Department of Transport and Main Roads - Keeping an open dialogue on Yammer

The world’s most in-depth analysis of Yammer networks has identified three of the top performing communities around the world belong to Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR), a state government department in Australia.

These three Yammer Communities reflect a healthy modern workplace - with a work-based community, runner’s club and gender equality network among the top two per cent of almost 9,000 Yammer Communities analysed around the world.

Factors including high levels of engagement, responsiveness, innovation, and participation were considered when ranking the performance of the 8,916 Yammer Communities, from every industry sector, globally.

TMR’s No.1 ranked Yammer Community in the independent report was a “New Yammer Champions” group, where employees across the entire department are encouraged to share tips and advice on how best to connect, collaborate and engage within their own Yammer Communities.

Coming in at No.2 was TMR’s Runner’s Club, and No.3 was TMR’s Gender Equity Network.

Leadership leveraging Yammer

Director General Department of Transport and Main Roads, Neil Scales.

One of TMR’s most active Yammer Champions is Director-General (DG) Neil Scales, who uses Yammer as a key channel to share news and information with employees.

TMR has almost 9,000 employees, with an enormous scope of work encompassing 79 different occupational areas across the state. 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. Considering the department's size, you may wonder how someone issuing licences on the Gold Coast can keep up to date with what’s happening on a local bridge building project in far north Queensland.

Neil Scales said Yammer is a great way to open that dialogue, with updates from him and other senior leaders going a long way to keeping employees informed.  

“I regularly travel to meet local teams and inspect projects, and I'll often shares these visits on Yammer," Neil said.

“Our people are spread out across the state, working in diverse roles from planning projects to public transport. Sharing information empowers them to learn more about the vast work TMR delivers, and how we continue to achieve our vision, day to day.

"Yammer provides the platform for team members to connect and collaborate and enables our organisation to work together to deliver the best solutions for our customers – whether internal or external.”

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Queensland, the Director-General was unable to travel to TMR sites like he normally would, so he decided to step in front of the camera each week to provide updates about the latest COVID-19 news and impacts to the department.

Keeping staff, customers, and industry up to date on the latest developments and health advice has remained a key priority for Neil throughout TMR's COVID-19 response.

These videos have continued and evolved to become another internal channel to promote important events and initiatives, but also to speak with TMR staff from around the business.

Director-General Neil Scales and Kym Murphy, Acting General Manager (RoadTek), discussing COVID-19 vaccinations on Yammer.

Connecting people through Yammer

Many TMR employees never step foot inside a traditional office, because they work on roads or construction sites building Queensland’s infrastructure.

Leonie Challacombe, Principal Advisor (Digital Culture) said that’s where Yammer can play a huge role in connecting people across the state and department.

“A lot of these people are field-based and potentially won’t ever come and sit at a desk,” she said.

“As a department we connect people to places, people to services, people to people. It’s all about that connection and Yammer helps us to do that at scale.”

Yammer truly came to the forefront of collaboration across TMR in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced many employees to work from home. Leonie said COVID-19 was the catalyst for many to start using digital collaboration tools and appreciating the value of different ways of working, especially with Microsoft Teams and Yammer.

“When COVID came along a lot of our staff needed to work from home and we did get that initial spike of using Yammer, in particular, for IT support,” Leonie said.

“Yammer proved its worth then with people being able to help each other and the IT teams able to support people at scale to adapt and stay productive during that transition.”

Leonie explained the initial boost in activity on Yammer during the start of the pandemic was from crowd sourcing answers to problems, with employees helping each other find solutions to issues.

Leaders also embraced Yammer as a communication tool during this time, sharing videos of themselves recapping key messages.

An example of a post on TMR’s Yammer network.

Using analytics to debunk the myth that Yammer is social media at work

TMR introduced SWOOP Analytics to better understand how the department is using Yammer, and to show the value provided by connecting and collaborating on Yammer.

SWOOP is designed to allow every employee to see their own online collaboration behaviours at work, as well as the actions of their team, department and the entire organisation. Leonie has been promoting the use of this data to inform the success of a community and identify any gaps in the collaboration process.

At the end of 2020, Leonie used data from SWOOP for a whole-of-enterprise Yammer report, showing the 10 most influential people, the top 10 groups, the top topics employees were discussing, and the most engaging posts across the network.

“That was really well received,” Leonie said.

Off the back of that report, Leonie shared some Yammer best practices. She uses the data from SWOOP to show colleagues how they can be engaging and influential within their own communities and across the platform.

“It's clear in our analytics that Yammer is a really valuable tool for connecting our people to our strategic plan and achieving our strategic priorities,” Leonie said.

“It’s debunking the myth that Yammer is just ‘Facebook for work’.”