The Seattle Farmers group used the mass effort rules quite a bit in two games run by Jeff Richard and David Dunham respectively.
The rules worked OK in general, but had some problems (note that some of the members of our group might not agree with the list below):
(1) It took a lot of arithmetic to track the average mass combat ability of the player heroes and their many followers
(2) There was no way to calculate the losses from a victory -- in general, HeroQuest victors take no damage
(3) Player heroes other than the leader had very little influence on the outcome of mass effort contests, and had little incentive to raise their mass effort abilities since they would be lost in the unit average
(4) Unit size had much less effect in combat and other kinds of mass effort than it does in rituals and other community support tasks.
Based on my experience as a player: I'd recommend planning for player heroes to have separate contests of their own during any mass effort contest, and then apply bonuses or penalties to the mass effort contest based on how the player heroes do.
For long-lived groups like hero bands, community warbands, and the like, I'd just make them characters with abilities for specific types of mass effort contests. Give them starting ratings based on either average member ability, or the community support table, but then maintain each ability rating as you would for a player hero or guardian, granting hero points and directed improvements, applying penalties based on "wounds", etc.
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