When British technology services business Arqiva relaunched its Viva Engage network in March 2024, it put in place two governance measures that have resulted in the network’s success.

The first was to delete all communities that were no longer needed. Viva Engage, then Yammer, was used prolifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and numerous once-thriving communities had been inactive since people could come back into the office.

The second was to establish guidelines for anyone wanting to create a new Viva Engage community. These guidelines explain the responsibilities involved in creating a new community, including plans to keep it active and ideas of how and what to post. The guidelines are effectively an agreement for the community creator to be accountable to keep it active.

When Viva Engage was relaunched across Arqiva in March 2024, some of the original communities used during the pandemic stayed, and these continue to flourish, while new communities were created.

Fast forward six months, and Arqiva’s Viva Engage network ranked No.1 for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in SWOOP Analytics’ 2024/25 Viva Engage benchmarking analysis.

When SWOOP Analytics shared the news with Arqiva’s Digital Communications and Channels Manager, Helen Nias, she was surprised. When we listened to Helen’s story about the relaunch of Viva Engage at Arqiva, we were unsurprised the company ranked so highly.

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 network. This analysis takes into account every Viva Engage community across the network – the high performers and the low performing communities. With such clear governance in place at Arqiva, it makes sense it would perform so well, as there were no low performing communities dragging down the network.

The timing of SWOOP Analytics’ analysis period may also have been in Arqiva’s favour. We analysed six months of data from February 1 to August 1, 2024.

The challenge now for Arqiva is to sustain the governance while also building on a successful initial period. Helen admits there is "lots more we can do".

A Viva Engage network led by the CEO

As well as strong governance, Arqiva’s Viva Engage network is boosted by strong executive buy-in, led by CEO Shuja Khan.

Prior to the relaunch of Viva Engage in March 2024, the CEO did a weekly six-minute podcast reflecting on the past week and talking about what was ahead for the coming week. It was shared on Microsoft Teams.

While Helen describes Shuja as “super charismatic”, the podcast was largely scripted, and only about 25% of employees listened to it. Importantly, the podcast was one-way communication from the CEO to employees, with no clear way for people to interact.

The relaunch of Viva Engage provided an alternative option with in-the-moment posts, and Shuja was immediately enthusiastic about the opportunities. He could properly engage with colleagues by sharing photos, asking questions and responding to comments. It is two-way interaction.

“A really huge reason Viva Engage has been successful is because it’s come from the top down,” Helen said.

“Shuja is very active on Viva Engage. I send examples of things he could post each week and if he thinks they are relevant, he’ll take them on board.

“Sometimes I'll get a surprise notification that he's posted something else. That's always great to see because I can't know everything that's going on!"

Data from SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage shows Shuja’s posts are regularly among the Most Engaging Posts, and he is also among the top 10 most Influential People on the network. Showing Shuja the impact of his posts with data has been a game changer.

Helen recently used SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage to analyse 26 of the CEO’s Viva Engage posts. Most received strong engagement, and often more than 1000 views from the 1600-strong company. Helen had ghost written two of the posts, which both received much less engagement.

"There were a couple I'd drafted and got the okay to post, and unsurprisingly, they were right at the bottom,” she said.

“The ones he writes himself are the most engaging posts.”

Interestingly, Shuja posts on his Storyline rather than in a Viva Engage community. This has been a deliberate decision at Arqiva for leaders to build their profiles by posting on their personal Storyline.

“We are working on his Storyline because we want people to follow him and be notified,” Helen said.

Clear governance

Arqiva launched Microsoft Teams in late 2019 and when the COVID-19 pandemic hit months later, Yammer (now Viva Engage) was launched before its scheduled kick-off to meet the needs of people working from home.

Helen said Viva Engage was “self-sufficient” during the pandemic as people created communities to discuss all kinds of topics, and the communities thrived.

“As people started to come back to the office, they didn’t just have to rely on digital interactions anymore,” she said.

“And then there was tumbleweed. There were a few people using it and a few communities with stuff in them.”

When Helen joined Arqiva she rewrote the internal channels strategy. One of the first tasks in implementing it was to delete the communities that were no longer needed. Some communities remained at the request of employees, but Helen gave them guidelines and responsibilities to keep the communities active, with the promise of holding the community admins accountable.

If someone wants to establish a new Viva Engage community, they have to fill in a form.

There are social communities at Arqiva, one of the most popular being Studded Plastic Engineering for Lego lovers, and a gardening community. Helen said many of the business communities have strong Cross Enterprise Collaboration, which is one of Arqiva’s culture goals.

While holding people accountable to their Viva Engage communities is working, Helen said she does sometimes see a drop off.

“It's working well but it's not perfect. I set communities up for colleagues and they're active in the beginning. But work is the top priority, so in some cases the excitement wanes slightly and there's a drop in activity,” she said.

“I've got a vague ‘three months inactivity and we'll delete the community’ rule, but it's flexible. I use discretion. Sometimes people agree their community should go.”

Moving forward, Helen plans to create more self-help guidelines to keep communities thriving. She often shares tips like SWOOP Analytics 1, 2, 3 rule – for every one post, make two replies and three reactions. And she plans to continue to work with colleagues to advise when they should be focusing on building their Storyline and following rather than creating unnecessary communities.

“We’re a small company so I don’t think we need a community for every single interest that people have, but I don’t want to stop people talking about what they’re interested in, so Storylines are obviously a place where they can build that up,” Helen said.

Inspiration from colleagues

Everyone from frontline workers to the CEO uses Viva Engage at Arqiva. With much of the workforce on the frontline maintaining broadcast and utilities network equipment, there are some incredible stories that get shared on Viva Engage.

Hear more from Helen in her inspiring Viva Engage Festival presentation.