CEO of Motoring & Membership Emma Harrington admits she was nervous, and maybe even a little anxious, when she first started to share her thoughts, ask questions and open herself up on The NRMA’s Yammer network.

In the back of her mind though was the reassurance from her internal communications team. If you stuff something up - edit it, or worst case, delete it. Still, it wasn’t something that came naturally to Emma all those years ago, to share personal stories on a social platform and make herself vulnerable in front of her more than 1000 employees.

Emma also knew if she wanted her employees to trust her, she needed to first trust them. So, Emma took the plunge and posted in The NRMA Group Yammer community.

Emma Harrington, CEO of Motoring & Membership, NRMA.

Fast forward four years and The NRMA’s Motoring and Membership Forum is ranked No.6 in the world from more than 3,200 Yammer communities analysed as Thriving Communities in SWOOP Analytics’ 2022/23 Yammer & Viva Engage Benchmarking study. The Yammer community has become a place of connection, community knowledge sharing, people recognition and innovation - where every employee has a voice, customer problems are being solved within hours and innovations and solutions to new technologies are being brainstormed.

Emma continues to be the Most Influential Person in the Yammer community, according to data from SWOOP Analytics - not because she’s broadcasting but because she’s listening and responding to conversations. Yammer provides her an “open door” visible leadership approach in the hybrid world.

Answering questions, solving problems and getting to know her employees via Yammer has now become one of the best and easiest parts of Emma’s role at The NRMA, Australia’s largest member organisation.

“I get so much joy spending time in there and you get a real sense of the community that is the wider organisation,” Emma said of Yammer.
“Of all the things in my job, this is the least pressured, most fun part of it to be honest.
“I quickly realised this is way less work than sitting, crafting an email or a video. It suddenly revolutionised it for me because I could stay connected without having to schedule meetings but I could be present and ask questions and invite feedback really informally.
“It didn’t take much effort, you immediately get feedback, which then builds your confidence.”

As CEO, if it wasn’t for Yammer, Emma wouldn’t have the opportunity to welcome the new contact centre team to the organisation, follow step-by-step the roll out of new tablets to the roadside assistance patrols or comment on someone’s new pet.

The trust now established via Yammer has resulted in quantifiable business returns. People post their problems in the Motoring and Membership Forum and receive answers. If Emma comes across a problem herself, she @ mentions the relevant leader to alert them to the issue and problems are usually solved within hours. In the days of email, Emma said it could take a month or more to do the same. People have the confidence to discuss the good and the bad on Yammer.

“There’s the positive comments, but also constructive comments - feedback when we’re not doing our best,” Emma said.
“That’s taken a bit of time to build trust that you can appropriately share customer feedback or employee feedback and it will be listened to and actioned upon.
“It needs that to really be a robust tool that is a symbol of our trust. We’ve built so much trust we can even have great conversations about things like LGBQTI+ and people can learn about inclusion in all its forms, ensuring everyone feels like they belong in our organisation.
“For me it’s become the heartbeat of our organisation. You can see what’s going on, how people are feeling. I otherwise don’t get to necessarily celebrate the everyday successes, so I love it.”

An example of Emma joining in a conversation on Yammer.

How does a CEO find the time to be so engaged on Yammer?

It’s a question asked by most internal communicators and business leaders. Emma says it’s easy! Most days, Emma will find 10-15 minutes to jump onto Yammer on her phone and have a quick look through communities, not just the Motoring and Membership Forum but other communities across The NRMA. If someone is asking a question, she’ll @ mention the people who can help.

Then, about once a week, often while she’s waiting in the car to pick up her kids from sport or after-school activities, Emma will spend 30-60 minutes scrolling through Yammer communities on her phone and joining conversations.

“Last week someone was saying; ‘The T&Cs on this don’t reflect this’ and I was like; ‘Okay, @Ken, can you do this?’ so I can steer traffic at something that’s a really customer-detailed level that otherwise would never make its way to me because people say, ‘You don’t need to know it’,” Emma said.
“And I don’t need to know it but it’s nice to be able to feel valuable. The 10 seconds that it took me to tag Ken and ask him to help, I can contribute value to anyone in the organisation and they can see that we’re listening, learning and acting.”

Doing something as simple as the CEO tagging in the right people to a conversation can make things happen quickly, ultimately delivering a better service to NRMA Members.

“Literally the collaboration and the customer problem solving can happen within 24 hours or faster (via Yammer),” Emma said.
“That’s the role I sometimes play. It’s a nice channel to show that I do care about the work that our frontline are doing every day. That then builds trust and breeds trust and it’s self-fulfilling. We get better results.
“People feel more connected with each other. Instead of sitting there wondering; ‘Who do I ask to fix this?’ they just ask, literally; ‘Can anyone help me with this?’. And they get to know each other as people, not just professionals.”

Kimberley Tunbridge, Internal Communication Manager, The NRMA.

NRMA’s Internal Communication Manager Kimberley Tunbridge made the point that Emma, and other leaders, can’t always be across Yammer and that’s okay. When a leader feels like they’ve dropped off Yammer for some time, it’s never too late to jump back in and just pick it up.

Analysing the impact with SWOOP

Every month Kim and Emma go through the past month’s data on SWOOP Analytics to see who engaged with Emma’s posts, what they liked, responded to and where she could improve.

“Once a month we go through the SWOOP analytics to see what’s working and what’s not working and really make sure we get the right mix of the formal and informal communications to align our people to our strategy,” Emma said.

“So really understanding what kind of content people are engaging with so we can learn from that and build on it. That happens once a month and we have a meeting where we go through the analytics and the dashboard both at an NRMA M&M (Motoring and Membership) Forum level and my role in the group.”

Right across The NRMA Kim encourages people to follow the SWOOP guidelines of a successful Yammer post – include a photo or video, or ask a question. The internal comms team run workshops to show employees the impact of doing so, how they can connect, collaborate and profile the critical work they are doing for our business.

Emma said posting on Yammer, including a photo or video and asking a question, is now just second nature.

“Hats off to Kim and the Internal comms team for helping to be the light that keeps us innovating, keeping it fresh, trying new things and using SWOOP Analytics to use the data to improve on that,” Emma said.
“Sometimes we do it great and sometimes not so much but that’s okay. It feels such a safe environment now for us to try things out.”

In her Yammer workshops, Kim makes the point that posting on Yammer is not about self-promotion but about contributing to the business.

“I tell people; ‘This is not about you, it’s not about making yourself look good. It’s about connecting to our business and delivering for our business’,” Kim said.

“We created the Motoring and Membership Forum Yammer group to bring two businesses together. The way we connected people, combined cultures and aligned people to our future strategy has been incredible. Our Yammer group was the cornerstone of this – especially through COVID lockdown times.”

Saving lives by knowledge sharing on Yammer

Kim said Yammer is so ingrained in the culture of NRMA now that people automatically go to it for help and support, which is encouraging collaboration.

She shared the example of a recent Most Engaging Post where a patrol member shared his story of how he managed to unlock a Maserati with a child locked inside, with emergency service personnel and large crowd of onlookers.

The Yammer post about the keys locked in the car with a child, and how the patrol shared his new-found knowledge.

“We often see children or animals locked in a car in serious situations and our patrols are the heroes who come to help,” Kim said.

“Recently, police, the fire brigade and ambulance service couldn’t unlock the car and The NRMA was called on for help. As previously our patrols had shared their top solutions for unlocking cars, our patrols had the knowledge to help. The response, it exploded!”

Kim attributes the shift to people coming to Yammer for help directly with Emma’s leadership on Yammer.

“Since Emma has been so visible on Yammer, everything changed and shifted and everything transformed. We are also seeing other leaders follow her example,” Kim said.

A post from leader Ken Collins about Wear It Purple Day.

Innovating on Yammer

The NRMA has recently rolled out a project where all roadside patrols, towing team and country service centres received a new Samsung tablet, with Yammer and the Microsoft 365 suite installed.

Elena Sergis, Change Communication Advisor, led the project comms and has observed patrols are now more frequently sharing their stories, insights and experiences.

“We continually encourage our patrols to share and collaborate on Yammer as we are finding stories from the roadside are not only popular internally, but they also form some of our most engaging content on external channels like LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook too,” Elena said.

Emma said patrols are also sharing their experiences of electric vehicles (EVs), which is becoming a knowledge depository for the new technology.

“Today they were talking about a couple of EVs that were breaking down and how they were solving it,” Emma said.
“I think we might see over the next period how they start to use it to knowledge share, particularly around what electric vehicles are doing and how they behave differently, which will be phenomenal because that knowledge doesn’t exist anywhere in the market.
“We’re experiencing it in real time and can then build education and learning off the back of that.”

Trusting employees by showing you can be vulnerable

Kim said Emma’s willingness to share her vulnerabilities and opening up about wellbeing and even mental health challenges have become some of the most engaging posts on Yammer. For example, Emma recently posted about how she can feel uncomfortable when she has to learn something new. Her post was met with loads of responses from employees who feel the same way.

“That’s fostering this culture of growth and leading by example,” Kim said.

“People have been able to get to know Emma on a personal level much more digitally than what existed when it was face-to-face because Emma would just be in the office and she’d be moving from pillar to post in lots of different meetings.”

An example of a wellbeing and fun post at The NRMA.

Energy fuelled by Yammer

In a complete backflip from her initial nervousness and anxiety about posting in Yammer, Emma said she now enjoys posting on Yammer much more than writing a formal email or report.

“You stop overthinking what you’re writing and what you’re saying and people can see different dimensions of you because you let them into your lives because you comment on their dogs, or you comment on different pieces of content they’ve put up,” Emma said.
“I’ve enjoyed the fact that I can, in a non-forced way, reveal parts of my personal being as a leader without a big show and tell. You can do it in real time, in the moment, and that is really rewarding for me.
“It's become a wonderful community of practice for our people but as a leader it allows me to stay connected and, when we’re not in the office all the time, to have those informal, ‘how are you?’ chats, or celebrate someone or welcome someone new - that gives me energy.”

The NRMA - Motoring along with Yammer