Every few months, the internal communications team at RAA will post an “adoption” campaign on the organisation’s official news Viva Engage community.

The purpose of the campaign – usually a competition – is to encourage people to engage with the platform in a fun and easy way. And, once they’re on the platform they’re likely to look around at other communities and engage in conversations. At RAA, it’s especially important to have as many colleagues as possible using the RAA Official News community because it’s the member organisation’s official and only internal news channel.

Take the post on the right for example. The corporate communications team posted a competition to tag in a friend to share a coffee at the head office’s café. Five double vouchers were up for offer, and the demand was high!

The competition cost RAA maybe $50 in coffee vouchers but resulted in hundreds of people engaging in the post, and more than 80% of the entire workforce, which is spread across the state of South Australia, seeing the post.

This simple campaign achieved exactly what it set out to do.

Another adoption competition offered a $250 RAA travel voucher up for grabs. Employees were asked to tag a colleague they thought deserved a holiday. It remains one of the top five Most Engaging Posts of the year, according to data from SWOOP Analytics.

No more all-staff emails, no newsletters – it’s all on Viva Engage

One of the main reasons the internal comms team at RAA wants to ensure everyone is using Viva Engage is because Viva Engage is the official communications channel at the member organisation, which provides insurance, road service, travel, energy and motoring services across South Australia.

Viva Engage was launched across RAA in September 2023 in response to staff feedback asking for more opportunities to engage in two-way conversation. Prior to Viva Engage, there was a twice-weekly newsletter sent via email that compiled company news, and email communications from the CEO and executive team.

When Viva Engage was launched, the decision was made to make it RAA’s official communications channel.

Fast forward a year and the RAA Official News community is ranked No.10 in the world from 3,751 active Viva Engage communities benchmarked by SWOOP Analytics.

“Anything that you need to know about what’s going on at RAA is published in that community,” Sally said.

“We publish two to three stories a day on average, sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less, but I guess the whole point is it’s meant to be a dynamic channel, you hear about news as it happens.

“When we had our newsletter, it was sent on a Tuesday and a Friday and so if you had news it had to wait until the Tuesday or the Friday. Whereas now we’re able to share things as they happen.”

What makes this community different to others is that while everyone at RAA is a member and can comment and engage with news, only the CEO, executive team and corporate communications team can publish news.

“We set it up so all staff can comment and engage with the news, but we wanted to protect it as a channel because, for some people, they only want to see the need-to-know news,” Sally explained.

However, RAA still wants colleagues to share their news and stories, celebrate anniversaries and recognise colleagues.

That’s where RAA’s second top performing community comes in – Life at RAA.

“We also wanted to encourage staff to share their own news and information, so we created another all-staff channel called ‘Life at RAA’,” Sally said.

“It’s fantastic to know ‘Life at RAA’ is is another top performing community, as it’s solely driven by our people.”

This community was ranked among the top 55 in SWOOP Analytics’ 2024/25 benchmarking of 3,751active communities.

Sally’s offsider Marilyn McAuliffe, Communications Coordinator at RAA, said there were some sceptics prior to launch, suggesting it would be difficult to get colleagues posting.

“We have such a diverse workforce – including mobile roadside assistance patrols, solar and battery system installers, in-school educators and, of course, office-based staff – so there was talk of how successful this platform could really be,” Marilyn said.

“But we’ve actually had some great success and we’ve seen people really champion it and own and post updates as they’re out and about on the road,” she said.

While staff were calling out for two-way communications, they were also not keen to add another channel to check for information. So this informed the early decision to make Viva Engage ‘Official News’ the primary news channel for RAA - a one-stop source of information for a busy workforce.

The key to success

Sally and Marilyn said there are two key drivers of Viva Engage’s success at RAA. Firstly, the willingness of RAA’s people to embrace it and share their stories and ideas, and the support from the executive team, led by CEO Nick Reade.

Many of the five Most Engaging Posts across the enterprise at any one time are ‘nostalgic’ posts about work anniversaries, celebrating achievements or big moments for the organisation.

Data from SWOOP Analytics shows 98% of employees access Viva Engage from their desktop. This is partly because the RAA intranet is the default browser for all employees, and because Viva Engage is embedded in Microsoft Teams. As Viva Engage is the official communications channel at RAA, it is embedded into the intranet for easy access, with feature posts amplified at the top of the intranet home page under a section called “What’s trending”.

All CEO updates are posted in Viva Engage with an Announcement feature, which results in every employee receiving a notification with a link to the post in Viva Engage. The Announcement feature is used about once a week.

All executive announcements are posted in the RAA Official News community, along with all CEO updates, as he no longer sends any updates via email.

“We knew from some of the SWOOP Analytics case studies that participation by our leadership team would be key to driving success,” Sally said.

“People would want to see their leaders using the channel.”

Ahead of launch, the internal communications team gave the executive team tips including SWOOP Analytics’ 1, 2, 3 rule, and finding just five minutes a day between meetings to scroll through Viva Engage to comment and react to posts.

“Our CEO in particular is very across what’s going on,” Sally said.

“He’s such an advocate for the channel and he’s especially passionate about creating opportunities to connect and engage with people across the organisation – whether that’s ‘all-staff’ Town Halls or simply connecting with someone on Viva Engage.”

Sally and Marilyn said their CEO is also not afraid to ask hard questions and show his authentic self.

“He regularly posts to share what’s on his mind - and these are posts he writes himself,” Sally said.

“That authenticity comes through.”

Community management

The internal comms team at RAA partners with teams across the business to understand their needs to schedule news on Viva Engage. The stakeholders are encouraged to engage with the posts made on their behalf (for example, there might be a particular policy change) and be active in the comments and available to answer questions. On the rare occasion a post is made and no comment follows, Marilyn might tag in a relevant person.

It’s not just the internal comms team that’s across Viva Engage, but the entire Corporate Communications team, including the social media team. RAA’s social media team will often find content in the Official News and Life at RAA communities, and ask to share externally.

“Our people are  posting in Life at RAA, giving a shout out to a colleague on patrol who helped them out, or acknowledging somebody’s 40 years of service to RAA, and our social media team is on there asking if they can put it on socials,” Sally said.

“That’s been a nice cross over as well.”

Sally tells the story of a new television advertising campaign. RAA’s mascot is Trev the bee, and the new ad featured Trev.

In Adelaide’s iconic Rundle Mall, in the capital city of South Australia, there is a landmark called Beehive Corner. A staff member named Roman from Risk took a photo of it (RAA had recently moved into new offices around the corner) and posted in Life at RAA. This caught the attention of the brand team as they were preparing the campaign with the new bee mascot, and the finished ad now features Beehive Corner – something RAA’s Chief Marketing Officer acknowledged on Roman’s post happened because his post brought it to their attention. 

“And how great for that staff member to have contributed to the campaign in that way,” Sally said.

RAA’s people-first principle ensures staff know about any news relating to RAA before it hits external stakeholders. This is all posted in the RAA Official News community, so there are no surprises if a member of staff sees their organisation featured in the news.

The team continues to work on ways to increase engagement across the business, and are thrilled to see the impact it’s had so far in two-way engagement.