I’m very keen on the idea of the enterprise social network Yammer and what it could mean for internal business communication.
I visualise a time when our interstate frontline staff are discussing
the pros and cons of a new business initiative with our senior managers
at Head Office. When the CEO spots a game-changing idea from a new
employee during his daily check of the site. When our sales teams are
reporting back from the field, creating excitement about wins as they
happen.
But enterprise social tools like Yammer are not like our traditional internal communication tools:
- We don’t control the message.
- We can’t force people to get involved - and success relies on interaction.
- We can’t guarantee success.
It’s actually pretty scary. I know of plenty of organisations
that have experimented with Yammer and it failed. People didn’t see the
value, they didn’t find the time and it fizzled out.
At this moment in time, the success of Yammer within my own
organisation is at make or break point. Over one-sixth of our workforce
signed up within the first few weeks of my soft launch, simply via word
of mouth. I invited those people I could rely on to join first. That
worked well. A key group of about half a dozen people from across the
business were very keen and began posting updates, asking questions,
replying to threads and creating groups.
Next, with a good proportion of staff onboard I sent an email to our
Senior Management Team, outlining the benefits and asking for their
commitment to the network – just five minutes a day, twice a week to
begin with.
I also spoke face-to-face with a number of staff: if they were
working on an interesting project I suggested a Yammer post. If I was
writing an intranet news story on behalf of a business unit, I suggested
that they could also promote their work in a status update.
I’ve nudged conversations along, introduced talking points, asked questions and tried to encourage the lurkers.
Now, we’re six weeks in. The initial excitement has died off. There
are other business priorities. Less people are joining. Those who
signed-up haven’t revisited the site. The goodwill of our Senior
Managers is there, but they just haven’t found the time.
So, I’m asking myself some key questions and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts:
- do we just ‘experiment’ with enterprise social tools such as
Yammer, or do we strategise the roll-out as we do with all other
internal comms channels?
- by creating a strategy for success, can we ever guarantee a social tool like Yammer is a success?
- what does success look like on these tools anyway?
- finally, what can we learn about our employee engagement if there
is low interaction through Yammer. How can we use this to influence the
rest of our internal communications strategy?
These are the questions I’ll be working through over the coming months…..I’ll keep you updated.
*Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Allthough the article is a couple of years old, some statements keep nagging as I keep hearing them. They can be summarized by the following quote:
"But enterprise social tools like Yammer are not like our traditional internal communication tools:
- We don’t control the message.
- We can’t force people to get involved - and success relies on interaction.
- We can’t guarantee success."
Starting with the third item: Can you name any tool that actually does guarantee success?
And the first: when your goal is to control the message, don't use a collaboration tool. Use a send to all mechanism, preferably with a 'do-not-reply' from address. ;-) You then automatically arrive at your second point: if you want involvement, let go of the control issues....