Announcing the 2021 Yammer Community Champions!
The competition was fierce, but SWOOP Analytics and Microsoft’s worldwide search has uncovered the most passionate Yammer community managers for 2021.
As part of the Yammer Community Festival, SWOOP and Microsoft launched a global competition to identify Yammer community managers committed to employee engagement, knowledge sharing and collaboration on the enterprise social network.
A winner from the Americas, Europe and APAC regions was announced by Microsoft CVP Yammer + M365 Groups, Murali Sitaram, at last week’s Yammer Community Festival.
Drumroll please! The winners are:
Tai Collins, Corporate Communications Manager.
Bernie Murtagh, Modern Workplace - Employee Success Manager, Capita.
Richy Cartmell, Digital Channels Adoption Manager, ANZ.
Tai Collins
As the manager for Yammer at the world’s largest home improvement retailer, Tai is instrumental in developing the materials and documentation of what success looks like on the company’s Yammer network. Yammer was launched across the company, with 500,000 associates, less than a year ago.
“We are already seeing a sharp increase in participation in conversations and utilisation of this tool compared to our previous platform,” said Tai’s colleague Jessica Dahn in her submission for Tai’s nomination.
“Tai's insight into the bigger picture of how Yammer can be utilised company-wide is helping our business partners realise that Yammer is the best two-way communication tool in their arsenal.
“It also has led to instrumental feedback for both SWOOP and Microsoft on functionality changes to consider for future improvements that will make their platforms even more of a success in the future.”
You can read more about Tai’s Yammer journey in a case study in SWOOP Analytics’ 2021 Yammer Benchmarking Report.
Bernie Murtagh, Capita
Bernie is known across Capita as the evangelist for all things Yammer. She is credited with successfully growing Capita’s Yammer network to 35,000 active users per month, with 1.7 million read messages.
Bernie created and implemented a M365 Champion network of 300+ enthusiastic and tech savvy colleagues from across the business to support the embedding of M365, with Yammer being front and centre to drive awareness and positive change.
From June 2020, Bernie led a project to switch to the new Yammer including an awareness campaign, VIP training with sneak previews, help and guidance, a Yammer Top Tip of the Week campaign and leadership support using Yammer to demonstrate listening and visibility. This campaign included a Question of the Week posted by a senior leader.
“Bernie created many key strategic-aligned communities as community manager to ensure everyone reaps the benefits of using Yammer day-to-day and even more so as we transition to our new ways of working - Communities such as Working Together Apart, Just Say Thanks, New Joiners, Yammer Help, Office 365 and a private community called The Yammer Play pit where members can put their learning straight into practice and in a safe environment after they've attended the Yammer training online with Bernie,” said Andy Ryan, Director of Divestment, Technology and Software Solutions at Capita, in his submission for Bernie’s nomination.
“Bernie is a true Yammer Community Champion through her sheer passion with bringing its value to life at every given opportunity across the organisation and indeed with other external customers. She really deserves to be recognised for her dedication and hard work with transforming the mindsets of how people view Yammer, use Yammer and reap the benefits day-to-day!”
Richard Cartmell, ANZ
Richy has played an instrumental role in the success of ANZ's Yammer network since its launch in 2019. For the past three years, the ANZ Yammer network has been amongst the top performers globally for large-size organisations in SWOOP Analytics’ annual benchmarking, achieving the top spot this year.
Richy is an active member of external Yammer community networks; he proactively shares knowledge, asks questions and stays informed of feature releases. Being a regular contributor to the Yammer Customer Connection Community, he consistently shares feedback and ideas to help elevate the experience of other Yammer users globally.
Some highlights from Richy's time as ANZ's Yammer Community and Adoption Manager include:
Leading the Yammer response for a tech incident that occurred 30-31 December 2020. The conversation thread where users troubleshot their issues and provided feedback on the FAQs was the largest thread in ANZ's Yammer history, receiving more than 1,000 comments. The communications response to the incident went on to win a Bronze Quill award from IABC.
#WhatIMissed campaign - an idea that came about when ANZ was looking to return to the office early in 2021. People were encouraged to share what they missed about working together in real-life. Richy filmed his journey from home to the office and edited it down to a brief, snappy and engaging 90-second video which was uploaded to ANZ’s head offices Yammer Community. The post received more than 400 reactions, 74 comments and inspired a sequel.
“Richy is heavily involved in events that highlight Yammer best practice,” said Tobie Aylett, Adoption and Communications Lead at ANZ.
“He shares his expertise on topics including leadership engagement, running effective Yammer campaigns and the importance of Yammer in the shift to hybrid work. Richy also manages ongoing training sessions to build and maintain Yammer capability across ANZ.”
You can read more about Richy’s involvement in ANZ’s Yammer network in our case studies - Nurturing connections through competitions, cooking and culture, Authentic leaders listening to their people, The power of authentic leadership – and in this SWOOP Chat video.
We want to congratulate the three winners and acknowledge the dozens of others who were nominated for the award by their peers. We’ll be looking for the 2022 Yammer Community Champions so please start thinking about your nomination for the year ahead. You can find more details here.
Hear directly from Tai, Bernie and Richy in our Yammer Community Festival recording.
