Which Side of Yammer Are You On?
We’ve been at this “enterprise social” thing for quite awhile now. In that time, we’ve learned a lot about how companies are using Yammer. At Microsoft Ignite 2016, we showed this slide.
For some organizations, they’ve used Yammer, or some other enterprise social platform primarily for things on the left hand side. In these organizations, Yammer is viewed as “the company watercooler”, or the place where we have conversations related to town halls or events. When focused on the left hand side, people are generally enamored with vanity metrics like number of people that log in, or the number of messages posted. These use cases for Yammer are okay and the end up doing a pretty good job at helping to improve employee morale.
The problem is, when you poll employees at companies where they predominantly use Yammer for the left side, you hear things like “Yammer is an extra place for me to have to go. It’s an extra place for me to check.” And that’s understandable because left side activities aren’t built into the day-to-day workflow of your employees.
Organizations that use Yammer for the right hand side, however, tell us that they get much greater business value out of Yammer. They’ve used it to replace an existing process. Or their project teams use Yammer daily to communicate and share what they are working on. These organizations make a stronger connection to business value because they can see the value generated by the work being carried out on Yammer. Their measurements come in the form of alignment to business objectives and outcomes. They are able to realize true business transformation.
Of course, this is not to say that your organization should only use Yammer for the right OR the left. There’s certainly a place for both sides. In fact, when your organization is using Yammer on the right side, it makes the left side even better! Consider that the left side is more Internal Communications focused. Which means that when you have more people using Yammer for right side activities, Internal Comms has more eyeballs for their left side activities.
Is your organization using Yammer for the left side or the right side? Maybe you feel like your network is stuck in a rut. Consider how you might shift to the right. If you’re using Yammer on the right side, what are you using Yammer for? Please share for others to learn!
Need help getting started? Here are some resources that might help.
Work Out Loud on Yammer — 7-Day Challenge
Is your Yammer network ‘too social’? Here’s how to get a business focus
How to use Yammer for Business Continuity Planning
15 Reasons Posting a Yammer Message Might Be Better than Sending an Email
