Moderation that matters: Building safe and engaging communities
Siemens Energy
AMER | Viva Engage Festival 2025
Discover how smart moderation keeps conversations constructive and communities thriving at Siemens Energy. Carla Guest shares tips to guide discussions, handle challenges, and make Viva Engage a safe space.
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I hope you feel hydrated, had a break. So we are now very lucky to hear from Carla Guest. So Carla has been a friend of SWOOP for many years, spoke at one of our Viva Engage festivals before in the APAC region, but this year she's speaking with us.
So Carla is going to talk about moderation that matters. Over to you Carla. Great, thank you so much Gemma, Coco, Cai, Laurie, everyone.
Really so happy to be here and share a little bit about our experience with Viva Engage and mostly learn from everyone else online in the chat, such great comments and engagement. You guys are all rock stars. So in the spirit of being agile, there were many comments when the first speakers were on the line about whether they had manufacturing workers or office workers or how big they were.
So Gemma, you will notice that I quickly inserted this slide into the deck to give a little bit of background about Siemens Energy, the company where I work. So we were created out of Siemens five years ago in March 2020. So we are a standalone separate company focused on the energy sector.
You can see here we have about 102,000 employees in more than 90 countries. We operate in different regions. So when you're moderating a global Viva Engage platform, obviously there's some specific things we need to consider.
Approximately 30% of our workforce is manufacturing. So they are obviously building the product and I like to think of them as the foundation of our business, the driver of our success. So they do not have access on a daily basis to Viva Engage.
We do have computers available to them during their work time, but it just depends on their tasks, whether or not they have access. So we're about a 30% manufacturing and 70% office workers. So a little bit about us.
I'm part of the global employee engagement team. We are a team of 12. I myself am based in Canada.
We have some members Orlando in the US. We have several members in Germany, the UK, Denmark, and the leader of our employee engagement team is based in Dubai. So as an internal communications team, we really represent a pretty broad spectrum of Siemens Energy employees.
So what are we here for today? Viva Engage and a shout out to Alison and the group at Microsoft. This is a slide that they shared in their masterclass in February. They had a series of six sessions focused on Viva Engage.
They were fantastic and I was happy to hear at the first Friday session in November that they're planning on running this masterclass again. So maybe Alison, if you're still on the line, you can pop the details in the chat or I can do that later. I really encourage everyone to, if you can, to attend and even just to register because then you get access to the recordings.
And I've been working in communications for more than 25 years, maybe giving away my age a little bit, actually more than 30 years, if I'm honest. And I've been working on Yammer and Viva Engage now for more than five years. And I learned so much in those masterclass sessions.
So I encourage you to take advantage of that. But really, Viva Engage is all about connecting people across the organization. I also saw comments in the chat about, you know, when do I use Teams and when do I use Viva Engage? And for me, I embraced something that I heard at the Microsoft headquarters last year when they were hosting an internal communications conference in that if you know your team, use Teams.
If you don't know your team, use Viva Engage. So if you're collaborating within your team, I'm collaborating within Viva Engage with people outside of employee engagement. For our employee engagement team, we use Teams.
We use the files, we use the planner, we use tasks, the calendar, etc., all of that within Teams. But when I want to reach all of the communicators at Siemens Energy, which is more than 250 people, or all of the people in North America, which is more than 14,000 people, or all of the people in the company, which is more than 105,000, then I use Viva Engage. So a little bit of context setting there.
So I'd like you to share in the chat when I say the word community, what comes to mind? What feeling does it evoke for you? One word, because I'm curious to see what people might have here. So we're seeing family from Steven, belonging from Chris. These are great.
Culture, hub, support, connection. Great, knowledge sharing. So when I think of the word community, and when I look at the comments here in the chat, these are all positive, right? I'm not seeing any negative emotions.
Inclusivity, love that, Vanessa, thank you. Shared experience. Those are all positive elements.
And that's when I think of Viva Engage, I really do smile when I'm talking to colleagues or communicating with them online, because it's about community. That's the foundation of communication in Viva Engage, whether it's a community of broad topics. So for us, that would be our all company channel, which we call team purple, because purple is kind of our company color, or whether it's specific business groups, I mentioned gas services there on the slide, or a regional community, like I'm part of the North American community, I'm also part of the Canada community.
To me, it really brings a smile to my face. And the point here at the bottom, I also wanted to highlight, because I made a note on my, I actually have hard copy notes here, about it's a long term commitment, creating a community. So we saw in the chat, people were saying it's hard, you know, people create communities, and then maybe the attention wanes, or they get focused on another task.
So I always like to emphasize that, you know, it's this commitment to community building. So it's not just groups, it's, you know, the heart of your organization. So keep that in mind.
So lots of points here on the slide, I'm not going to read them, I'm happy to share my slides after the fact. But what I want to think about is guidelines. Guidelines are your BFF, your best friend forever, as a moderator, because they are the foundation for the professional behavior.
They align with your company values, they enhance your user experience, they give you as a moderator, a safety net, when you're dealing with some challenging conversations. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. As a tip, you can even use Copilot if you have it to draft guidelines.
Microsoft has some really good samples on their communications blog. So you might want to check that out. And, you know, we kind of learned the hard way, because we didn't start out with guidelines.
And then we noticed, you know, things happening that we were kind of like, is that really the kind of activity that we want? And that led us to draft our guidelines. So I want you to think of them as your BFF for moderation in Viva Engage. So I think somebody kind of paraphrased this in the chat.
This is something I say all the time. Have your say, don't walk away. So I want to paint a story for you, because we know people remember things in terms of pictures and stories.
And one good way to do that is an imagined story. So imagine you're at the water cooler. You've just arrived there and your colleague, Jane, is there getting a coffee, you're refilling your glass.
And you say, hey, Jane, I got this really important news I wanted to tell you. We're moving offices. It's going to be great.
It's a new location, going to give us, you know, more windows, etc. Just wanted to let you know. And then you walk away.
Jane is going to be filled with questions. She's like, what? We're moving offices? What is going on? Where is the new office? Do I have to commute? Can I work from home? Am I going to have the same printer? Are we going to have meeting space, etc. So have your say, don't walk away.
This is a tip for moderation in Viva Engage. Don't post your news and then walk away. Don't have a leader post significant news and walk away.
You really need to be there actively monitoring what's happening in the conversation, looking at the comments, engaging with the people. So I have some points on the next slide about that. And if you notice something about the first letter of each of my points, it looks like a lot of points, but does spell out communicate.
So collaborate with experts, tag people with insights, have open dialogue, analyze the data, the analytics. Use your announcements wisely. You don't want to be like the person who cried wolf and, you know, people stop listening because you keep announcing stuff.
If everything is important, then nothing is important. Add relevant links, notes, files, use photos, address questions promptly. You don't want to leave people hanging, especially with a question.
Engage with empathy. We don't always know what's going on in people's lives. Nurture recognition.
You know, there was lots of comments earlier about recognition. I don't understand why people don't recognize more. I really don't, because for me, it's really a core belief of mine.
It is so easy to say thank you. It is so easy to shout somebody out in Viva Engage with a recognition or a comment. And it pays dividends, right? It really does make people's day, especially, you know, you have a post from a leader and you go in as a communicator and you recognize somebody who worked on a program that maybe the leader is mentioning.
You know, that's just so heartwarming to recognize people. So again, I will share these tips with you, so feel free to just listen and not have to worry about notes. As a moderator, you can help control the flow of discussion.
You can pin content to the top that is most important. We try to have a limited time frame for that, so only a week, usually for a pinned post. You can move it to another community.
We actually had an issue where certain regions were taking, they didn't feel quite right about certain content. And when us as moderators had a look at the content, we realized, yeah, this is really specific to the audience of this one country. So we reached out to the moderator of that country community and said, you know, hey, this really isn't Siemens Energy News.
I'm going to move your conversation into that country community where it belongs. You also have the capability to edit, delete, and close. You know, hopefully we use that sparingly.
In our time of using Viva Engage, we fortunately, you know, knock wood, haven't had to use that a lot, but it does come up. And that is why guidelines are your BFF, right? Your moderator's BFF. Because with the guidelines, that gives you the basis to stand on when you do have to move something, when you do have to delete it, or close a conversation, unfortunately.
You know, you can't really read the visual cues in Viva Engage, you know, somebody's face or their body language, like I'm talking to you now. Are they smiling? Are they serious? So always keep in mind that, you know, you don't really understand the intent, maybe. So it's always good to be empathetic in your approach.
For us, you know, we have people who might be communicating in their second, third, or fourth language online on Viva Engage. So something that you think, oh, that sounds off. Keep in mind, they might be from another region or another culture.
So a few thoughts there. So when we had, Gemma mentioned we had the meetup in Toronto at the Air Canada offices. And she said she loved my phrase, have your say, don't walk away.
So thanks to Copilot, I was able to come up with some other catchy sayings. And this one is collaborative checks, no neglect. So what do we mean by that? That is something called Viva Engage Watch.
And you can see I have a shout out to Andrew Clark from Air Canada. I hope he's still on the line. Because when we were developing our guidelines, I had connected with Andrew at that SWOOP Asia festival, the first one that I was involved with.
And Andrew kindly shared his guidelines with me. And you know, that led us on developing our own guidelines. And then I reached out to him again.
And I'm like, well, what do you do about problematic posts? And he mentioned they had this watch group. So we have dedicated teams channel that represents all regions and business areas. So we have a communicator from China, we have someone from, we operate in six regions.
So we have each of those regions has a communicator who's part of this Viva Engage Watch group, as well as the different business areas. And it's really kind of a four eyes or six eyes or seven eyes. No, it wouldn't be seven eyes.
Well, it could be seven eyes, eight eyes principle where, you know, I might look at something and I might think, hmm, that sounds odd. I'm not really sure what that person is saying. And I don't really think that that should be posted here on Viva Engage.
So I can copy the link to that post from Viva Engage. I put it in the team's channel for the chat for the Viva Engage Watch group and say, hey, what do you think? And my colleague Su Li in China might say, oh, no, that's exactly, you know, we're having dumpling festival. And that makes total sense that they are posting that.
OK, great. Or somebody might say, you know what? You're right. That's off.
I don't think that's appropriate for this channel. So we would have a conversation in the team's group and then decide on a course of action based on our guidelines. And when you do decide on a course of action, pro tip, keep a paper trail showing my age.
It should really be keep a digital trail. But again, like I say, I've been in communications for three decades now. I started out with a paper trail.
But record what you what action you take, what the results were. Take a screenshot of the post, you know, before you delete anything or move anything and just keep that digital record. So if you ever need it, hopefully in an escalation process, it doesn't come to that, but you would have it have it there available.
So I really encourage, especially in a large organization, you can't keep an eye on everything. It also gives us 24 hour coverage based on time zones. You know, if I'm asleep, but other colleagues are awake, they can be checking what's going on.
So I really encourage a VivaEngage watch group. So again, co-pilot. Penguins in a flap, don't let it snap.
So what does that mean? So calling in versus calling out. Rely on your guidelines, assume good intent, seek to understand, escalate as needed according to your guidelines. I've put a couple links on the slides there for Kim Clark and Professor Ross where this, I guess you would call it a strategy or a tactic where it comes from.
And it's all about nobody likes to be called out, you know, sitting at the dinner table. Uh, Gemma, you didn't finish your carrots and, you know, your siblings or the other people at the table are like, you know, nobody wants to be called out or in the classroom. Carla, I see you're chatting in the back of the classroom.
Would you like to share with the class, right? Nobody likes to be called out. So they have this activity of calling in versus calling out. And so originally I might've thought, you know, we have our VivaEngage guidelines, somebody posts something that's problematic.
And I'm going to write a comment to them saying, you know, Jane, that's a terrible comment. Please take it down. Nobody likes that.
So we started, this started around the time of the war in Ukraine and kind of escalated with everything that was happening with the war in the Middle East, et cetera, where we did notice a few problematic posts. So we thought, let's try this approach. Rather than calling people out, we actually call people on the phone and seek to understand what were they trying to say? Because again, it's a written format.
You may not know what they were trying to say. They might be writing in a language that is not their first language. Our VivaEngage is primarily English, but they could be a native speaker of something else.
And I want to share a very specific example. So we are very proud that in the United States, we are, I'm not sure if the correct term is that we are a certified employer for veterans. We employ a lot of veterans.
We have a very strong veterans pipeline. And someone posted in our Siemens Energy News group with photos of people in military uniform recognizing what was happening in the US. And we had some European colleagues who got very upset with this and they expressed it on the post.
And so I called the gentleman. He was actually in the Netherlands and English was not his first language. And we talked about it and I said, you know, this is what I'm hearing in my head when I read your words.
And it turned out that really wasn't what he meant at all. We did agree that the post should go into the US community. So we moved it there, but he felt so positive that when we moved the comment to the US community, he actually came in there and made his own comment.
So really think about calling in versus calling out. And I think I need to speed up a bit here. So again, measure right, reach new heights, importance of data monitoring on Viva Engage.
There was a lot of comments in the chat about squishy seen by numbers and reach versus engagement. We did a lot of analysis in our first couple of years of Viva Engage to establish our own company benchmarks, because what we quickly found was that what might be a benchmark for Air Canada or another company is not necessarily our benchmark. So it's not enough to understand the kind of global data and the benchmarking reports are great for that, but you also need to understand your own data and activity.
So this is about the importance of data monitoring and data analysis. And then I mentioned, I think it was Victoria who posted in the chat about this slide and actually said that I was going to be sharing this. So when you're keeping an eye on data and you want to encourage engagement, this three points from SWOOP is really key.
We established, I mentioned in the chat, we established a leaders influencer community to get more activity in our leaders group. And this was definitely part of the data that we shared with them that don't just ask a question, don't have your say and walk away, get engaged, etc. So lots of tips here.
I think I'm at time. So five key tips for moderation that matters. Your guidelines as your BFF, have your say, don't walk away, establish a Viva Engage watch group for collaborative checks, no neglects.
And if your penguins are in a flap, don't let it snap, try calling the penguins in and measure right, reach new heights. So hopefully that will be memorable and stay with you and be relatable.
Meet the speaker:
Carla Guest
Senior Communications Manager
