A new CEO building authentic relationships while working from home

Days before the COVID-19 pandemic sent everyone to work from home, member organisation RACQ welcomed a new Group CEO.

David Carter was just weeks into his new job at RACQ, a member organisation providing roadside assistance, insurance, banking and more to the people of Queensland, in north eastern Australia, when he was forced to send most of his 2,500 employees to work from home.

Mr Carter met only a handful of his new 2,500 staff face-to-face before almost everyone began working from home.

That’s when Yammer stepped in as a platform to introduce the new CEO to employees and give Mr Carter a means to connect and collaborate with his employees, and vice versa.

These employees are spread across the state of Queensland, which is seven times the size of Great Britain and two and a half times the size of the US state of Texas.

Mr Carter started with YamJams, a live Q&A/town hall-type event held within Yammer, where Mr Carter answered and discussed questions from staff.

Mr Carter regularly participated in conversations on Yammer to engage on posts from employees, while also creating a direct line of communication between the CEO and frontline staff.

“The impact of a senior leader becoming involved, you can almost see people virtually puff out their chests in pride and really be positive and enthusiastic as a consequence of the new CEO taking an interest in what they’re doing online,” said RACQ General Manager Corporate Communications, Renee Smith.

Yammer - a reflection of RACQ’s culture

As well as being a business tool, Renee said Yammer was used at RACQ as a forum to celebrate people and teams and it has become a reflection of the collaborative culture at the organisation.

“Yammer is an exemplar of the culture within the organisation,” she said.

“Not only is it a great projector of business priorities but can also be used to celebrate individual successes of people, milestones, even work anniversaries.”

Renee said social communities on Yammer – like dog and cat appreciation groups – have also been important across the business, particularly during the pandemic.

“Some people think these sorts of groups could become a distraction but we’ve found it has had the opposite effect. Groups where people can share their commonalities and interests builds rapport and creates safe places for our people to interact and build connections with other staff outside of their own area,” she said.

“A temperature check on our people”

RACQ uses data from SWOOP Analytics for monthly reports to its group executive, and board, using Yammer as a ‘temperature check’ on the engagement and wellbeing of employees.

“We can see a direct correlation between engagement in Yammer and how about people are coping,” Renee said.

“For example, at the start of COVID we saw a large increase in usage of the platform but when we’ve made organisational changes we saw a drop off in engagement. It can really showcase how people are feeling and willingness to participate collectively.

“We find the insights very valuable to feed back to our clients and our executive team. SWOOP is able to provide us with information about performance and engagement of certain teams that management don’t have visibility over and can become a very useful ‘value-add’.”

• Read our case study to learn more about how Yammer has become a reflection of the culture at RACQ.

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