What is Yammer?

Yammer is a social network tool that comes with Office 365; this means everyone with a company email account will already have a Yammer account connected. Like Facebook, Yammer is split into a main wall of posts that is labelled ‘All Company’ and then there are groups for each interest area. It’s an excellent way to share information, ideas and feedback while also getting to know more about the company and your co-workers.

How is this useful?

As a new starter, who was familiar with Yammer, I found it a really good way to learn more about the areas of the company. The groups were a nice way to connect with colleagues with similar interests, I joined a music group and a crafting group. Posting on groups gave others an insight into who I was and many people used it as a conversation starter, which was nice and welcoming.

What can you do? Groups / Posts / Follow / Message

Inspired by the success of other groups and my interaction with others in the office I made a user experience (UX) group and a gamers group. I made both groups private, so the creation of the group is announced on the ‘All Company’ wall but the posts in the group aren’t; I was then encouraged to make the UX one public which greatly increased the number of replies to posts.
I have joined many groups to learn more about the company and Ed-Tech and I post possibly too many articles and videos; but I love that I am able to share research, news or things of interest with people around the company. This exchange of knowledge and interests has connected me to new areas and resources I wouldn’t have been able to find and lead to me connecting with some amazing people.
The ability to ‘Follow’ people is a notification system, which is a great way to keep an eye on people who post interesting things or to get flags when people you’re interested in connecting with create posts. Following people on my team, helped me get to know their interests and start conversations, which can be difficult in the beginning.
Direct messaging is available but I haven’t used it much, but it has come in handy when I have wanted to give feedback on a post, or wanted to get in touch with someone who doesn’t use Skype for something too quick and informal to warrant an email.

What did I do?

Thank you for reading my experience with Yammer and I hope those who haven’t checked it out will give it a look. I recommend joining or making groups for your job roles and research areas and using it to connect with and keep in touch with those who you don’t work face to face with. Please encourage new starters to login and join groups, it’s an excellent way to learn about their company and their peers. Head to Office 365 login and find the Yammer app.