Healthe Care, one of Australia’s largest private hospital operators, depends on strong internal communication to connect its 4,600+ staff and deliver quality care across its network.
Client
Healthe Care
Service
Viva Engage
Organisation size
Large
Industry
Healthcare
Context
With the retirement of Workplace from Meta, Healthe Care saw an opportunity to modernise its communication platform and align more closely with its existing Microsoft 365 environment.
With an investment in the Microsoft ecosystem already in place, they identified Viva Engage as a natural replacement, offering familiar functionality, improved integration, and a more secure, scalable foundation for collaboration.
Engage Squared partnered with Healthe Care to lead the migration with a focus on replicating key features, maintaining governance, and streamlining onboarding, all without access to premium Viva features.
Challenge
With Meta retiring Workplace, Healthe Care needed to migrate 35 groups and over 14,500 posts and comments to Viva Engage without losing engagement, functionality or security. The challenge here wasn’t choosing a new platform but managing a technically complex migration within the constraints of their existing Microsoft 365 licensing.
This included enabling secure external collaboration, managing dynamic group membership and establishing scalable governance. They also aimed to automate community onboarding while maintaining the strong sense of connection their teams would expect. The complexities were present in: configuring permissions, setting appropriate access and deploying tailored workflows effectively. However, for the Engage Squared team, it was simply challenge accepted!
Solution
The transition to Viva Engage was shaped by a few clear drivers. Healthe Care wanted to consolidate their digital employee experience within Microsoft 365, reducing silos and bringing their messaging closer to the tools their people use every day. They also needed to establish governance that could scale within their current licensing model and enable secure collaboration with external partners. Just as importantly, Healthe Care wanted to make use of automation by streamlining onboarding and community engagement. With many Workplace to Viva Engage migrations under our belt, our team stepped in to deliver a solution to make this vision a reality.
We employed a two-phase approach to ensure a smooth and secure transition from Workplace to Viva Engage.
Phase 1 – Discovery & Planning
We began with targeted workshops and analysis to understand how Workplace was used and to map a path forward. This included a review of access permissions, licensing constraints and outlining the technical and governance requirements for success in the new environment.
Phase 2 – Migration & Configuration
We deployed our brand-new, high efficiency migration tool to move all 35 groups and 14,500 posts and to Viva Engage. Post migration, we supported a clean transition to Viva Engage by making Workplace read-only and providing templates to ensure consistent community creation in their new platform.
And because adoption doesn’t stop at go-live, we developed three custom workflows to enhance user experience:
- A ‘subscription workflow’ to keep automatically maintain the custom workflows, removing the burden from Healthe Care IT
- Community auto-join’ to automatically add new users up to key groups depending on specific conditions e.g. location or role
- A custom ‘welcome message’ that greeted new members with helpful, friendly, onboarding experience
Results
The migration was completed with zero disruption to Healthe Care’s internal communications, with all 35 groups and more than 14,500 posts and comments successfully moved to their new home on Viva Engage. Early alignment and close collaboration between Healthe Care and Engage Squared helped our project team move fast, resolve technical blockers early and ensured end-users stayed confident throughout the change.
- Over 3,500 staff were brought onto the new platform at launch, spanning frontline, operational, and corporate roles. The solution was also configured to allow secure external and guest access for administrators.
- The change journey unfolded without resistance or major setbacks
- Custom workflows launched on day one, enhancing onboarding and ongoing engagement.
- Governance frameworks are now in place. These are scalable, sustainable, and effective within a non-premium licensing model.
With the foundations now set, Viva Engage is ready to grow alongside Healthe Care’s evolving communication needs.
