RACQ - Creating business value and focusing on wellbeing with Yammer

If you’ve ever wondered about the business value of Yammer, RACQ can provide you with hundreds of examples where its employees have used the enterprise social network to solve problems to deliver a better service to its 1.7 million members.

And it has the data to prove it.

In SWOOP Analytics’ 2020 analysis of almost 9,000 Yammer Communities from around the world, it found RACQ’s “Ask IT” community was among the top 1%, based on factors including high levels of engagement, responsiveness, innovation and participation.

RACQ is a member organisation providing roadside assistance, insurance, banking and more to the people of Queensland, in north eastern Australia. When any of the organisation’s 2,500 employees have an IT question, they can ask it in the “Ask IT” Yammer Community.

RACQ General Manager Corporate Communications, Renee Smith.

The IT team that curates the community is incredibly responsive, said RACQ General Manager Corporate Communications, Renee Smith. However, at times they have a backlog of questions and it can take some time to answer every request.

“They have 2,500 people who could be asking the service team questions and sometimes someone who has a solution will see it and say; ‘I’ve had a similar issue’, and be able to answer the question before the guys with the technical expertise get to it,” Renee said.

The result is a quick solution, allowing employees to get back to their work and freeing up the IT support team to focus on another issue. What should never be discounted is the new connection formed between the author of the post and those who engaged in the conversation. There’s been relationship-building across the organisation as one employee helps out another, perhaps one they have never before encountered. Now, if they later cross paths while working on a project, they have already begun to form a two-way relationship.

Renee shared a recent example of a post on the “Ask IT” Yammer Community. Colleagues have jumped in to answer the question, @ mentioning others to bring them into the conversation and provided the author of the post solutions to the problem.

A healthy workforce is a productive workforce

While RACQ has numerous similar examples of business value from Yammer, it has just as many focusing on employees’ wellbeing.

Another of the organisation’s top performing Yammer Communities is MyMarathon2020. This was set up to encourage RACQ staff to join The Heart Foundation’s fitness and fundraising challenge. Participants run, jog or walk 42.2 kilometres at their own pace during the month of October, helping to raise vital funds for lifesaving heart disease research.

Last year, RACQ employees joined MyMarathon and raised about $2,500. The goal was set this year to raise $5,000. When MyMarathon closed on 30 October, RACQ employees had raised $14,800.

Renee credited much of the success of the internal communications campaign to the fact RACQ’s leaders encouraged their people to join the MyMarathon challenge to keep fit. She said RACQ leaders had been encouraging staff to take breaks to focus on their wellbeing as they work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They’ll take an hour off and they’ll go on a 5km walk during the course of the day,” she said.

“MyMarathon has had this multiple result of helping raise funds, but it’s also reminding people that if you’re working at home, you don’t have to stay seated all day. Do something to break up your day.

“We have a responsibility as an organisation to make sure people are looking after themselves.

“We had this massive health risk to the global community; it’s sharpened that focus. But it’s also recognising that a healthy workforce is a productive workforce.”

Renee said there was a large uptake in Yammer usage from mid-March when RACQ staff moved to work from home.

“People were looking for not only the business benefit of Yammer but for the social side as well, an opportunity to interact with their peers they would no longer get to see every day,” she said.

SWOOP data revealed large increases in Yammer activity in April and May, before dropping back to normal levels from June, due mostly to employees using Microsoft Teams for their day-to-day work.

As well as having some of the top Yammer Communities in SWOOP’s 2020 benchmarking, RACQ was the top performer for medium-sized organisations, for the second consecutive year. It’s a reflection of the health of the Yammer network and the collaborative culture at RACQ.

• Learn how RACQ welcomed a new CEO days before the entire organisation was forced into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in this case study.

• Learn more about how Yammer has become a reflection of the culture at RACQ in this case study.

• Hear how RACQ has used Yammer during the COVID-19 pandemic in our SWOOP Chat video with RACQ Internal Communications Advisor Andrew van der Beek.