5 Ways Yammer Will Benefit Your Business

Yammer is a tool we have recently embraced within our organisation. Gone are the days of the “staff all” email, there’s a new, more interactive way to reach you all.

Yammer is the social network of the workplace, the “Facebook” of work. This may scare many business owners as social media is better known for procrastinating. However, if used properly, it can increase productivity in the workplace.

Over the years, I have learned that communication to staff within a business is key to an efficient and happy workforce. All too many times, a simple fact will become fiction. Only a handful of individuals are told the facts, office Chinese whispers occur, and the information discussed in the work kitchen bears little resemblance to the original facts. Yammer is a space where all announcements can be posted, discussed and viewed by everyone so there’s no confusion.

How can Yammer help…

1. Engage all staff and connect

It doesn’t matter how big or small the office is, sometimes you just never time that trip to the kitchen for a brew correctly to bump into the right colleagues for a catch-up. Or as is more commonplace than ever, you work remotely and rarely see anyone. With Yammer, you can ‘follow’ your colleagues directly, so you not only keep in the loop with what projects they’re working on and content they’re sharing, you can instantly engage with the click of a button.

It’s also a great platform to keep people informed of company social events and company performance updates.

2. Seamless Integration with Office 365

Nearly all Companies are now using the Office 365 suite as a base for effective working and Yammer just adds to this as it fully integrates with the new Office 365 Groups app.

3. Share Knowledge

For us, it’s a great platform for our techies to post information on a newly discovered issue and solution.  If you read an interesting article it’s easy to share with your colleagues as a link, PDF, image or even video.

4. Discuss

If you’re stuck on an issue or with a project, you can start a discussion within Yammer and find out who has the knowledge or expertise to help. If the next company team building session is due, and a staff member has a few ideas, they can start a poll and a discussion and see who else is interested. Don’t forget it’s easy to loop in colleagues by @mentioning them, so they get notified when something is being discussed that needs their input.

5. Search

Self-explanatory but a powerful feature, if it’s important to the company and your colleagues it will be on Yammer and then easily searched for, you end up with the right information, up to date and not a third hand version of the facts!

The list of effective business uses for Yammer is significant and it’s the reason I am pushing its use at our office and recommending to clients.