How long does it take before SWOOP has an impact on your ESN?

This question was recently posed to us and we didn’t have a quick answer.  In this post we have taken the time to make a considered response to a question we expect all of those considering SWOOP would be interested in.

SWOOP Democratises Analytics 

SWOOP is an analytics product that uniquely provides its insights to all staff members. The default screen when opening SWOOP is a person’s personal view of their interactions. This data is secured to the individual. Other analytics (groups, topics, business units and enterprise views) are available to all. The intent behind our design is that behavioural change has to happen at the individual level; hence the democratisation of the analytics SWOOP provides. 

How Customers Engage with SWOOP Data 

SWOOP for Yammer has been in the market for more than three years. Our anticipation at launch was that once individuals see their own collaboration profile, they are more likely to immediately change the way they interact for the better; and hence an immediate impact. 

Our experience is that this proved the case, which for the large part, is due to Yammer community managers and champions acting as change agents promoting SWOOP and inculcating SWOOP data into their coaching activities. 

Once the community managers have introduced leaders and staff to SWOOP, the dashboard is there to provide direct and ongoing impacts. 

How long for SWOOP to have an ‘Impact’? 

When we talk of “impact” it is typically the Yammer community managers who provide that feedback to us. Several of these community managers have shared this feedback with their peers at MS Ignite conferences and through interviews with SWOOP.  

We can classify the ‘Impacts’ reported as: 

1. Direct impact on the performance of community managers 

2. Reporting to management

3. Coaching leaders and staff

4. Direct and indirect impact on organisational leaders

5. Impacting personal behaviours

6. Facilitating organisational interventions

7. Direct and indirect impact on all staff

8. Impacting personal behaviours

9. Helping staff build relationships through online conversations 

Based on client feedback, we have found that the ‘time to impact’ for SWOOP has ranged from days to weeks for immediate short-term change initiatives, up to months and ongoing for the more ambitious culture change initiatives. 

Impacts on Community Managers and Yammer Champions 

Community managers are typically the first people to access SWOOP within an organisation. The immediate and early impact of SWOOP is in management reporting for Yammer. The majority of our clients use SWOOP ‘out of the box’ to report directly on Yammer performance. 

“We use SWOOP data on how to better guide us on how we can best use Yammer. With the help of data from SWOOP, KFC set the goal this year of 35 per cent active engagement, which has already been well surpassed.” (KFC) 

“Analytics underpins everything to make a successful community.” (Mars) 

“SWOOP has transformed our Yammer analytics. SWOOP has worked wonders for us in terms of being able to get data and information and insights from our Yammer network that we couldn’t get before. Every time I share SWOOP with an employee, or with our leaders, they look at it and they’re like; ‘Wow, this is incredible, the amount of information I can get just from clicking a couple of different reports’.” (Diageo) 

“The No.1 way to get more people on board is by saying; ‘Your leader is there, or your CEO is there, why aren’t you?’ As soon as we had SWOOP we were able to benchmark all the leaders against each other. At our leadership conference we were able to show hard data about where successes were and so put the argument to them; ‘This is why you should be talking to your teams on Yammer’.” (Syngenta) 

The community managers and Yammer champions play a leading role in coaching organisational leaders and staff on how to collaborate online more effectively. The SWOOP behavioural Personas are central to behavioural coaching provided. For leaders, behaviour change can be nearly immediate. For more fundamental cultural change, the impact time can be much longer. 

“When it (SWOOP) first came in I thought ‘Oh my God, I’m going to have to lift my game here.” (Westpac Executive) 

“A graphic of the SWOOP leader board shown to executives at the annual conference had a big impact. Seeing the data of who was best engaging with their staff had a big impact on Syngenta’s leaders. Leaders came to us saying, ‘How do I get to be a top user and a top engager?’” (Syngenta community manager) 

“Yammer, along with data from SWOOP Analytics, also gives insight into Hall & Wilcox’s company culture, something that has allowed new staff to smoothly integrate into the business.” (COO, Hall and Willcox) 

“Certainly, as you move up in your career we want more responses, more knowledge sharing, more thoughtful questions that turn into problems solved. We look at it differently at different levels, but we do look at the SWOOP personas in these reviews.” (RealFoundations Executive) 

SWOOP impact on staff, at large, is initially facilitated by the community managers and Yammer champions, who coach staff on how and what to engage online about. SWOOP is then available to provide direct support to staff at large. Richer conversations ensue in weeks, if not days. 

“Each week I use SWOOP’s data to identify the top five Most Engaging Posts. I then share the post on Yammer. I’ll tag those who were involved in that post or I’ll say what we learned from the post. We keep staff engaged by using SWOOP to identify top posts and track hashtags and trending topics. We set challenges in Yammer where, for example, I will encourage staff to make a post, tag three people and add at least two hashtags.”  (URJ Community Manager) 

“The library department’s 140 Yammer users became very competitive about being a (SWOOP) Engager and making it onto the list of the most influential people. We get quite competitive about who’s an Influencer and who’s an Engager.” (University Head Librarian) 

“I can look at the SWOOP dashboard and see who is collaborating and which teams need some help.” (NRMA NZ Collaboration Lead) 

We are confident that SWOOP for Yammer provides immediate impacts on team behaviours, while at the same time providing effective analytics supporting more fundamental long term change.