The topic of enterprise collaboration is one that fascinates me; I love it when organizations learn to use solutions properly to break down communications barriers between employees.
That’s why, when I start working with customers who are deploying Office 365 (or who are already there!), I always ask how they plan to use Yammer. Surprisingly, the typical response I get is, “Oh, we haven’t turned that on, yet; we don’t quite know what we’re going to do with that and how we’re going to manage it.”
Well, how about just letting your employees communicate?! Most people are already quite familiar with social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and whatever else is out there – Yammer is not a big jump from that!
At one customer I work with, I told them, “Just turn it on, let’s see what happens.” The IT Director agreed, and by the next morning, users had noticed the new service icon in their Office 365 menu and had gone to check it out. Conversations were already happening! Users were already creating groups! Communication was happening!
Today, they use Yammer on a daily basis to keep everyone updated on promotions, marketing campaigns, and good news. Some even like to post quotes to motivate others!
All this means there are much less emails being sent to “All users” and clogging up inboxes. Users have also loaded the Yammer app on their mobile devices and using it to communicate easily with their coworkers.
Excellent!
Now, back in November, I presented at a CIO summit in Banff, Alberta, and we got on the topic of Yammer. One of the CIOs said they hadn’t turned it on because they did not know how to handle employees that would post rants or negative comments. HR was concerned that it would turn into a big dumping ground of employee complaints.
Another CIO quickly jumped in with a story.
Oh, we turned on Yammer, and yes – at some point, one employee went on a very negative rant about the organization, the president, and generally everything. The HR DIrector rushed into my office in a panic and asked me if I could remove the post. I said, “You know what, let’s give it about an hour”.
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Sure enough, other employees responded to his post, and before you know it, a lot of people were responding with very positive comments. One employee even said, “Hey, I know how you feel. I felt like that a couple of months ago, but had a talk with so-and-so and he helped me through it. We work in a pretty damn good place!”
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After several hours of responses, the original poster ended up admitting that his colleagues were right, that the organization was indeed a good place to work, and that he would work through his frustrations.
How awesome is this!! Generally speaking, it has been shown that most workers do enjoy their work, and here was a case of employees helping out colleagues.
So don’t be afraid to open up Yammer and break down those communications barriers – I strongly believe it is very beneficial to organizations.
I leave you with another great story; read how KLM is leveraging Yammer to improve inflight customer service:
