There were two stand-out performances in SWOOP Analytics’ global benchmarking of Viva Engage enterprise networks and communities this year – and they were to do more so with geography than specific organisations.  

It turns out New Zealand-based organisations and South Australian-based communities are killing it when it comes to high performing Viva Engage networks and thriving Viva Engage communities! 

However, the No.1 ranked Viva Engage enterprise network didn’t fall into either of these categories, with Australian health insurer Medibank taking top honours for 2024/25. It’s a well-deserved accolade as Medibank strives to create the healthiest workplace in Australia. Viva Engage plays a significant role in achieving that goal by giving every employee a voice. Those voices are used and heard at Medibank and the case study in SWOOP Analytics’ 2024/25 Viva Engage Benchmarking Report about Medibank’s two-year communication and change project, mostly done on Viva Engage, is a must read. 

Following closely behind Medibank in the enterprise rankings was Westpac New Zealand, coming in at No.2 in SWOOP Analytics’ global rankings. 

Here’s where it gets interesting. In No.3 and No.4 position were two more New Zealand organisations. They are both New Zealand government agencies, which have chosen not to be named given the sensitive nature of their work. 

So, three of the top four-ranked enterprises from our global study were based in New Zealand. 

Perhaps even more interesting, when we ranked 3,751 individual communities across all the benchmarked organisations based on measures for participation, people-to-people engagement, sentiment, growth, responsiveness, and innovation, a quarter of the top 20 ranked communities were New Zealand based.  

We discovered this Kiwi connection when we approached each of these top performing organisations to reveal the purpose and best practices of the communities. The secret to their success turned out to be simple – they bring the fun to work. Rather than stick with plain corporate comms messaging, they often present the messaging in a fun, more engaged way.  

We had one example of a multinational organisation that shared the same messaging about a new corporate initiative across two countries. In one country, the messaging was presented on Viva Engage as a formal text-based post. It received very little engagement.  

Exactly the same messaging was presented in a Viva Engage community for New Zealand-based employees, only it was written as a parody from a book series based on a popular a Netflix series, along with a witty video in the same style. It has been the Most Engaging Post in this New Zealand-based community for 2024. The same messaging, presented in two different ways, with very different employee interactions.

Another surprise was the high number of South Australian-based communities in our top performing communities. 

Restaurant chain KFC Australia had five of the top 10 most thriving communities from our global analysis based in South Australia, and South Australian member organisation RAA also had a community in the top 10 of our benchmarking of 3,751 Viva Engage communities.  

Therefore, six of the top 10 ranked Viva Engage communities from the 3,751 benchmarked were based in South Australia!  

We are fortunate to be able to share many of these organisation’s stories in detail in case studies in SWOOP Analytics’ 2024/25 Viva Engage Benchmarking Report. 

As part of our annual benchmarking, we also rank the top performing enterprise collaboration champions based on each global region. This analysis takes into account every Viva Engage community across the network – the high performers and the low performing communities.  

Drumroll please! The 2024/25 Viva Engage collaboration champions for each global region are:  

How do we rank each organisation and community? 

As part of SWOOP Analytics’ annual benchmarking of Viva Engage, we rank every organisation involved in our study based on the performance of its entire enterprise network. This analysis takes into account every Viva Engage community across the network – the high performers and the low performing communities.  

For example, an organisation with some incredibly high performing communities could be dragged down in our overall enterprise rankings if there is poor governance in place and inactive communities are being included in that organisation’s analysis.  

In the past, our practice has been to divide our benchmarking participants into small (100 – 1,500 interactive users), medium (1,500 – 8,000 interactive users) and large (more than 8,000 interactive users) for each region – the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and Asia-Pacific (APAC), based on the number of interactive users. Interactive users are those that have interacted with at least a reaction to a post within the six-month benchmarked period.  

These divisions were made in recognition that it is often easier for smaller organisations to perform well, compared with the larger organisations. Up until 2022, this had largely been the case. In 2022/23 a medium-size organisation, Westpac New Zealand, was ranked the best overall. In 2023/24, a large size organisation, ANZ, achieved the top ranking overall from the 97 organisations benchmarked. These results showed the evolution of the maturity of Viva Engage and the fact that the size of the network really does no longer matter.  

Again this year, a medium-size organisation – Medibank - took out top spot, prompting us to ditch the small, medium and large categories in favour of overall champions for each global region.  

We also did a deep-dive analysis into 3,751 “active” Viva Engage communities across the 70 organisations benchmarked.  

These “active” communities had regular activity throughout the six-month period assessed – posts, replies, comments and reactions. We then looked at the “regularly active” communities – those that had, on average, at least one interaction every workday for the six-month period analysed.  

We analysed these communities on measures of two-way relationships (reciprocity), connections between members, sentiment analysis of conversations, growth in activity, consistent activity and more to identify the top “thriving” communities. We also added a dimension to assess whether a community is thriving (or not). The key thriving measures relate to sentiment, growth and consistent activity. Surprisingly, it was this last factor of consistent activity that proved to be the hardest to meet.  

We set the bar of at least one activity each working day, on average. We found only 10% of the 3,751 regularly active communities we analysed could meet this threshold. The below diagram shows the SWOOP Analytics measures used and the weightings given to each measure.  

We approached organisations ranked in the top 1% of the 3,751 communities analysed, and below we list the names of the organisations with these top performing communities, ranked in order based on SWOOP Analytics’ measures. We want to recognise these top performing Viva Engage communities (many from within the same organisation), all of whom ranked in the top 1% of the 3,751 communities benchmarked. 

KFC Australia – Restaurant chain
Incredibly, KFC Australia boasted a whopping five communities in the top 10 of our global benchmarking of 3,751 communities! Even more surprisingly was that all five are store-based private communities, and all five are based in South Australia.

Medibank – Australian health insurer
Medibank had two communities in the top 10 of our benchmarking. The top performing Medibank community is called Medibank Community. It connects all 400 frontline team members at Australia’s largest private health insurer, along with another 300 or so Medibank employees and executives who want to feel connected to the frontline of the business.

Primarily, the Medibank Community is used for daily updates across all stores, for recognition of employees’ tenure, celebrating business successes, and for health and wellbeing initiatives like RUOK Day. It was also the No.2 performing community in SWOOP Analytics’ 2023/24 Viva Engage Benchmarking Report, and has retained the position two years running. You can read more about this impressive community.

ANZ – Bank
ANZ also did exceptionally well in this year’s benchmarking of communities, boasting seven communities ranked in the top 20 (with one in the top 10)! What makes it even more interesting is that five of these seven were New Zealand-based communities! 

That comes off the back of three of the top four ranked enterprises in SWOOP Analytics’ overall benchmarking this year also being New Zealand based. Why are the Kiwis killing it when it comes to Viva Engage? They bring the fun to work. They put a fun spin on corporate comms to make them appealing and engaging.

Australia Post – Australia’s national postal service

RAA – Member organisation providing insurance, road service, travel, motoring services and road safety across South Australia
RAA made the conscious decision to post official news only on Viva Engage – and it’s clearly paid off. Viva Engage was launched across RAA in September 2023 in response to staff feedback asking for more opportunities to engage in two-way conversation. When Viva Engage was launched, the decision was made to make it RAA’s official communications channel – no more news-driven intranet, no more all-staff emails and no more newsletters – everything is on Viva Engage. Fast forward a year and the RAA Official News community is ranked No.10 in the world. RAA’s story below is a must read. 

Comcast – multinational telecommunications and media conglomerate 

Schneider Electric – multinational digital transformation of energy management and automation company

Progressive – American insurance company

Global beverage company
Each year when SWOOP Analytics contacts this global beverage company to share its top performing communities based on SWOOP’s measures for participation, people-to-people engagement, sentiment, growth, responsiveness and innovation, the beverage company uses it as an opportunity to recognise these high performing communities internally, and to learn from them.

They will get together those community admins to recognise their achievements, and to uncover their best practices so others within the organisation can learn from their experience.

“We want to acknowledge those community leaders and take that as a moment of pride and recognition for those people who are working really hard to do something well,” said the company’s Director, Digital Workplace Communications.

“It doesn’t happen by accident. All of this is very intentional work by these community leaders.”

The Home Depot – American multinational home improvement retail corporation

Air Canada – Canadian airline

Congratulations to all our 2024/25 Viva Engage champions! If you’d like to see your organisation and/or community in next year’s list of winners, please join our 2025/26 Viva Engage benchmarking study.