Business value from Yammer comes from personal value at Bankwest

Published on December 5, 2018

Summary

Bankwest is a 120-year-old bank based out of Perth, Western Australia. It has more than 4,500 employees. Bankwest’s Yammer network is an establised part of the company’s culture, a place where employees go to collaborate, share and problem solve.

Before the Yammer network, there were really two options for engaging large numbers of people at Bankwest – an event, which can get too big and be too impracticle, or email – a closed network totally reliant upon who you already know.

Challenge

Now there was Yammer, a place where everyone has the same access. But was it working?

Bankwest turned to SWOOP Analytics for a transparent view of exactly what was happening on the Yammer network. SWOOP shows who is connecting with whom, which teams and departments are collaborating, it shows every employee’s online behaviour, identifies influencers, assesses the levels of engagement between executives and frontline staff.

SWOOP will track sentiment in the network, tell you when people are posting, find the hot topics, show the health of the network, the most engaging posts and give every employee tips on how to improve their online collaboration.

What was working best at Bankwest were the posts displaying authentic leadership.

Strategy

Encouraging the managing director and senior leadership to be themselves, show a little of what they’re like as a person, not just a boss, post some photos or videos and share some ideas – that made employees feel connected to their leaders because it was genuine.

“That was the key for us. If you show nothing of your actual self, you’ve got your work persona on all the time, people will think it’s the comms team writing it for you,” Matt Dodd, Senior Manager Digital Channels, said.

In the end, Matt says Yammer isn’t a numbers game of gaining the most likes. “Ultimately, it’s about people connecting with people. That’s where they get the real value from this,” he said.

Yammer is a great place for building your span of influence, whether you’re a senior leader or whether you’re working on the front line. It makes no difference

Matt Dodd (Senior Manager Digital Channels, Bankwest)

Results

For Bankwest, Yammer is about changing culture and ensuring the culture is one of connecting, sharing and working together. Its called it being “Brilliant Orange”.

But to get business value from Yammer, or any ESN, you must give personal value.

“You’ve got to get people on the network, that’s the only way you’re going to get that stage of getting business value,” Matt said.

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