Medibank - Creating the healthiest workplace in Australia by engaging employees
Imagine you’re moving to a brand-new office, and right from the get-go, you get a say in what your future employee experience will be like.
You get to vote – literally – on how you’d like to access the building (swipe card or mobile app?), what sort of computer monitor you’d prefer (4K high definition screen, dual screen, curved screen?), what your office should be called, what the meeting rooms should be called, and whether you’d prefer a pool table over an air hockey table in the activity room. You get a say in just about every aspect of the new build.
That’s exactly what every employee at Australian health insurer Medibank has been a part of. And it’s not just those who choose to use the new office to work from, but all 3600 employees across the country who also want a say.
It’s all part of making Medibank the healthiest workplace in Australia. A healthy workplace means Medibank can get the best outcomes for its customers, patients and the community, and create the best health and wellbeing for Australia. A key part of the new office is about employee choice, which includes whether or not employees choose to work from the six-level tenancy, or from home (there is no mandate for anyone to return to this new office to work), and this is the same company trialling a four-day working week.
This two-year communication and change project to involve employees in the move from one side of Southern Cross Station in Melbourne to the other, was primarily done via Viva Engage, using a multi-channel communications approach which also included SharePoint intranet, with a widget to link to Viva Engage conversations about the move.
A Viva Engage post which was posted more than a year before the move to the new office, asking employees to vote on their preferred monitor type, after testing their preference in a Proof-of-Concept area.
A Viva Engage poll asking colleagues their preferred method to access the new Melbourne office.
Bailey Cunningham, Employee Change and Communications Partner, Medibank.
SWOOP Analytics identified this Viva Engage success story when Medibank ranked No.1 globally across every organisation analysed in SWOOP Analytics’ 2024/25 benchmarking study. When you read Medibank’s story about this communication and change project, you’ll see how asking questions of, and listening to, employees is at the heart of everything Medibank does.
Bailey Cunningham, Employee Change and Communications Partner at Medibank, described the project as two years of listening to employees. While there was a dedicated project team and design steering committee, ideas were taken to employees via Viva Engage for confirmation before final decisions were made.
This often involved polls on Viva Engage.
“I developed a holistic communication strategy in which Viva Engage was a key channel to excite and educate employees about our new space, and really tried to use it to listen to employee hopes for their future workspace,” Bailey said.
Medibank used a widget to embed Viva Engage conversations into its SharePoint intranet as part of the communication and change project.
A Viva Engage post asking employees to name the new Melbourne office.
Tapping into employees’ needs
A Viva Engage post asking employees to name the meeting rooms in the new Medibank Melbourne office.
Even before architectural plans for the new office in Melbourne’s Collins Street had begun, consultation was underway with employees, including Medibank’s neuro-diverse network, who gave feedback that some days they need complete silence to work and other days they need lots of buzz to concentrate.
That feedback resulted in a floor plan that includes low energy, medium energy and high energy work zones.
“The space was designed by our people for our people,” Bailey said.
And at the heart of every design decision was the connection to traditional Wurundjeri land, where Medibank’s new Melbourne office – now known as Melbourne Medibank Hub (MMH) - stands.
“The lifeforce of water is the overarching design theme at MMH. We undertook extensive consultation with Wurundjeri Elders and subject matter experts to create a living and breathing connection to the land of the Wurundjeri people on which our new office is built,” Bailey said.
“So everywhere you look there has been a genuine commitment to acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island culture; whether it be the architecture, the artwork, custom pieces of furniture or encouraging people to use the woi wurrung language for meeting rooms.”
Through Viva Engage, employees were able to suggest names for the office’s meeting rooms, and some suggestions were adopted. With the life force of water design theme in mind, the highest meeting rooms on level 10 are named after birds as they fly high in the clouds, level nine after Australian mountains where the rain falls, level eight after Wurundjeri landmarks like goranwarrabil (Mt Dandenong), level seven after waterways, level six after Australian beaches, and level two after ground-dwelling wildlife, who all depend on water for survival.
In the Viva Engage post below asking employees to share their ideas for names of the meeting rooms, you can see an example of Bailey using multiple communications channels by linking to an intranet article.
A post on Viva Engage about the yarning circle and custom rug by Wurundjeri Elder, Auntie Kim Wandin.
Woi wurrung language was also used to name the new board room (named “nganga warit”, which means “to see a long way”), the low energy work zone (“bolin bolin”, akin to a serene billabong, a quiet and reflective place), the medium energy zone (named “Coranderrk”, inspired by Coranderrk Aboriginal Station in Healesville, where people come together to make decisions) and the high energy zone (named “marngrook”, the traditional Indigenous Australian football game, which is often played by up to 100 people at a time). Each work zone reflects its purpose. For example, the marngrook (high energy) work zone has low partition workstations for high collaboration, with bolin bolin (low energy zone) sheltered in the corner of the floor plan.
The new Medibank Melbourne Hub also has a yarning circle, a key element of Indigenous culture. In yarning circles decisions are made collaboratively and through inclusive dialogue, rather than having one person in a position of power who makes autonomous decisions that may affect others.
In the building’s concierge area, there are two handcrafted yarning tables that symbolise the life force of water design theme and elements of the Yolngu culture from Milingimbi Island in Arnhem Land.
“They’re not just tables, they’re conversation starters,” Bailey said.
“Their exquisite craftsmanship encourages visitors to consider and discuss their health, and how Medibank can help them.
“Space is an enabler of culture, so health and connection to each other and connection to Country, has really been embedded into every facet of our new space.”
While every aspect of the new office is thoughtful, most employees probably would not be aware of the significance, except that Bailey kept everyone informed via Viva Engage, using the platform as an education tool, as well as for communication.
Measuring the impact of comms
Throughout the project, Bailey used SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage to measure the reach, impact and engagement of her posts. She especially used the Cross-Enterprise Collaboration measure to see if any parts of the business were not engaging with the posts.
Interestingly, in this internal change and communication project, Bailey became the “face” of the project as she initiated most of the conversations. Usually, internal comms people like to be out of the spotlight but in this instance, Bailey had to take a more visible role. She said in the early days of the project, she would tap into her support network of influencers (which can be found on SWOOP Analytics’ Influential People report) to help get early engagement on posts and Viva Engage polls.
While the move to the new office was a two-year communication and change project, Viva Engage posts really started to ramp up in the period from March 2024 to the actual move date in July 2024. This ties in with SWOOP Analytics’ 2024/25 benchmarking period from February 1 to August 1, 2024, ranking Medibank as the overall top performing organisation from 70 organisations benchmarked in this same time frame.
Another example of a poll on Viva Engage asking colleagues to vote on what they’d like to have access to in the new activity and games room.
An example of cross channel communication, with a Viva Engage post linking back to the intranet and multiple Viva Engage communities.
The night before the move to the new office, Bailey rebranded the Viva Engage community for the move to Medibank Melbourne Hub and uploaded a new data set for all 1500 employees allocated to the office to add them to the community. She posted a welcome message as an announcement on day one – the only time Bailey used the announcement feature during the project.
Building momentum and communication about the move on Viva Engage.
The Medibank Melbourne Hub announcement.
Moving forward, Bailey is planning on a series of posts to encourage her colleagues to keep visiting the new office. Things like video content from the lead architect, and a tour of the artwork in the new office with the art curator.
“Medibank doesn’t mandate employees to come into the office,” Bailey said.
“We’re really anchoring back to employee choice. We’re all adults, we can make our own decisions, we have a culture of trust.
“That will be a challenge for me from a change and comms point of view - what happens if the novelty of the new space wears off, how do we earn that commute back into Collins Street?
“I’m developing a content plan at the moment to start drip feeding more ‘surprise and delight’ content via Viva Engage to help people really get the most out of the space and earn their commute, because we don’t have to come in, but we choose to.”
