AXA Group: Energizing Internal Communication and Engaging Employees with Poppulo

AXA, a leading player in insurance, savings, and asset management, protects 93 million people across 51 countries. As part of their digital transformation, AXA chose the Poppulo POP platform, deployed to 70,000 employees in 15 countries. In this article, you'll discover how POP was implemented within AXA Belgium, one of the first countries to adopt it, for a more modern, interactive, and truly engaging internal communication.

AXA is one of the major players in insurance brokerage, savings, and asset management. AXA provides protection for 93 million individuals and professionals across 51 countries, thanks to a team of 140,000 employees and distributors worldwide.

For several years, AXA has embarked on an ambitious digital transformation to maintain connectivity with its vast network and optimize its working methods. This is a comprehensive approach that affects all company sectors. It aims to review all business processes, thereby facilitating service delivery and communication with clients.

Internal communication was also at the heart of this profound transformation. The group chose Poppulo to support this change, and together, they deployed POP, the new internal communication and employee engagement platform.

POP is now used by 70,000 employees across 15 countries, with a target of 100,000 in the coming months. Discover why AXA deployed POP, with the concrete case of AXA Belgium, one of the first to adopt the solution.

A SHARED GLOBAL PROJECT BASED ON VOLUNTARY ADOPTION

For many years, the AXA group's intranet facilitated the transmission of information to employees. Being not very dynamic, limited in formats, and rather focused on "top-down" communication, AXA Group wished to modernize its tool. The challenges included:

• Offering more dynamic, varied, and easy-to-consume content
• Re-engaging employees through a playful platform with the codes of social networks, easy to use
• Complying with security standards: GDPR, ISO27001

Changing tools at the group level was not easy. To ensure the project's success, AXA Group's strategy was simple: offer different global offices the voluntary deployment of the future platform. Initially, 7 entities embarked on this adventure.

For Poppulo's CSMs, the challenge was significant: to propose a unique platform to all group participants while being adaptable to local specificities. That's what the framing workshops achieved in just 3 months: a common base for all countries and customization for the needs of each local entity.

Thus, POP was born: an internal communication platform with a memorable name, which stands for "Platform Of People.” A name that reflects the desire to put employees at the heart of the transformation and engage them as actors in the group's communication.

Thanks to the platform's success in the pioneering local offices, and the support of Poppulo consultants, POP has been adopted by tens of thousands of employees in the group.

THE CASE OF AXA BELGIUM: A FINE EXAMPLE OF CREATIVITY TO GET EMPLOYEES ON BOARD

From the beginning, AXA Belgium volunteered to test the new internal communication platform. The Belgian entity aimed to re-energize internal communication with innovative content to engage its 3,000 employees. A challenge that was met with flying colors!

Let's see how AXA Belgium organized the platform's launch among its employees, orchestrated daily administration, and achieved impressive results.

A Deployment that Puts All the Eggs in One Basket

AXA Belgium's Internal Communication team was highly inventive in promoting POP's adoption. They chose to launch the platform during Easter, taking advantage of distributing chocolate eggs to employees to introduce the new platform and assist them in creating their accounts—overall, a great way to support the change.

To encourage employees to connect and engage from the project's start, the AXA Belgium team was very creative and organized a digital egg hunt! The principle was simple: users had to find 5 golden eggs hidden in articles published on POP. A highly effective and playful strategy to encourage employees to become familiar with the platform and engage with the content by "liking" and leaving comments.

Thanks to this dual initiative, 98% of the 3,000 employees adopted the tool from its launch.

Because the codes of social networks are known to everyone, POP was readily adopted. The platform is intuitive and does not require training for the user.
Zeger Lindemans, Head of Internal Communication and Events, AXA Belgium

Features Serving the Content of Each Department

With well-established communication governance, the Communication, Branding, Sustainability, HR, and Brokerage departments transform communication each day, ensuring it aligns with the company's strategy. It all happens in the "News Room" to orchestrate relevant content for all their targets, including employees. Specifically, all departments meet weekly and coordinate their respective actions. This meeting is key: not only to build the communication editorial calendar but also (and especially!) to ensure that content is coherent and compliant. This governance is very effective: on POP, AXA Belgium succeeds in offering its employees a relevant engagement experience by conveying the right messages to the right audiences.

Thanks to POP, AXA Belgium's Internal Communication and Event Service benefits from many advanced editorial features that the old intranet did not offer. For example:

• Campaign creation
• Highlighting current hot topics
• Multilingual functionalities
• Innovative content that fosters engagement: video (Poppulo Enterprise Video), quizzes, polls
• Precise performance tracking through the dashboard.

"With Poppulo Enterprise Video, we have eliminated the static aspect of our video publications, offering playback right from the homepage, without needing to open the post," explains Zeger Lindemans. This feature is a major asset for AXA Belgium, as video accounts for nearly 20% of all content.

The POP platform mainly focuses on the "hot" content of the moment. As for "cold" content, such as internal regulations, AXA Belgium decided to keep it on its old intranet. To this end, the company set up a carousel of widgets to display the "hot topics" on the intranet, linking back to POP—a synergy of both tools that meets the diverse needs of employees.

Communicating and Engaging Employees: A Case Study of Two-Way Communication

One of POP's strengths highlighted by AXA Belgium is its ability to build an internal communication strategy that responds to a hybrid work policy. Many employees work from home. In this context, it's crucial to ensure the engagement of all employees. POP allows the implementation of concrete actions to involve all workers. On the different thematic channels, employees easily interact with publications through "like" and comment functionalities. They can respond to integrated quizzes and participate in challenges organized by the internal communication department.

POP is a bit like an internal Instagram; it's a tool much more aligned with modern communication technology. Publications closely resemble those of social networks.
Zeger Lindemans, Head of Internal Communication and Events, AXA Belgium

To push two-way communication even further, the "owner" communicator of a publication is required to moderate the post and must respond to comments and questions. These interactions are highly appreciated as they create engagement. In a way, it's really doing "Internal Social Media Management."

This task is sometimes directly taken on by the employees themselves. For example, when changes to the teleworking policy were announced, some employees had doubts and questions. They wrote comments, to which other employees responded. A conversation thus ensued, resulting in very valuable elements that allowed AXA Belgium to react and better explain certain aspects of the announcement. Comments showed that, with few exceptions, the communication was well received overall in the end.

Well-Informed and Highly Engaged Employees

With POP, the dissemination of information has significantly improved without impacting communication governance. This new organization is done:

• By department and theme, thanks to the different channels of the platform
• By orchestrating content, with a focus on important information that employees must read and retain

In terms of employee engagement, the goal has been achieved. By accompanying employees, varying the content, and promoting upward communication, engagement naturally increased.

Channels allow AXA Belgium's internal communication department to target varied audiences with relevant information. Pinning publications ensures that the most important communications are read. Additionally, reaction functionalities like "likes" and comments help maintain employee engagement.

Also, gamification features like integrated quizzes and challenges help boost content performance. Notably, opening up to user-generated content (UGC) on occasion has been very successful, as demonstrated during the “AXA Week For Good” held in June.

Finally, thanks to its high adoption rate (98%), an internal survey reveals that POP has become the #1 source of information for 72% of employees, far ahead of traditional channels such as exchanges with managers and internal newsletters.

To measure such performances, the Internal Communication and Event Service relies on the integrated dashboard in POP. The most followed indicators include:

• Audience by channel
• Content performance: deep reads, likes, comments
• Video performance: number of views, click-through rates, completion of playback, video pause
• Engagement level regarding strategic topics via internal tags

The Mobile Perspective for Greater Engagement

The web version of the POP platform demonstrates its effectiveness: a very high adoption rate and a very good level of employee engagement. With its ease of use and ability to host numerous varied formats, it's easy for administrators to offer rich and varied content.

"It's a beautiful story between AXA and Poppulo," says Zeger. So why stop there? "We aim to develop POP in a mobile version. Even though all our employees have a computer, mobile remains the ultimate communication channel. Currently, the deep read rate is 82%. With the POP app, we are sure to further increase the content reading rate while maintaining this permanent contact point with our employees."

Poppulo: The Platform Serving Internal Company Communication

The AXA Group is recognized for being at the forefront of digital transformation and change management. By choosing Poppulo to develop POP, AXA also proved its effectiveness in engaging employees, encouraging them to play an active role in corporate communication, whether on a global or local scale, as illustrated by the example of AXA Belgium.

If, like AXA, you want to transform your internal communication and strengthen your employees' engagement, contact us! We would love to discuss the ways we can help, and accompany you on your journey.