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4 companies generating employee ideas with Microsoft Viva Engage

See how big businesses are using microsoft viva engage to harness employee ideas and develop a culture of innovation..

Change is the new norm. Facilitated by globalization and technological developments, the pace of change is increasing, and its power is growing.

The thing with change is that you want to be the one driving it, not fortifying against it or – even worse – ignoring it. Remember Blockbuster and Blackberry? 

To win in the game of change, you have to play. That is, you have to innovate. And who knows your business better than the people working in it every single day? 

Big or small, delightful or practical, employee ideas can bolster the foundations of your business, helping to generate new products, services, processes, or improved customer experience.

When you start listening to employee ideas you can build a culture of openness and collaboration, where everyone is empowered to share their ideas and feel that they have a genuine stake in the business.  Wouldn’t that be great?

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

-----   Linus Pauling   -----

We often think big businesses are less responsive to change, with agility and lean processes being more commonly associated with startups.

But big businesses can  innovate, engage and survive change.

Using Microsoft Viva Engage , the companies below have been able to seamlessly embed innovation into their organizations, creating safe places where employees can share and engage with new ideas.

The fantastic four

1. centrica – a small change for a big change.

Can you put a number on a great idea? Centrica did, and there are a lot of zeros. They have so far saved $6,500,000 from one great idea. 

Due to the unprecedented pace of change in the energy sector, Centrica needs to continually innovate to deliver operational efficiency and continuous business improvements. 

The approach

With an active Viva Engage network already in use, Centrica launched their campaign ‘Make a Good Idea Count’ (MAGIC) as a Viva Engage group. Drawing on the open and social structure of Viva Engage, the team were able to capture an amazing quality and quantity of ideas from employees.

The $6.5m idea

Centrica had a process in place whereby they texted customers to advise them when the company had tried to phone them, but didn’t give the customer the option of texting back.

Three call centre employees shared an identical idea on the MAGIC group. Manish from Mumbai, Sadia from Leicester, and Wayne from Cardiff all recognised the potential of allowing customers to reply to these texts.

The insight we get from our employees helps shape the future of change and allows us to prioritize the work we have to do.

-----   Gordon Blue, Centrica   -----

A trial quickly confirmed that this simple change had a substantial impact on both call centre productivity and customer experience.

Customer satisfaction increased by 15%, repeat call centre customer outreach dropped to near 0%, and the estimated business value in savings was over $6m. Not bad for a text.

The lasting impact

The $6.5m idea was far from a one-off. Centrica has achieved staggering engagement with their MAGIC campaign, capturing the imaginations of employees across their global network. Their campaign has collected over 8,000 ideas in two years, collectively receiving a whopping 46,000 comments and 33,000 likes.

So far, over 260 of these ideas have been brought to life, and the effect on company culture has been immeasurable. Magic indeed!

In this video, Gordon Blue, Business Improvement Analyst at Centrica, explains how MAGIC works.

 2. Avios – Lightbulb moments

Avios  found that the best way to engage their  employees   to collaborate and share their insights and ideas was to get creative. 

They wanted to create an open platform for employee ideas as they don’t believe innovation should be limited to one team – any one of their employees could have a great idea. 

They set out to engage their people to innovate in three key areas:

• Customer experience
• Speed and agility
• Use of big data

Using the initial campaign as a launchpad, Avios planned to have an impact so great that a culture of innovation would remain embedded long after the campaign ended.

Microsoft Viva Engage was already being used actively in various pockets of the company. The team saw this as an opportunity to reduce barriers to idea submission and ensure more great ideas were captured. They created a group called ‘Avios Ideas’, allowing people to socialize ideas and receive feedback from colleagues.

But they didn’t stop there.

Magnificent, magical bulbs

Together with IAG Digital, Avios got creative and took the ideas and lightbulbs analogy to a whole new level.

They placed giant light bulbs all around the workplace with signage encouraging people to #LightTheBulb.

Every time a new idea was posted on the company’s enterprise social network, the bulbs lit up. Employees were quite literally lighting up the office with their ideas.

Check out the video below to see the lightbulbs in action:

Over a five week period, Avios were able to engage over 500 employees, with one-in-five people submitting an idea. 12 were sponsored, and the remainder make up a growing idea bank which continues to evolve through collaboration.

We needed to find a unique way to bring our people together. We wanted to create a buzz and get employees excited about sharing ideas.

-----   Hanna Greenfield, Avios   -----

Avios is also encouraging sponsors to get the idea owners involved in the development and testing process going forward. 

3. Severn Trent – A flow of great ideas

The greatest challenge for  Severn Trent  was how to engage a workforce that isn't office-based.

Severn Trent's innovation team knew that the solutions to dozens of business problems would most likely lie within the company’s 5,000+ deskless, frontline workforce — the challenge was to find them.

The team identified that the key to engaging the workforce was simplicity, making it as effortless as possible for employees to put forward and discuss their ideas.

We didn't want to introduce 'yet another app'. We wanted to spark collaboration in the places where it happens naturally.

-----   Lesley Parker, Severn Trent   -----

They created a group on Microsoft Viva Engage called Bright Sparks, and the innovation team targeted specific areas of the frontline to help spread word of the campaign.

A buzz quickly spread around the workforce and employees were excited to be involved in the conversation.

With over 1,500 ideas, comments and interactions in just two months, the campaign smashed expectations. 

From ten shortlisted ideas, three have now been accepted into the company’s innovation portfolio with resource committed to bring them to life! 

4. British Airways – Flush with cash

Okay, this story isn’t the sexiest. But sometimes the best ideas are practical. 

British Airways decided to reach out to its employees for ideas on how to reduce emissions and cut fuel bills, ultimately wanting to help the environment and the bottom line.

Previous innovation campaigns at British Airways were run using focus groups of small numbers. This naturally limited the ideas that could be collected and the quality of collaboration.

Stepping into a new era of innovation, British Airways wanted to engage whole communities of employees to get many more ideas of a greater quality.

Did you know?

Running employee idea campaigns through collaboration tools like Microsoft Viva Engage can result in 5-10x more ideas than traditional methods

They ran a campaign, ‘Make it Great’, through a new Viva Engage community. From pastry chefs and pilots to cabin crew and cleaners, ideas were generated from across the workforce. Hundreds of ideas were submitted, included replacing glass with plastic for wine bottles, washing engines more regularly, and using lighter cutlery for business class passengers.

An idea of scale

The biggest idea of the campaign, however, was to descale the toilet pipes in order to make them lighter. The saving? $800k a year. 

BA’s campaign is now estimated to have generated savings worth more than £20m – the fuel cost of 550 flights from London to New York.

The campaign helped the environment – as well as the bottom line – and just like the toilets, that’s not to be sniffed at!

This really has been a team effort. It goes to show that small changes here and there can add up to significant savings.

-----   Jon Counsell, British Airways   -----

There was also a deep and lasting impact on company culture. Engaging through Viva Engage with their people, British Airways were able to develop trust and ensure that their people felt valued and part of a community. Not an easy thing to do as a big business. 

Watch this video to hear David Williams, Service Recovery Strategist at British Airways, talk about how the campaign has changed the culture of innovation at the UK’s oldest airline:

So there you have it…

Big businesses can make the small ideas count. And, if it’s done right, there can be a lasting effect on company culture, making your business more innovative, resilient and transparent.

How you can do it in your organization

Why not try running you own innovation campaign through Microsoft Viva Engage? Here are some simple steps:

1. Get inspired

If you’re going to run an ideas campaign, you need to think about the why for your company.

There is so much benefit in creating a ‘home for ideas’ where ideas from anywhere can land at anytime, and the culture of innovation is supported. But in addition to this, why not consider running some time-limited campaigns, seeking ideas around a certain topic or question?

To find focus for your campaign, we recommend trying to answer the following questions: 

• What are the biggest challenges in your industry today?
• Is your industry being disrupted, or on the horizons of disruption?
• What do your people care about, and what might be on their mind?

2. Create a dedicated community

Start a new Viva Engage community, where you can either make it open for the whole organization to access, or close it and only invite select groups for innovation.

3. Brand for success

Make sure everyone knows about your campaign, get them excited with clever branding, and empower them with senior stakeholder buy-in. This should be fun, so try to incorporate something unexpected (remember Avios?)!

4. Measure, analyze and engage

Monitor and drive engagement, identifying top ideas and tagging employee experts to get their view and inspire more collaboration. Keep your employees up to date with the progress of their ideas.

5. Get started!

Change is the new norm. Big or small, delightful or practical – listen to ideas from your employees to bolster the foundations of your business and flourish in this new age. 

If you enjoyed this article, check out The Ultimate Guide to Listening to Employee Ideas on Microsoft Viva Engage !

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• It’s Yammer time…

16th July 2013 by Rachel Miller

Do you have or are you thinking of introducing Yammer into your organisation? Do you know how to use it, how do other people use Yammer for internal communication and are there any tips and best practice around?

Welcome if that’s you!

I thought I’d collate the information that I’ve published to date in one place so if you are looking into how to use Yammer, you have a wealth of knowledge at your fingertips.

Using something else? I’ve collated 243 examples (and growing!) of what companies are using for their enterprise social networks/ internal social media/ collaboration.

Call it what you will, there is a lot to choose from including Chatter, Jive, Lync, SharePoint, Interact and many more.

To find out more and view the examples, check out my round-up of case studies .

Come across one that’s not on the list? Do Tweet me @AllthingsIC or comment below to point me towards the link to include.

It’s a constant mission to keep these links updated, do let me know if there’s a broken link.

Ready? Let’s go…

Overview video of how Yammer works

Case studies of how organisations are using it:

Video: How to use Yammer

Infographic on introducing Yammer into an organisation  – features the illustratrations on this page, which are by Virpi Oinonen ( www.businessillustrator.com )

Illustrated guide of how to introduce Yammer into an organisation:

Articles i’ve published about yammer use include:.

How Gatwick Airport Uses Yammer How Aviva Investors Use Yammer Do They Like It? How Accountants Use Yammer

What Yammer (Microsoft) publish

Find them on Twitter @Yammer The Yammer blog Yammer Success Centre Overview video by Christophe Fiessinger @cfiessinger on enterprise social How to set up the Yammer app for SharePoint Whitepaper on integrating Yammer with SharePoint Information about Yammer certification (useful overviews) Yammer’s Learning Centre

Other Yammer resources

Webinar: Supporting learning with social networking , by Mike Thomas (thanks for Tweeting me this link Mike) Free download: 43 ways to use Yammer

How to run a webjam

Hearing about it first hand

In September 2012 I chaired a session at the annual Internal Communication conference from CIPR Inside , the sector group for IC pros from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations .

During that session, Linda Mortimer from Gatwick Airport shared their story of how they have been using Yammer. You can see the whole programme here .

First published 16 July 2013.

[…] CEO about Yammer, it’s a safe bet that you will in the next 12 months. With that in mind, this post by Rachel Miller (the Stephen Fry of the Internal Comms world) is possibly the most valuable page […]

Hi Rachel, thanks for your great list of case studies, I have recorded some interviews with companies in Germany using Yammer – even if they are in German it might be worth adding them to your list http://sharepointsocial.de/category/sj/ Best Regards Michael

Thanks very much Michael, I’ll do that, Rachel

I’d love to access the case studies however, most of them appear to link to a website that’s now offline. Any chance of updating the links?

Thanks a lot!

Thanks Jaz, never-ending mission to keep it updated as links keep being moved. Thanks for the note, I’ve had a look and revised some that were broken. Do shout if any are still invalid.

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Why your business needs Yammer AND Teams

Wait a second— Yammer ? Isn’t that social media for work? Your organization is already chatting, meeting, and coauthoring like pros in Microsoft Teams. And you need to help your people use another messaging app?

Yep! You definitely do. Stay tuned for why your business needs Yammer .

Spoiler alert: You’ll collaborate without department boundaries, learn more about the individuals in your organization, and have some fun along the way.

We’ll tackle this in two ways. First, what is the experience for an IT leader that’s trying to get more people to use their software tools?

By contrast, as a user of these tools, you might be confused. Why do you have both Yammer and Teams? When and how do you use them?

Making a case for Teams

Before we dive into Yammer, let’s chat about Microsoft Teams. Teams is efficient, secure, fast, and backed by the cloud. Collaboration in Teams looks like:

• Chat messages
• Team chat conversations
• Video calls
• Coauthoring files

You can also share files, images, GIFs, and praise badges with individuals or groups.

As an IT leader , you want to see that the software you provide is effectively used. For more information about the administrative side of Teams, check out The Definitive Guide to Teams Governance .

If you are having a tough time getting your users on board, we can help you scale your software training. Click to learn more .

From a user’s standpoint, there are a lot of features to understand. Read our article about Teams features beyond chat and calling.

Teams is powerful. It’s built on groups of people and designed to get work done. But what about when you want to work beyond your structured Teams? How do you collaborate across departments if your organization only uses Teams? How would you get a company-wide discussion —not just a newsletter—going?

Getting to know Yammer

Yammer is your organization’s social networking service. Think of Yammer as a way to collaborate and get to know colleagues beyond your Teams teams. Make sense?

The Yammer fundamentals are:

• Yammer is built on communities of people.
• Users can post messages to communities.
• You can send private messages in Yammer.
• An update feed displays personalized updates and relevant content.

In particular, Yammer excels at large group discussions and sharing. Whole communities or organizations can participate, ask questions, and share information.

IT leaders or other administrators can broadcast live video to thousands of participants, mark posts as featured conversations, and use Microsoft 365 native mode.

Yammer gives all users a company-wide platform to share, ask questions, and make connections with users.

When should I use Yammer or Teams?

Here’s a way to think about the difference between how to use the two tools:

• When you know who you need to talk to, use Teams . Send a message or ask a question in a team channel.
• If you don’t know who you need to talk to, use Yammer to ask and find out . Start a discussion or ask a Question to shout out to your whole organization.

Still wondering what is the difference between Teams and Yammer? Consider these scenarios:

• A CEO wants to announce a contest to 10,000 employees. She could send an email, but instead she chooses to post an announcement to Yammer—which lets her see how many people have viewed the post, how they reacted to it, and any comments they added to the conversation.
• An employee has an idea to improve time between assembly and shipment. He has some questions for several different teams. While he could send a Teams message to his manager, he posts to Yammer instead to show his openness to feedback from the wider organization.
• An HR manager would like preliminary feedback about expanding the wellness package. He posts a poll on Yammer with 6 options to see which are the most popular.
• An administrative assistant is organizing an internal conference. She asks a question in Yammer and tags specific people. Other employees also answer the question and join in the discussion.
• A customer service representative has a question about a new product. He posts to his organization’s Sales and Service community. A rep he's never worked with before answers his question.
• The members of the C-suite post short videos of themselves to engage employees.
• The birthday person posts in her local Yammer community “Cake’s in the break room!”

In a nutshell, use Teams for collaborating with specific colleagues. For networking, company-wide visibility, or watercooler talk, use Yammer.

BrainStorm’s Yammering: A Case Study

Here at BrainStorm, we love using Yammer. To give you an idea of how we’re using Yammer, here are some of our communities. We hope this list inspires you to start using Yammer in your own way!

Core business communities:

• BrainStorm recruiting

Communities specific to our product and company processes:

• Adoption & change
• BrainStorm QuickHelp platform
• BSI culture
• Content support and updates
• Industry stats and quotes

For fun, volunteering, and creativity:

• BrainStorm Gives Back
• BSI book club
• BSI fitness & fun
• The pets of BrainStorm
• Traveling foodies
• Whirled Peas (Gardening enthusiasts)

Recently, one of our client success managers had a suggestion to improve one of our products. She pitched her idea on Yammer and explained the need behind it. She tagged people from several departments, including management, marketing, and content creation. Most of the tagged individuals replied to the post, but several other people “liked” the post, and it was viewed by many others.

This is the perfect use for Yammer. Our CSM could have sent a direct message or group chat to the people she tagged. Instead, her Yammer conversation was seen by a larger audience that knows her idea is in the works—which allows everyone to follow the conversation for the latest updates.

Feel free to share this blog post with colleagues and employees to help everyone better understand why you need both Yammer and Teams.

Are you IT leaders ready to look like a hero to your boss? Get your users to use both Yammer and Teams. Check out our demo to learn more.

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Resources to keep you going, what is yammer, virtual communication: which tool when, don't miss a thing.

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THE CENTRICA STORY

The £5 million idea, the story of how a single employee idea helped save centrica over £5 million., process improvement, integrations, viva engage, key results, repeat customer outreach, increase in customer satisfaction, in cost savings so far, section topic, section title.

The challenge

Inspiring innovation.

With an ever-increasing rate of change in the energy utility sector, the need to focus on operational efficiencies and continual business improvements has become more important than ever.

As one of the largest multinational energy suppliers, Centrica knew they needed to innovate to stay on top.

The innovation team were therefore challenged with finding new ways to improve processes and customer satisfaction to reduce costs and increase revenue.

Prior to the introduction of Sideways 6, our business had not taken advantage of Yammer’s functionality and infrastructure to successfully crowdsource ideas.

THE solution

Engaging employees.

With an active Yammer network already in use that could integrate with the Sideways 6 platform, the innovation team had an accessible, intuitive and social solution for setting up an employee idea programme.

To kick off the campaign, a Yammer group called ‘Make A Good Idea Count’ (MAGIC) was set up, where employees were encouraged to post and discuss any ideas they have.

Given Yammer's open and social nature, the team were able to capture more ideas and of better quality from employees across the whole business. 

The Campaign

The magic of an idea.

During the campaign, three call centre employees shared an identical idea independently of each other in the Yammer group.

Manish from Mumbai, Sadia from Leicester, and Wayne from Cardiff all put forward “a small change with a potentially big impact.”

Centrica would text customers to advise them when the company had tried to phone them, but didn’t give the customer the option of texting back. Why not give the customer this option? 

Due to the automation of many tasks made possible by Sideways 6, we could focus their energy on challenging users to come up with solutions to their feedback.

The results

Making good ideas count.

The innovation team took forward the idea to allow customers to text back, trialling it in the call centre offices in Cardiff and Mumbai.

Since its implementation, this simple change produced an estimated business value of £5 million in cost savings through higher productivity and increased customer satisfaction!

The idea was just one of hundreds that have been successfully implemented through the MAGIC campaign, demonstrating just what's possible when employees are given a voice.

Download a copy of the case study

The Centrica Story

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Case Study (Practicing SQL) Analysis & Recommendations from Mode Analytics: "Yammer Analysis: Drop in User Engagement"

joshuaemayer/Yammer-Analysis-Case-Study

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Case study from mode analytics: "yammer analysis: drop in user engagement".

Mode Analytics case study analysis and answers from Springboard Data Science program: practice SQL query, analysis, manipulation, in order to provide recommendations to the "Yammer Analysis: Drop in User Engagement" case study.

Primary Objectives

Demonstrate ability to utilize SQL for querying and analysis across multiple SQL tables.

Data Source

All data from: https://community.modeanalytics.com/sql/tutorial/a-drop-in-user-engagement/

Summary Files

"SQL-Case-Study-JMayer-Answers-Apr17.pdf" - analysis, charts, and recommendations. "SQL-Queries.txt" - all SQL queries used in Mode Analytics.

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