Our client is one of Melbourne’s largest metropolitan health services, providing emergency, surgical, medical, and general healthcare services to communities across Victoria.
Client
Withheld
Service
Viva Engage
Organisation size
Large
Industry
Healthcare
Context
With over 18,000 employees, our client supports a diverse workforce that includes thousands of frontline clinicians alongside corporate and administrative staff. They had previously relied on Workplace by Facebook for internal social networking, however as the platform approached retirement, they needed a modern, integrated solution to bring all employees together, improve knowledge sharing, and support collaboration within its Microsoft 365 environment.
The goal was a seamless rollout that unified communications and built a thriving enterprise social community.
Engage Squared was brought in to guide this transition. Our Change and Transformation team were tasked with replacing Workplace with Viva Engage, configure the new network, establish governance, and help key teams feel change-ready with training and adoption support.
Challenge
Our client faced a six-week deadline to move from Workplace to Viva Engage before the existing license expired. Key challenges included:
- Diverse workforce needs – staff ranged from corporate office employees to frontline clinicians using shared or mobile devices, many of whom had limited Microsoft 365 experience.
- Change fatigue – employees were already navigating a broader Microsoft 365 rollout, so adoption support was critical.
- Governance requirements – with no historical Workplace content migrated, a clear governance framework was essential to guide community creation and engagement from day one.
- Tight timeline – the transition had to be completed quickly without disrupting communications across hospitals and clinics.
Solution
Engage Squared delivered a three-phased solution to meet our client’s technical and people-centric needs:
- Discovery & planning – We conducted workshops to understand current Workplace usage and desired future state with Viva Engage. Through a tailored governance framework we established core feature needs, agreed platform responsibilities, and an adoption approach to facilitate the transition.
- Network configuration & administration – We configured Viva Engage from scratch alongside added automations to streamline platform management. We guided the Communications team on how to develop a community architecture based on location, business and interest-based needs, enabling them to provision communities and add community managers and members in advance of launch. We also assisted the IT team with licensing, role assignments, permissions management, and policies related to onboarding, email and app visibility. The platform was fully ready for launch well within the six-week window.
- People enablement & training – To set the launch up for success, we upskilled the Communications team in change readiness and adoption. Alongside comprehensive training in everyday management of the platform, we ran interactive sessions on how to engage community managers and leaders. We shared user guides and other on-brand collateral that could be used to build excitement and coach key target groups in enthusiastic adoption of the new enterprise social network.
Throughout the project, Engage Squared maintained close collaboration with the project team through weekly stand-ups and agile problem-solving, ensuring that technical or adoption challenges did not derail the timeline.
Results
Our client successfully launched Viva Engage on schedule, achieving a seamless transition from Workplace in just six weeks. Key outcomes included:
- On-time, seamless launch – 18,000 staff gained immediate access to Viva Engage through Microsoft 365 logins, avoiding any communication downtime.
- Unified digital workplace – enterprise social networking is now embedded in Microsoft 365 and Teams, reducing reliance on external apps while providing a single hub for news, collaboration, and social connection.
- Empowered Communications and ICT teams – governance documentation, training, and hands-on enablement left internal champions confident to manage and grow the network independently.
- Positive cultural impact – staff embraced the new platform, and leaders now use Viva Engage to connect directly with frontline teams, improving knowledge sharing and engagement.
This project demonstrates how healthcare organisations can rapidly implement a modern enterprise social network under tight deadlines. Engage Squared’s combination of technical expertise, governance guidance, and people centric change management ensured that our client delivered a thriving internal community for its workforce.
