Every time a new Executive Team member joins the ranks of Westpac New Zealand, they’re also introduced to the organisation via Viva Engage.  

This is no usual biography featuring a corporate photo and listing the manager’s career history and hobbies. Instead, the camera is rolling, and the new executive is asked random questions, literally pulled from a jar. Things like: “Do you prefer Vegemite or Marmite?”, “Are you a dog person or cat person?" and “Would you prefer a holiday visiting museums or drinking cocktails by the pool?”  

“How many times have you worked somewhere where a new starter is introduced with the standard ‘Welcome to Jane. Jane is married and has three kids and outside of work she likes yoga and painting’,” said Fiona Roberts, Senior Digital Engagement Manager at Westpac New Zealand.  

 “That feels very formulaic, and it doesn’t tell you anything about the person. So, we give our Executive Team some random questions, including some funny ones, to allow their personality to shine.”  

Fiona said this approach was influenced by short-form video content often seen on TikTok or Instagram. It’s more casual, and a deliberate move away from formal corporate videos.  

“These videos go straight to Viva Engage and people love them,” Fiona said.  

“We’ve had a lot of really good anecdotal and survey-related feedback that staff prefer communication that’s a little bit more authentic, and not too polished. They don’t want to see corporate spin.”  

 These types of videos interacting with general managers at the bank are not a one-off at Westpac New Zealand. In fact, they’re a great introduction for new leaders to the culture of interacting on Viva Engage at Westpac New Zealand.  

Led by leaders 

Most of the Executive Team at Westpac New Zealand now have their own Viva Engage community where they post at least once a week. Everyone in their departmental teams are members of the community, and throughout the week, leaders scroll through their communities to listen to conversations, react to posts, tag in colleagues, and contribute comments.  

There’s some friendly (and sometimes a little fierce) competition between leaders to see where they rank on Westpac New Zealand’s Influential People list on SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage. The competition started last year when Chief Information Officer Russell Jones was ranked outside the top 100 influencers on the bank’s Viva Engage network, and a month later he had shot to No.2!  

Russell came from nowhere to take a top spot on the influencers’ list (of more than 6,400 employees) simply by posting on Viva Engage once a week and taking a few minutes from his busy schedule to respond and react to other people’s posts.   

He is not on Viva Engage every day, but he does make an effort to post at least once a week with an update about what he’s been doing, to recognise the great work of his team, to call out service anniversaries, or share some thoughts. Importantly, he also replies to comments, reacts or responds to other posts when he can – a true indication he is listening to employees - and tags colleagues into posts. Read more about how Russell became an influencer in a month.  

Proud of his impact, Russell has encouraged his fellow leaders to do the same. In fact, he shared his story to the Executive Team, which Fiona said resulted in an “avalanche” of GMs coming to the Internal Communications team asking for their own Viva Engage communities.  

Fiona and her team do a monthly report benchmarking leaders’ activities, including top posts and influencers, on Viva Engage using data from SWOOP Analytics. This report is shared with the Executive Team. She said it works as a positive catalyst to encourage leaders to lift their game when it comes to connecting with colleagues on Viva Engage.  

Ask Me Anything

In the past financial year, three of the top 10 most Influential People across the entire Westpac New Zealand network have been members of the Executive Team. The Most Engaging Post for the year also belongs to an Executive Team member who held an Ask Me Anything session on Viva Engage.   

Helen Ryder, Managing Director, Consumer Banking & Wealth at Westpac New Zealand knows the value of connecting with her people. It’s especially important in her business, which is geographically spread. As part of her responsibilities, she looks after more than 100 branches from the top of New Zealand’s North Island to the bottom of the South Island. So, the diversity of her people and their locations is one of the main reasons she is so keen on using Viva Engage.   

Fiona said Helen’s Ask Me Anything session was completely in her own words and unscripted, albeit carefully planned. She opened the conversation with a Viva Engage post asking colleagues to hit her up with questions.  

Even though the Ask Me Anything session was eventually “closed”, months later questions still come trickling in. It’s one of the ongoing benefits of Viva Engage – it allows everyone time to ponder their question, or dwell on a response, and follow up with more questions.   

Equality for all in a safe space

Fiona said Viva Engage has become a safe space at Westpac New Zealand where everyone is encouraged to share their voice, and everyone has an equal say. There are also communities to allow people from similar cultural and language backgrounds to connect.  

Bringing the fun to work 

Westpac New Zealand’s Viva Engage network was ranked No.2 in SWOOP Analytics’ 2024/25 global benchmarking of 70 organisations. The bank has consistently ranked in the top three organisations in SWOOP Analytics’ annual benchmarking analysis over the past five years. This ranking takes into account the performance of every community across an organisation’s entire Viva Engage network – the high performing communities, as well as the lower performing communities.  

What was surprising in this year’s analysis was three of the top four ranked enterprises benchmarked globally were all based in New Zealand. We also ranked 3,751 individual communities based on measures for participation, people-to-people engagement, sentiment, growth, responsiveness, and innovation. A quarter of the top 20 ranked communities were also New Zealand based! These came from a range or organisations.  

It was a result that didn’t surprise Fiona.   

She said “not taking ourselves too seriously” is something Kiwis do particularly well.  

Fiona told how the consumer banking arm of the business did a virtual tour of the country, with each physical bank branch posting on Viva Engage with a quirky meme or funny video or photo. When the latest season of the Netflix series Bridgerton was released, based on the books by Julia Quinn, one branch created a clever post, superimposing their own faces on Bridgerton characters’ faces.  

Regular governance guided by analytics

It’s no fluke Westpac New Zealand regularly ranks as one of the top performing Viva Engage networks in the world. Every six months, Fiona does a regular check of poorly performing communities across the network, as identified by SWOOP Analytics, and culls them if there is no longer a purpose for them, or she reaches out to the community admins to offer one-on-one coaching.  

Fiona admits a successful Viva Engage community does not survive without work and analytics.  

“It does take quite a bit of work. You can’t just set up a community and let it run,” she said.