ACE: Building an Employee Communications Brand
More Than a Platform. ACE gives BME a consistent way to reach employees while keeping content approachable, engaging, and distinctly Acenda. It's become a home for organizational information, leadership communication, employee recognition, culture and connection.
Recognition
2026 Ragan Employee Communications Awards
2025 Ragan Zenith Awards
2024 eHealthcare Awards
The Challenge
As Acenda grew, employee communication grew more complex with it. Employees worked across multiple locations, programs, roles, schedules and traditional channels alone couldn't keep everyone connected.
The team saw an opportunity to build something bigger than another internal communications platform: a recognizable employee communications brand that employees could trust as a consistent source of information and that gave them more ways to connect with Acenda and with each other.
The Idea
The team created ACE, Acenda Communications for Employees, giving the platform its own identity and personality while keeping it firmly tied to the Acenda brand.
ACE became the voice of Acenda for employees, bringing organizational news, leadership communication, recognition, resources and opportunities for connection into one place.
The team didn't treat the ACE rollout as a technology launch. They built it as a brand and employee engagement initiative from day one.
The Strategy: Educate, Engage, Repeat
To introduce ACE and build lasting adoption, the team developed the Educate, Engage, Repeat strategy.
Educate helped employees understand what ACE was, why it mattered and how to use it, through a coordinated onboarding and training campaign.
Engage gave employees reasons to come back. Activities, recognition, organizational content, events and interactive experiences made ACE part of everyday life at Acenda.
Repeat kept the momentum going through ongoing campaigns, activities and communications, rather than leaning on the initial launch to sustain adoption.
The Results
ACE hit 97% adoption within its first six months and has stayed above 90% as the platform has matured.
More recent data shows about 73% weekly engagement, proof that employees aren't just registered for ACE. They're actually using it.
Campaigns built around ACE have driven measurable spikes in engagement. For example, in 2025 and 2026 Acenda hosted ACE campaigns promoting a Top Workplace celebration and a Staff Bash celebration. For the 2026 campaigns, the BME team utilized their understanding of ACE users and the platform's strengths to optimize the campaigns for engagement and UGC (user generated content). The results showcase a more engaged, informed, active audience:
43.9%
More
Visits
45.7%
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Likes
59.2%
More
Comments
Across all of ACE, the BME team's use of high-level audience engagement techniques and understanding of ACE users has benefitted the platform as a whole. This has led to increased activity year over year:
+3.0%
Visits
+13.5%
Likes
+13.5%
Active
Users
National Recognition
ACE and the broader work behind Acenda's employee experience have earned national recognition, including the 2026 Staffbase VOICES Americas Award for Employee Experience.
Staffbase called Acenda's approach a "master class in employee experience."
ACE-related work has also been recognized through:
Amazing Workplace Culture Finalist / Ragan Employee Communications Awards 2026
Intranet Finalist / Ragan Zenith Awards 2025
Platinum for Best Internal Communications / eHealthcare Awards 2024
More Than a Platform
One of ACE's most important outcomes has been the creation of a recognizable employee communications brand.
ACE gives BME a consistent way to reach employees while keeping content approachable, engaging and distinctly Acenda. It's become a home for organizational information, leadership communication, employee recognition, culture and connection.
Same ACE. New Superpowers.
In 2026, BME began the next evolution of ACE, moving the experience to Workvivo and expanding what employees can do on the platform.
The upgraded ACE introduces AI-powered search, an enhanced employee directory, improved communities and conversations, Journeys, recognition, a stronger mobile experience, and additional AI-enabled capabilities.
The strategy stays grounded in the brand employees already know and trust, rather than introducing a whole new platform identity:
Same ACE. New Superpowers. Still the voice of Acenda. Just smarter, faster, and even more connected.