Sydney Water

Category

  • Future of Work

The Project

Sydney Water’s Yammer network has helped transform the workplace of a 125-year-old monopoly. It has become a platform for accelerating change, growth, and customer awareness with employees. The culture of Sydney Water is more open and cognizant because of the increased employee connections, interactions and knowledge sharing facilitated by Yammer.

The Technology

Yammer

Metrics Matter

A dispersed workforce, departmental silos and employee segregation created cultural and collaborative barriers at Sydney Water. A company survey revealed a strong desire for a change to the communications status quo, and a formal pilot of Yammer was introduced to the marketing and communications team. Within days, 90% of the department had signed up. They began inviting colleagues in other departments and the Sydney Water Network exploded into four hundred in a few short months, representing more than 25% of eligible employees. Currently, engagement is at 46% of users, which is quite high compared to others.  

Disruptive Factor 

Decades of equilibrium solidified company culture as top down, heavily engineering focused, risk averse, and insular in its awareness of stakeholders and customers. In addition, barriers to collaboration and cultural change included geographical dispersion, nine siloed divisions, and segregation between blue-collar and white-collar employees. Yammer has catalyzed breaking down these walls and shifted the culture away from just doing a job to creating conversations among the workforce about innovation, efficiency, the company’s processes, and its customers. 

Shining Moment 

Not only do our employees love it, but leadership as well. Our new managing director often gets into work at 6am and starts the day by answering questions and posting interesting nuggets or questions. There is a type of passion for Yammer, which, until now, seemed out of place at a company like ours. 

 

ABOUT Sydney Water

Sydney Water delivers essential and sustainable water solutions for the benefit of the community. Sydney Water provides drinking water, recycled water, wastewater services and some stormwater services to more than four million people in Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains.

We source drinking water from a network of dams managed by the Sydney Catchment Authority and from the desalination plant before treating it and delivering it to customers' homes and businesses.

Sydney Water is Australia's largest water utility with 3,000 staff and an area of operations covering 12,700 km2.

Sydney Water is a statutory State owned corporation, wholly owned by the New South Wales Government and has three equal, principal objectives:

  • To protect public health
  • To protect the environment
  • To be a successful business.