10 people. In a multi-thousand-person organization, it would take you a lifetime.
So ultimately, we made the case that this really wasn't the way to go. So where do we go from here? Well, not going to boil the ocean. Let's start with a pilot.
And this is probably the most important thing in my section that we're going to talk about, is this pilot. So we initiated the pilot lower in the organization as a case study. We did what I call kind of a teapot.
It was a global organization, but about 500 people. So we were able to evaluate as a mirror of the larger organization. Focus on the platform.
For those of you that are on the Microsoft platform on 365, we already have the platform. So it's not like there's an additional cost. It's usually one of the first things leaders ask.
There really isn't a downside because we're doing it in a small teapot here. And we're emphasizing it in a more serious note. And this is obviously when we were using the Yammer branding, there were more questions than there are now.
But kind of emphasizing this is not Facebook. We're already doing a lot of LinkedIn posts for our leaders. This is just the internal counterpart to LinkedIn.
Microsoft owns both. It's kind of all connected. So really focusing on the business aspect of it.
And then really leveraging those LinkedIn posts as our starting point, which we had already been doing those. The way we started, particularly for the pilot, we got the business leader out there saying kind of what I call my last email. This is my last email.
We're going to now be communicating here and then follow up with the first post. And ultimately, the pilot went about performing email. As I showed on the last slide, we had about 50 percent reach on most of our emails.
This pilot showed 87 percent. And not surprising given the makeup of our organization, as you can see in the bottom. So going from there, we got the buy-in, we made the case, and we launched to the larger organization.
So I won't go through all the information here, but you can see the stats speak for themselves. By starting with that pilot, proving out in a low-risk environment, this can work, breaking the skeptics, and then going on to the larger group and scaling it there. And then from there, it just rolled and rolled and rolled.
And now our entire organization is completely on Engage and truly thriving on it. And we continue to just drive engagement, which is where I will turn over to my colleague, Chris Dickey, who is our head of adoption to talk about that. Thank you, Dan.
Yeah, so I'm going to talk about how you go from having a thriving all-company space to having thriving communities across the whole organization. So the biggest difference there is that you will lose a little bit of control, and you'll likely have to build some new connections within the business to manage your own capacity to get this done, but also help other people manage it on their own. So I was brought in two years ago to go from having the all-company groups to having groups all over the company.
And a lot of what I'll talk about here is if you've ever dipped into any kind of change management in your career, it might sound familiar, kind of like the ADCAR method. So I've kind of leaned on a little bit of that, but not too much because I think ADCAR is a little too rigid, but I kind of put my own spin on it. So the way I did it is, literally the first thing I did was, so I had about like seven business areas that I was tasked to get live on Engage.
So that was a pretty open-ended goal. When I had my interview with Dan, that's kind of what he told me. And that was just when I was brought in, that was what I was tasked to do.
So the first thing I did was literally just put like a scorecard together of all those groups, and I gave everybody a point based on if they had connected business partner, who I could rely on to get me stuff, who had a leadership team was actually open to the change, a group that had existing communications that could easily be ported over to Engage, just kind of like make it easy for everybody. And I also weighed like whether this group was a significant win to get started with. So focusing on like some of our critical areas of business, and no offense to HR and compliance, but kind of like leaving them for class.
And being ready is pretty subjective, but something we always lean on is the idea of teams making it their own. So it's like when you go from giving people ideas to them saying, this is how we want to do it. So I think that's a good marker.
And kind of like following that, just start small. So you put together a scorecard, you kind of identify the group that is good to go, just really dig in with them. And your initial view might be, and this was initial view too, is like, let's get everybody live so nobody feels left out and everybody's getting the same experience.
But it's really about your capacity to manage this rollout, because it's not easy. It's a lot of handholding. It's a lot of back and forth.
It's a lot of work to get this done. So it's about managing your capacity and giving the energy that you need to see this through. So I'd say like pick one or two groups you feel are ready to go, really dig in with those business partners, create a launch plan to sustain the group.
So not just launch it, but like map out like your first 90 days, tap people who can give you good content over those 90 days. And taking this approach to just starting small also gives you really good examples that you can point to for the next person. So nobody can ever say like, well, this won't work for my group, because they can see like this group had all the issues and all the problems and all the skepticism and all the, you know, the capacity issues.
And they can see like, okay, this team did it. They have examples. They're not too much more different than I am, and I can do this too.
So that's kind of the way I've re-approached it. And it kind of follows along with the next point. And I think this is actually the most important point that I've come across in my career at Nuveen, is to hold hands with the people who you've asked to be communicators, who are probably not communicators.
So just really take time to sit with people, like literally, when they're starting to use the platform. Don't just send them like off to Microsoft.com to learn how to do something. Sit with them, watch them press the buttons, be on the call when they send their first thing.
Give them the confidence to do this on their own, because you might be saying, okay, I don't have time to sit with 30 business partners. But once you train up that one person, then they'll become the trainer for everybody else. So it's another way to maximize your capacity.
You kind of implant your brain and your thinking into somebody else, and they can go and kind of evangelize to the rest of the company. And something else that was a really big hit for us was just to create a simple sandbox group where people can just play around with Engage and do a post before it's real. So they can see what the things look like, see what the work it takes to put an image or a video in a post, and see what it looks like and show it to their people before it goes live, and just get more confident with using the platform.
And the next point is kind of like a self-preservation point. So you've probably had to convince some pretty skeptical leaders about doing this thing, doing communications on a platform that looks like Facebook. Our comms team is a little, you know, we're kind of wacky.
We do some fun stuff every once in a while, but we also have to be mindful of, like, we're asking a lot of our leaders to kind of take a chance on doing this new way of doing comms. So you're creating noise, but you're creating good noise in a different space. So you have to kind of like make the argument over and over about why this is a good thing.
So when I say SIN wins up the chain, I mean, like, if you go live with a key business area, if you do a first post from a key leader, if you transition some nasty-looking newsletter over to Engage for the first time, or you get, like, really good engagement on a post, just type up an email, draft an email to the leader, draft an email to your leadership team, send it up the chain, let them know that it happened. You probably won't hear anything from them, but maybe a few months later, you might pass your director in the hall, and they'll just, like, casually say, like, you guys are doing some cool stuff on Engage, and kind of just fist bump and walk away with that. But it's kind of like, over time, you just got to keep reinforcing that this was a good choice, because they're not going to be, like, checking in with you every day about, you know, what you guys were doing on Engage, but when you can really send those wins up the chain, you can kind of, like, reinforce that they made a good choice, they made a good bet, and it's working out within the business.
Yeah, and the last point, play the long game. Don't go into this thinking that you're going to try it out, see what happens, and then maybe go back to the way things were. You kind of have to be, more than anybody else, you have to be relentless in believing that this is how you're going to do communications forever.
And when you're in a meeting with some of your business partners about something, you know, unrelated, they need to know that when they see your face, you're going to ask them, like, are you guys ready to go on Engage? What's the conversation like? Have you been talking to your leaders? And also, don't box yourself in with, like, very short-term metrics about, like, how many likes or comments you're going to get on a post. Use those first 90 days to, like, baseline, like, what is the vibe with the team that I'm working on? So, like, I work with a very, I won't call them frontline, because it has, like, other connotations, but they're a team that's, like, very heads down. They're, like, traders, day traders.
So, I kind of treat them like a frontline organization. So, when I put something out, I don't expect, you know, lots of likes and comments, but I do see the views, so it's getting to them. But I don't expect folks like that to be, like, liking and commenting and chatting.
But if there is something big, and it's, like, a nice org announcement or a retirement announcement, they will pop on and say some stuff. So, there's, like, a little proof of life there, but you kind of have to balance this thing. Think about it as social media.
Like, there's companies with millions of followers on Twitter, or formal Twitter, and they'll post something, and they'll get, like, six likes. I'm like, how is this happening? But if they post something cool, like a story about a dog or something, that's, like, immediate, like, a million likes. So, you have to kind of, like, weigh the content.
Like, you're posting about business, but if you're having fun with it, you can expect a little bit more engagement. Yeah, and I think that's the end of my story. Welcome any questions at the end of this, but I'll turn it over to Chris to talk about how we make this all work on the operations side.
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it. So, yeah, this is Chris part two, I guess.
So, Dan, can you switch that slide for me real quick? Awesome. So, you know, I help to lead Nuveen's communications operations. So, I'm here just to talk a little bit about some of the things that we do on our end that have really been, you know, very successful for us.
You know, so to start off, we are big Microsoft fans over here, obviously. And so, we started to use the Microsoft Planner tool as an editorial calendar. And we sort of pair that with weekly meetings where the whole team will sort of huddle up.
We'll take a look at, you know, the previous week and the next week, as well as this week, just to see sort of what the landscape looks like. And the real sort of benefit of this is, you know, we've heard from via different channels, you know, that people feel overloaded sometimes with communication. And so, we want to be very cognizant of how much we're sending out, how we're prioritizing these posts, just so that we are, you know, sort of allowing our associates, you know, the ability to learn some more stuff about the company and wins and different things that may be coming down, but also give them the opportunity to do their job.
And, you know, we don't want to overload them or sort of make them feel a little bit like they don't have that time. And so, we use these meetings to definitely prioritize what we're going to push out. We, you know, try to keep it sort of light to where it's not, you know, multiple times.
You're getting a lot of pings. So, that's sort of what we use, you know, to just make sure that we're staying on top of that. We've recently started to use Amplify just so we can sort of streamline those multi-channel communications.
If you're not familiar, Amplify allows you to push out to engage Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint. So, it really gives us the ability to sort of meet associates where they're at and meet them on the channel that they're at. And, you know, essentially, through Amplify, you know, it's one click and you can basically hit associates on four different channels.
So, we found that to be really useful for us and just sort of just to be a useful tool. We also, this sort of goes back to the first bullet as well, but we're really working together, getting under the hood to try to strategically plan our communications. Sometimes, you know, it's based on leadership level.
Sometimes it's based on sort of strategic goals or things that are sort of coming down from the top. And so, we really, you know, try to take a good approach as far as, you know, what's most important? What can we push? What can we push off to a different date? What can we push off to a different channel even? So, we're really trying to use those meetings, you know, just to be as strategic as we can around that. And then, the last bullet there, this is a big hitter, and Chris sort of touched on it before as well, is, you know, we've really, as communicators, you know, as much as we'd like to, you know, we can't touch every single communication, right? And so, what we really want to do is, you know, sort of hand the keys over to some of our smaller business areas and really empower them to take ownership of their communication strategy.
So, you know, like Chris was talking about, you know, we'll definitely sort of sit with them and train them and make sure that they feel comfortable, but we want to give them the ability to sort of take control of that just so we feel sort of, you know, so they feel comfortable as far as taking that out and supporting their leader. So, those are sort of the four points that we hit on. We try to hit on this every week and just keep it always top of mind as we're communicating stuff out to our associates.
But with that, that was all the points that I had. I think we have a video coming up here. Dan, I just want to make sure you're sharing your sound.
Always got to check for that. Thank you very much, Chris and Chris. The rest we're going to breeze through real quick so we can get to Q&A.
But we've got our head of real estate who is, you know, kind of our voice of the customer, so to speak. Then we're going to show you. Dan, there's no audio yet at our end.
Yeah, I can't hear it. All right. Let me reshare.
Hang on. The classic share audio thing. Hang on.
Hey, Chad Phillips here. We're the real estate group. We have a little over 500 people in our organization.
I'm always looking for new ways to engage with, to motivate, to communicate with our teams. And one thing that I realize is people don't like email. They have too many emails and they don't like reading long emails.
So, Viva Engage has been good for us because it's a new medium. It's quick. People can see the comments and it easily allows us to upload videos as well as photos.
So, it's been a useful tool for us. Thanks. All right.
So, in a nod to some of my former... Hey, Chad Phillips. We don't need to hear you again. Thank you, Chad.
In a nod to some of my former colleagues on here from MetLife, lessons from 10 years of Yammer-engaged deployments between the two places I've worked at where we use this. I will leave this up while we open Q&A. But Gemma, I don't know if you want to officially open Q&A or how you want to handle it.
Yeah, of course. We do have some questions. Just thank you.
Just watching the chat, the community that we've built, everybody seems to know each other, which is incredible. So, I just love that we can host this event and they invite you all to join. So, Ty from the Home Depot, can you give some examples of how you're helping non-coms own their content in their communities? That's probably maybe Chris or Chris.
Is that something that you could answer? So, how it non-coms people? Yeah. To my earlier point, most of these folks are not going to be communications practitioners. They can use the example of the all-company group that you've already created.
That's the official tone in the way that you're going to be communicating. So, that example that you set forth with that big group really sets the tone for everybody else. So, they're going to want to make communications that look like the CEO's leadership team.
So, the way you write those early posts and the way that you position the community and the platform and the tone of the platform will really set the tone for everybody else. So, if you're writing really long posts, which you shouldn't do, everybody else is going to do that. If you're writing short, snappy, easy-to-consume posts, then that's what the rest of the platform is going to look like.
And the engage itself, it feels like social media. If you're a good social media practitioner, you're not going to be writing long screens either. So, I think just in the early days, set a really good example with your CEO-level or all-company-level community, and then that will kind of flow from there about how to do communications.
And also, to the point about holding hands, everything won't look good or look right the first time, but once you get people on it, you can kind of work with them to beef things up or take a different approach with things over time. So, it won't be perfect to start, but eventually you'll make communicators out of people who never thought they'd be communicating and people who were super sceptical about using the platform in the first place, because I have a ton of examples of those. Absolutely.
And do you know, I think tools like Viva Engage also can find those shining stars for you that maybe wouldn't normally have an opportunity. So, I'm a huge, huge fan of Viva Engage and everyone that knows me knows that. We're out of time for questions.
I know you're going to hang around for the panel at the end, so we can run through some more Q&As then. If you wouldn't mind, Chris, Chris and Dan, if you hang around, if you can access the Q&A and go and answer some of the questions, that would be super helpful. But just thank you, thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Meet the speaker:
Dan Mulcahey
Vice President, Internal Communications
