Q&A Panel (All APAC speakers)
SWOOP Analytics
APAC | Viva Engage Festival 2025
Q&A session with all APAC speakers.
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So for the next 20 minutes or so, we're going to bring Sam back into the chat, we'll bring Cat back in. Hello, Cat. And I'm also just thinking like from the SWOOP team, if there are any insights you'd like to jump in and share as well, like off the back of the benchmarking, please feel free to jump in and add your thoughts based on some of the questions that we'll ask.
So in saying that, and I mentioned at the start of this session as well, we had sent out a survey to our registrants to really understand the things that you want to get out of the event today. And some of those things, they have been quite consistent over the years, but I think there's maybe a few emerging things as well, of course, wanting to understand how to boost participation and engagement on Viva Engage, how do we encourage employees to move from just reading content to posting, and also how we're managing things like information overload, which I know was one of those key things that we covered as a part of the benchmarking too, and also in our success guides. So we'll get into a little bit more granular discussion.
I'm going to use as well some of the questions that came in throughout the session today. If you have more questions that you'd like to throw into the mix for the panel, please do get them in now and I'll make sure that we prioritize those ones that start to flow in. I can see there's a few more there now.
But maybe just to kick things off, I'll stop sharing this as well so that you can see our lovely panelists' faces a little bit better. There we go. I'm just wondering, maybe Cat, if I kick off with you, what are some of those practical strategies that you brought into play to boost more of that participation? Like how are you getting people actually talking on Viva Engage at Medibank? I think we definitely use it for sort of a campaign type approach.
So an example that comes to mind in our frontline space. So last year we launched a new way of working across all of our frontline teams called Geo Self-Managing Teams. So they're grouped by a region and they service the customers in their region.
So it's much more personalized, tailored to support for customers. And we were a year in and we really wanted to start hearing stories from the frontline around what their experiences were, what the benefits they were seeing of that more tailored approach. So we started a mini campaign with the hashtag Geo Storytelling.
And oftentimes it comes with prizes, as I said, with the mental health campaign. But each month we would promote the Geo Storytelling. We had sort of six themes across the six months.
And each month we would highlight, you know, two or three stories that really stood out to us in terms of bringing our values to life in the Geo way of working. And then prizes in the lead up to our Geo First Birthday celebration. So I think it organically, when there's a targeted part of the business that you can tailor a campaign to, use a hashtag.
We had lots of engagement from our, we've got a Geo Change and Readiness Team. So they were on board to like, share, comment. We then shared some of those stories outward.
So outside of that targeted Medibank community teams as well. So yeah, definitely from a campaign and storytelling perspective is where I think we get the most engagement from employee-led content. Of course, and we can also tell that from the story that you had shared earlier today too, right? And I think it's also really interesting too, when we talk about, you know, organically interacting and building more of that authentic engagement.
There is so much work that goes on behind the scenes to get networks to that point as well. So it does require that investment from the comms team and empowering community managers, empowering your admins and your influencers and champions to get to that point. Alongside running like fantastic campaigns like you are at Medibank.
Sam, I'm wondering like alongside what you had shared just now about leadership buying being so important to bring more employees into the conversation. Any other sort of quick tips or practical strategies that you were able to bring into play for more of that conversation? Yeah, I mean, we're similar to Cat I guess, you know, using that campaign approach, using hashtags, it was still being quite early in adoption. We've sort of tried to use incentives to varying degrees of success.
So over last Christmas, we ran a campaign called 12 Days of Pet Today CC. So it was a Christmas photo competition for your pets, dress them up, submit a picture for the chance to win a pet shop voucher. And we got people to vote and they shared the pictures using the hashtag.
And that sort of really got great engagement with someone tried to do something similar for Fraud Awareness Week recently, slightly different topic with the chance to win a $25 Creso card and that was really low engagement, something like a 2.2% engagement rate. So, you know, we've been trying things and sometimes, you know, it'll work for one campaign and then the same thing won't work for another campaign. So I think really kind of understanding and knowing Viva Engage is your platform, you're really knowing and understanding your audience and what's popular and reacting more effectively to that for sure.
Yeah, another thing we just try and do as a standard is make sure, you know, people are, when we're advising people, not just leaders, but anyone, is to try and get them to include calls to action, to try and manufacture discussion and conversation underneath posts. And again, varying degrees of success, sometimes it works brilliantly and then other times, despite asking, no one will comment. So yeah, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Yeah, and I think I'll pick up on this topic around storyline as well. So I know that Jordan, talking on behalf of Rhys, had spoken about how they had actually turned off storyline. And there's been maybe another like two or three questions about storyline.
Cat, are you using storyline at Medibank? Do you see much adoption? We do have, it's switched on. Interestingly, I had an example recently, we haven't promoted it and we haven't sort of gone out to tell people to use it, but just by accident, my executive posted his monthly video on his storyline and I couldn't initially work out why he wasn't getting as much engagement. But it turned out, because it was on storyline, not as many eyeballs were on it.
He didn't have sort of followers. So I think my understanding is posts on storyline, you get more visibility amongst your followers. So yeah, we haven't been promoting it and I did see a real difference in engagement from him posting on his regular business unit channel versus posting on storyline.
So I guess similar to others that we are promoting, like we do have it switched on, but we aren't promoting it. So it's a bigger discussion probably for our team around whether or not we wanna keep it on or not. Yeah, yeah.
Emily, can I jump in there with some of the data? Yes, please do. I was just going to say, we've got some data to back this up, right? Yeah, yeah. So in last year's benchmarking report, Sam, you're probably familiar with this because it sounds like you've read that report cover to cover a few times.
Thank you. In last year's benchmarking report, Laurie did a deep dive into the storyline usage and we actually uncovered like the top performing organisation that was using storylines and I won't name who they were, but we went to the community manager and we said, oh, you're the top number, what are you using it for? And that community manager said, well, it was all an accident. We turned it on on the start, but then we found, Laurie, do you wanna jump in here? The numbers were so low for using storyline.
Yeah, I think really Microsoft was trying to do something that you might be able to do on LinkedIn and so forth and it was a bit of an afterthought. It never really took off. I think even probably the leading user was Microsoft.
I think, I don't know if that was it, but I haven't got the numbers in front of me, but they were pretty low, you know, it was sort of, and you're right, I mean, if you use it by accident, you find that you don't get the exposure you would have got in the normal chat, you know, you'd be very disappointed. So I just don't think it's that whole self-promotion type, not so much self-promotion, but you know, the attention on yourself thing doesn't sort of sit well in the internal social media. So yeah, I don't think it's worth getting, going out of your way.
And I think blocking it probably just saves people from posting in the wrong spot. Yes, it is. Another interesting thing, Cat, you were talking about like the storytelling, and that's one of the things we've found, like not only in our Viva Engage benchmarking, but also in our SharePoint intranet benchmarking, it's those stories about people.
And we saw that actually in that Department of Customer Service example, you know, there was the CEO doing the authentic posts and then there were posts highlighting people's, recognising people's work. And then there was things like that heart, what was it, blood donor week, those sorts of things. It's those stories that we've found are the ones that really get the engagement.
And in fact, Cat, in your case about the family roast game, it was those people sharing those vulnerable stories about how it affected them, they got the most engagement. Yeah, we've got an employee recently, actually, she was really trying to, I guess, get in the top 10 influencers, and she just was having no cut through in her posts. And she did, ended up doing an internal sort of brand sort of session.
And she started posting more authentically on topics that she's really passionate about. And she has now bumped herself up into that top 10 influencer list. And I think it truly is because she's posting really authentically, she's talking from the heart on topics that she's really knowledgeable about, and then she can interact with other employees who post in a really meaningful way.
So yeah, a huge shift just by tweaking the content of her posts. And in fact, Cat, I'm putting you on the spot here, but can you share about your influencer awards? Yes, I touched on it earlier, but we started that at the start of the year. So an employee posted an incredible post around female health, women's health, and it just, it blew up on Viva Engage.
And I was congratulating her on her post and she said, oh, am I going get an award for being the top post of the month, like TikTok? And I thought, actually, that's a really fun idea and a great way to get people thinking about their posts on Viva Engage. So we've been doing it now for nearly 12 months. There's no actual awards.
We don't give out a prize or a voucher or anything like that. It's purely recognition and reactions and comments that you get on Viva Engage. But we really have seen a shift over the 12 months from the real regulars that were highly utilizing Viva Engage.
And we're seeing more and more sort of, I guess, unknowns coming up and popping into that top 10 that we hadn't seen before. And we use that post to also really promote what a good post looks like. So we'll find potentially some obscure posts from across the many, many posts on Viva Engage and bring them to people's attention and call out what we think is really great in that post, whether it was, you know, they created their own video and did a walkthrough of the store.
They might've promoted an event or they used imagery. So that's been working well. I think people are seeing the difference of, you know, rather than just content and copy, but really making it engaging.
Because there is a lot of noise and there are a lot of posts on Viva Engage. So, you know, you need to use those tips and tricks to make your post stand out. And tagging people and, you know, doing all the things to invite people into a conversation.
And you literally just use the most engaging post report. Is that what it is from Swoop? Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we choose, we say in the spotlight for the posts that we share, and we do choose posts that are outside of that top 10 so that we can showcase parts of the business that might not be as engaged with Viva Engage.
So if someone has done a great post, it might've not gotten as many likes or comments as they would have liked, but they've done all the right things. We try to give that a little bit of extra time in the spotlight and share it in that post. Cause we know our influencer post is going get lots of eyeballs on it.
I'm just thinking- And then behind, also. You go. Oh no, you go, Cat.
Go for it. Behind the scenes, we do something similar for our CEO and our senior leaders. So whilst we remove them from our top 10 because we feel like that should be part of their job, and the same as us, we've taken our names out of that top 10, we do share their own leaderboard in the background.
And it has created a lot of competition behind the scenes in terms of, similar to Sam, I think there's a third that are really great and have really embraced it, a third that jump in and out, and then a third that we probably really need to do some work with. They're just lurking around on Veebra and Gage. And Cat, that's using the benchmarking feature.
Emily, do you wanna explain how you use that in Swoop? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I guess if you had to take away like a few quick tips or actions today, like just on the point there that you've made about benchmarking leaders, if you are currently using Swoop, you do have access to a feature called personal or individual benchmarking.
And so you can build out a list of individuals to see how they stack up against each other. So not only looking at, are they following things like the one, two, three rule that Sam has mentioned as well, you're also then able to start to dive into personas and understanding what those behaviours look like, but then presenting that data in a way that does lead to a bit of that healthy competition and it shows how you stack up against your peers and also being able to put a spotlight on best practice and actually having the data to back that up as well. It makes for a much easier conversation with leaders.
Leaders love their data. So when you put that in front of them, it does make it a lot easier. So if you haven't done that already, I strongly encourage you to try that as just something to take away from this session.
The second thing, of course, if you haven't already taken away enough tips and tactics, we'd have to be something like an engagement type initiative that Cat's mentioned around recognising those people who are your influences and are your champions. I think it does bring a bit of that like warm fuzzy element. And I think recognition is always a great thing to put out on Viva Engage.
And it's also something that keeps those influences coming back. Something that you did touch on as well, Cat, was just around managing noise and information overload. And of course, like those were things that had come through as a part of that swoop session as well.
Maybe Sam, like is there anything that you have brought into play around managing that overwhelm that can come up when people are using these tools a lot? Yeah, I mean, because we're so early in our adoption, I guess we've not had much of an issue with this as of yet. I think we're currently sort of at a point where it's just starting to creep in. We're starting to notice it a little bit, starting to feel it, starting to think about it as a team.
Particularly in the old company feed is where things can get really quite active or overactive. So we're really sort of evaluating that and starting to think about what kinds of posts and content are we seeing people share quite regularly? Where is this noise coming from? And we're thinking at the minute, how do we sort of either direct that into existing communities, those conversations, or other new communities that we actually need to establish and set up? One of the things that we don't currently have, but we're looking at doing is setting up site-specific Viva Engage communities. So we've got 23 sites, we want to set one up for each site.
So location-specific content can be shared rather than at the minute people are promoting events for Wellington to all company, actually, if they could be promoting that directly to a Wellington audience. So we're looking at and thinking about things like that. Yeah, I think also thinking about communities in terms of the audiences that you're sharing with, right? We see lots of examples of that all company communities, almost just like that all company bulletin board where you know that you're going to get those eyeballs on a post, but does that necessarily mean that people are engaging with the content? It's very hard to tell.
I'm also wondering, Sam, alongside the other channels that you are currently using for comms, I think this might've been from a Q&A that maybe popped up a little bit earlier in the day, but how do you balance using Viva Engage alongside other channels like email and your intranet? And like, how does it kind of sit within that ecosystem? Yeah, so similar to Jordan's presentation earlier, we have a channels map, although I'm quite jealous of Jordan's and rethinking ours currently. It was really quite nice and simple. I like how he sort of positioned it.
So yeah, we do similar to sort of what he mentioned, what are the things that are specifically for work? Can that be done through teams? Things that are a bit more formal, we'll make sure that they're through Outlook. So things like board announcements, all that kind of thing. So we really try and split the content into the relevant channels and just try our best to be across things as much as we can and advise teams as best as we can do.
Again, it's not always perfect and can be really challenging as well. What we try and do is, quite often we have teams and people reach out to us saying, we've got this thing, but we don't quite know what to do with it. So what, the good thing about that is we can point them in the right direction.
In those instances, we do have a bit of control. Some of the, one of the things that we try and do is, if it's quite a chunky piece of content is, okay, well, actually you can upload this to the staff intranet, but you can also sort of link to it through Viva Engage and just get a bit of a brief snapshot. So yeah, we, particularly with our intranet and Viva Engage, so we try to make them quite a connected thing.
So like on our intranet homepage, we have our all company feed of Viva Engage. So there's, we try and get this sort of cross, natural cross fertilisation. And I'm just thinking, sorry, Cat.
I was going to say we're quite similar. So intranet is sort of our source of truth. So people don't go anywhere else to find their news, they go to the intranet.
So at least they get all the information they need. And then Viva Engage is kind of there to amplify those messages. But we always link back to the intranet, whether it's from like a newsletter, an email, Viva Engage, Teams post.
So that we're directing them back to that main source of information. And that's where, you know, you might get an update if things have changed or the campaign's progressed. So that does work quite well from us as well.
Yeah, they lean on each other quite nicely as well. And I do also recall a few case studies as well from previous SharePoint benchmarking and SharePoint festivals that we have about how those platforms sit really nicely together. It's almost like using Viva Engage as a place to share sort of like click-baity type headlines.
It's the opportunity for you to have conversation, but to get more of the detail behind the story. You have the intranet there to go into much more detail. Maybe like a quick tactical question actually from the Q&A.
When sharing company news, do you publish it as a communications team profile? Do you share it under your own name personally? Do you have an avatar that you use? We see kind of different approaches to this and we have lots of different thoughts around best practice when it comes to this as well. We've seen it works really effectively with some organisations, not so much for others. So maybe Sam, if you wanted, do you use any sort of like comms profiles or avatars to share news? Not really.
We try and encourage the subject matter expert to share their own content. Sometimes, again, it depends what it is. Sometimes there's pieces of news or there's announcements, that kind of thing that are set on the intranet.
They're unauthored, but we might get a relevant exec member or the chief exec to share. But where we can, if someone's sort of done the work and it's their news to share, we encourage that person to share it themselves and really empower them to do that. I like that approach, Cat.
Is it similar for yourselves? It's similar. So yeah, we don't use an employee comms team to post. We do all post individually, but similar to Sam, if someone's leading a campaign or a project, or we ask them to, and we'll be there to support, but we ask them to post.
We do use the sort of announcement feature if it's pinning a post to the top of a community. We did have an idea that was going be an experiment. We never got it off the ground, but we were having some fun with the idea of creating like a persona around like News with Ned, we were going call it.
And Ned would post the top five stories to be in the know on Viva Engage and link back to things like the intranet. We haven't progressed that, but it was something we were keen to experiment around. Ned would get a following and that's your go-to for news.
And then you'd have other little personas for health and wellbeing news or out on the field, in the stores. So an idea that we're keen to progress, but haven't had the chance to yet. Cat, can I ask with that announcement feature, do you use it sparingly? Like just thinking in the context of the information overload, how often do you use it? What do you use it for? Very, very limited.
It would be probably something from our CEO if we were going use that announcement post. I have seen a couple of leaders do it in so our Medibank frontline post, I think recently a leader did it to launch a campaign, but yeah, very sparingly. We probably use the pinning posts a lot more so that at least when you jump into that community, it's the first post that you see at the top and it's not getting lost in the thread of many other posts underneath.
What about you, Sam? Yeah, so we've only enabled the announcement feature for our executive team. And so one of the things that we did to help really drive people to Viva Engage is that we sort of made the decision early on that whenever an exec member posts, they do so as an announcement, just because everyone gets the notification and it helps sort of drive traffic through. The plan is to sort of shift away from doing that once we've got everybody on board, which we're sort of getting to that point now, but yeah, we're still sort of in the process of doing that just as we continue our adoption journey.
Fantastic, and Cat and Sam, I have to thank you again for sharing all of your fantastic insights today. We did have a few more questions that have popped up in the Q&A. I'm wondering if there's a way that we can maybe compile some of these and we can ask for some insights or even in the last five minutes or so, if you wanted to like pop in a few comments against them as well.
But at this point, I just want to say a huge thank you if we can all get like another round of applause and also for the SWOOP team for sharing insights as well. It's always great to have the data to back up how some of these best practice suggestions were.
Meet the speaker:
Cat Owen
Medibank
Jordan Gilliland
Reece Australia
Sam Parker
ACC New Zealand
