Medibank - Bridging the divide with Yammer during COVID-19 lockdown

One of Australia’s leading health insurers Medibank has a diverse workforce with employees operating across Australia in either corporate offices, permanent work from home, on the road or in retail stores.

Operating in the healthcare industry, the health and wellbeing of Medibank’s people and the community is paramount. With the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic looming, Medibank made the decision to transition to a virtual business. This included the temporary closing of retail stores and all office-based employees moving to work from home. Network capability was increased, and testing took place to ensure it could support the increased bandwidth before the move to all-company remote working was made.

The existing flexible working culture (#FlexBetter) meant they not only had the tools to work remotely, but their teams and people leaders had already-established practices and ways of working to support flexible ways of work.

While a variety of communication channels were used to keep employees updated and informed, Yammer remained critical, helping people stay connected with their colleagues and the company.

To address employees’ concerns during the early days of the pandemic, members of Medibank’s executive leadership team, including CEO Craig Drummond and Group Executive - People & Culture, Kylie Bishop, hosted a live Yammer chat, where employees could ask questions and receive immediate answers.

Medibank’s Most Engaging Post during the COVID lockdown period, according to data from SWOOP Analytics.

Data from SWOOP Analytics showed this was the most highly engaged post on Yammer for the year 2020 and had the most views on any day.

“That Yammer chat was so highly engaged with,” said Medibank’s Employee Communications Business Partner, Cat Owen.

“It was an opportunity for everyone to ask executives questions, personal or professional, such as; ‘How are you coping? What are your tips for staying motivated at home?’”

Due to the success of the first chat, a second live Yammer chat with the executive leadership team was hosted later in the year.

Medibank’s Employee Communications Business Partner, Cat Owen.

“Every month that we’ve been reporting, an executive post has been the most highly engaged with, and that’s coincided with our most engaged number of views on a day,” Cat said.

Cat and Michelle Urquhart, Medibank’s Manager, Employee Communications, said it’s not just this new relationship with executives that has Medibank employees engaged on Yammer.

Keeping things fun

During the COVID lockdown period, the focus for Yammer has been on fun, as well as on health and wellbeing, as that’s the core purpose of Medibank. They’ve used hashtags to track campaigns on SWOOP and used things like fun GIFs and videos to make posts pop.

The fun hasn’t stopped with campaigns. Many employees, including executive leaders, have also got involved and opened their homes via video for their employees to get a glimpse into their lives.

“People just love hearing the personal stories,” Michelle said.

“Yammer provided a really great platform for our executive and senior leaders to share photos of their work from home set up, with people wanting to know they weren’t alone having a laptop stacked on a pile of books, or the cat walking across the screen, or the kids in the background.

“I feel like Yammer has really helped us drop the barriers between work and home. There’s been a lot greater visibility, people see leaders in a more authentic way.”

Examples of Medibank’s leaders posting on Yammer during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Michelle said the fact people can see their leaders in their homes, facing the same challenges as everyone else, brings a whole new level of connection.

“People see leaders at home with their kids coming in to interrupt because they’ve got questions about their school work and I think it’s a case of; ‘Look at that, even they’re struggling with remote learning,” she said.

“It makes us feel like we’re all in this together.”

Feeling Good

Keeping the focus on fun, Medibank launched a Feel Good Grants campaign in June where employees could apply for a grant to bring their “feel good” idea on health and wellbeing to life.

The initiative kicked off with a Friday Feel Good Dance Off with each business unit participating in an online dance off battle against other business units. The executive for each business unit shared their team’s dance off and the executive from the losing team publicly congratulated the winning team.

“We got a lot of interaction on Yammer, people loved the videos and it was in the middle of the lockdown, so it was a nice distraction from real life,” Cat said.

“We really use Yammer for campaigns, to highlight activities our people can get involved in or share their own experiences.”

The Feel Good Grants campaign resulted in six winning ideas – focused on yoga, mindfulness, journaling, gardening and a couch choir – all of which will receive grants to bring their ideas to life over the next 12 months.

Two-way conversations on Yammer

Medibank was among the top three performing medium-sized organisations in SWOOP’s 2020 global benchmarking of Yammer networks. It’s the only Yammer network to be among SWOOP’s top performers for three consecutive years.

With a well-established Yammer community across Medibank prior to this year’s pandemic, Michelle and Cat said the enterprise social network played a key part in company communications during the lockdown, especially with enabling two-way conversations.

Across all communications channels, Medibank’s internal communications team has been focused on more consistent and frequent communications to employees during the pandemic, with a more conversational, laid back feel. Feedback and data from SWOOP showed positive results.

Also key was the connection with leaders and a focus on overall wellbeing of employees. Resources providing tips to keep kids entertained at home while you’re working, webinars to stay motivated and engaged during the lockdown were shared across Medibank’s communications platforms.

While messages may be emailed to employees, they are also shared on Yammer to allow people to engage with them.

“People really appreciated the transparency of Craig our CEO, he’ll often share how he’s feeling, encouraging people to look after their mental health and well-being,” Cat said.

Learn more about Medibank’s journey with Yammer and SWOOP in our earlier case study.