All Points Fibre Networks - Taking a centralised communications approach to reduce workplace noise
How do you quiet the noise in today’s digital workplace?
When information is bombarding you from email, Microsoft Teams, the intranet, Viva Engage, your phone and more, and the dinging from notifications is constantly distracting you, how can you quiet the “noise” and avoid information overload at work?
Try to calculate the cost of lost productivity as employees waste time every day dealing with the distraction of information overload. But it’s a fine line, because there is information your colleagues need to know to get their work done. So how do you cut through the noise to give employees the information they need, without overloading them?
UK full-fibre network wholesaler AllPoints Fibre Networks has found a solution that works for their organisation of 300+ employees.
One source of news
At AllPoints Fibre Networks, Viva Engage is the single official news channel.
All company news is posted in the APFN News community. This Viva Engage community is also embedded on the SharePoint intranet, so employees can see news via the intranet, but news and company updates are posted only in this Viva Engage community.
It was a deliberate decision to try to “quiet” the noise and information overload to centralise news through one channel, which is monitored by the internal communications department. News is always announced on Viva Engage first, there are no SharePoint news pages, all news is in this one Viva Engage community.
Don’t think Viva Engage is limited to official corporate news – it’s not, and there are plenty of organic conversations happening in other communities. It’s just that corporate news is limited to one Viva Engage community.
The decision to centralise news in APFN News community was made in late 2023 when Viva Engage was launched across AllPoints Fibre Networks. It a decision that’s clearly paid off!
AllPoints Fibre Networks ranked No.4 globally in SWOOP Analytics’ 2025/26 Viva Engage benchmarking study of 73 organisations benchmarked for a six month period to July 2025.
Kate Beall, Internal Communications & Employee Engagement Manager, AllPoints Fibre Networks.
In theory, it can be easier for a smaller organisation to perform strongly in benchmarking, often because governing a smaller size Viva Engage network can be more manageable than a network with tens or hundreds of thousands of users. However, there are still lessons to be learned from AllPoints Fibre Networks’ approach, especially when it comes to managing information overload.
Prior to launching Viva Engage in late 2023, AllPoints Fibre Networks used email and a quarterly newsletter to communicate with employees.
When Kate Beall started as Internal Communications & Employee Engagement Manager, she made the decision to centralise news on the APFN News Viva Engage community.
“I didn't want to use SharePoint for news, I only wanted to use news on Viva Engage because otherwise if you give people a reason to go to A or B, they're going to choose one or the other as opposed to just one,” Kate said.
Every employee was automatically added to the community, and Kate is the administrator for the community.
A screenshot of SWOOP Analytics’ Activity by Time report.
Kate uses a scheduling roadmap to determine who will post when in the news community, prioritising news and trying to limit the feed to one post a day. There are exceptions of course, when necessary.
If someone wants to post news, they send their request to Kate, who has delegate access to post on their behalf. Kate will check the news schedule to see the best time to post to gain maximum engagement. She does this by checking SWOOP Analytics’ Activity by Time report to know when people are accessing Viva Engage.
Importantly, with all posts being passed by Kate, it allows her to check for accuracy and give advice to the author on how to improve the post with tips like asking questions, @mentioning people, adding a photo or video. These are all insights Kate said she learned from SWOOP Analytics’ benchmarking reports. Kate will also add topics and keywords to each post for easy tracking with SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage.
“If there’s a communication that needs to go out to the business, it comes through the Internal Comms Team,” Kate said.
“We’ll plan it in our Comms Editorial Roadmap, and I’ll post it on their behalf and choose whether it’s an announcement or not.”
The whole purpose of this process is to avoid overloading colleagues with endless news and endless Viva Engage posts on the official news community, which is also APFN’s only official news channel. The news schedule is flexible and fluid – it’s all about ensuring the messaging hits the right people at the right time, without overloading people.
Announcements are used sparingly, again, to avoid noise overload.
“There’s an expectation that everyone needs to read what’s in that community and visit Viva Engage at least twice a week,” Kate said.
“If it's a big news piece, or a call to action, we'll stick an announcement on it so it triggers the email and the notification pop up on (Microsoft) Teams.”
A screenshot of an Announcement post on APFN News community.
Screenshots from SWOOP Analytics showing the engagement on the Announcement post from above. Just about every employee across AllPoints Fibre Networks saw the post, with 146 reactions to the post.
A screenshot of a non-Announcement post in the APFN News community.
Screenshots from SWOOP Analytics showing the engagement on a non-Announcement post from above. Note the dramatically fewer replies, reactions and people engaged.
That’s not say Viva Engage isn’t used for other non-news posts and informal conversations. In fact, increasing more conversation in other communities is Kate’s current challenge.
A screenshot AllPoints Fibre Networks’ intranet home page, with the Viva Engage feed on the right-hand side showcasing the APFN News community.
“Everything people need to know is in APFN News,” Kate said.
“Everything else is a ‘nice to know’ community. And then the intranet is literally just your quick links to tools and your static content.”
Embedding Viva Engage into the company culture
Ronan Kelly, managing Director, AllPoints Fibre Networks.
Kate’s current challenge is to make Viva Engage a part of AllPoints Fibre Networks’ everyday culture.
Support for this is happening from the top, with Managing Director Ronan Kelly requesting data from SWOOP Analytics on his executive team’s Viva Engage behaviours to encourage more engagement on the platform. This is expected to boost activity and participation.
“It’s fantastic that our Managing Director is a Viva Engage advocate. He is keen to get other leaders on-board and he recently asked me for all of the exec team stats, so I sent the SWOOP report and he’s going to use that to support his executive team to engage more,” Kate said.
The expectation is, once leaders see their benchmarking leaderboard, it will incentivise them to up their game on Viva Engage, and the data shows when leaders are using Viva Engage, their people will follow.
A screenshot from SWOOP Analytics showing leaders’ benchmarking leader board, along with nudges to help these leaders improve their Viva Engage behaviours.
“I think we're doing well on news culturally, and I'm currently working on getting people to be more involved on Viva Engage overall,” Kate said.
Another method Kate is using to get more people active on Viva Engage is to use incentives for engagement such as competitions and campaigns that encourage employees to interact with the platform.
Often, these campaigns are based on tips from SWOOP Analytics’ benchmarking about interacting on Viva Engage through @mentioning, reacting, asking questions and replying to posts.
“I always go back to these simple steps to get people using Viva Engage and it boosts activity and people are checking back to see if they’ve won,” Kate said.
“We want to make Viva Engage our digital town square.”
An example of a competition on Viva Engage to lure people to the platform, encouraging them to share a GIF in the comments.
The importance of data
Kate uses data from SWOOP Analytics for monthly reporting to track engagement and performance on Viva Engage. She uses this data to compare against benchmarks and identify areas for improvement.
Kate spoke of the importance of using SWOOP Analytics benchmarking data as a guide to see how AllPoints Fibre Networks is performing each month.
“Our Viva Engage performance has been increasing year on year, and I was looking for an opportunity to compare our statistics to a similar organisation,” Kate said.
“Thanks to the SWOOP Analytics benchmarking data, I can see how we’re performing globally against various metrics.
“The data helps me identify areas that need attention, and I create a comms plan to address them.”
