Building a Culture of Cohesion: How Yammer Can Help

Yammer is revolutionizing the modern workplace by creating new opportunities for collaboration and innovation within many of the world’s top companies. Billed as a socially focused, organizational communication tool, Yammer allows employees from all across your organization to share input which can fuel success and growth.

The best social science has shown us that diverse groups often come up with more innovative and groundbreaking social intranet solutions and Yammer allows for that. Rather than trying to get everyone sitting around a table discussing a project, what if you could get everyone to connect digitally?

Yammer allows for this and so much more. With the right approach to this dynamic and game-changing platform, you can build a culture of cohesion and watch as the productivity of your teams soar.

Like so many truly revolutionary ideas, Yammer may be a tough sell if you have not laid the groundwork to ensure implementation and compliance are values that permeate through your workforce.

Hit the Ground Running

The more you know the individual strengths of your team, the easier it will be to identify the leaders you need to call on to lead the way. Once you know who your Yammer leaders will be, take the time to work with these people first.

The quicker they get on board and start utilizing social intranet system, the harder it will be for everyone else to delay getting involved. Hit the ground running by identifying early, who will be leading your change effort and who will be taking on positions of leadership around developing the skills of other.

Be Patient

Ok, so most of your team is using the new system but you are running into issues because not everyone is onboard.

What to Do with Social Intranet?

1. Consider what tactics you’ve been using to train Yammer.
2. Have you used presentations?
3. Have you setup experts to instruct those who might be less technologically savvy?
4. Have you explained thoroughly, to everyone, exactly why new social intranet is going to be so useful?
5. Remember that different people learn and process information in different ways. Rather than getting upset because your tactic didn’t work, consider modifying your approach. Be patient and remember that getting everyone on board and working together is what Yammer is all about.
6. Take the time to make it happen.

Be Clear

You need to make your expectations clear. If you want your best people interfacing in Yammer for a certain period of their work day, set clear parameters and expectations. The fewer people have to guess about how to implement a new system, the easier it will be to get everyone working together and moving as a unit.

Set expectations, be sure to clarify any lingering questions. Respect that it may take multiple approaches and conversions to get everyone on board and working together in unison.

Encourage Creativity

Not every division of your organization is going to derive the same benefits from Yammer so don’t expect everyone to follow the same flows of communication. Encourage people to use the system in their way as long as they are using it. Encourage creativity and realize that the value of an enterprise level social intranet network of this nature is in bringing a variety of voices into the fold.

Allow discussions to take place. Allow new ideas to form. Don’t fall into the mentality that you need to do things one way. This is precisely what Yammer is going to help you avoid.

This is about innovation, not following a neat and clear little system. You want people to feel free to speak up and share their viewpoints even and especially if they are divergent from typical thinking around a concept or project.

Believe it or not, without dissent, nothing new can flourish and grow.

Support the Leaders

Make sure you recognize the people putting in extra time to help others. Realize that the people who give of themselves in this way are your leaders and will be the ones who will help you to smooth out an organizational culture of cohesion and collaboration.

Bring the Key Players Together with Social Intranet

Consider creating a special Yammer space or time of your workday. Place leaders in roles where they will be able to share their best insights with each other and this with less intuition. Get people used to interfacing in mixed groups across departments. The more people more together in the physical world, the easier to translate that culture to the digital space.

Give Praise

Remember that getting your best people to work diligently with each other in Yammer is in many ways adding extra things on to their plates.

Recognize those who are going the extra mile to make things balance out. Consider easing your expectations if you are throwing extra demands on your team all of a sudden.

You can be a carrot or a stick person. At the end of the day, both can be effective. Just remember, your best people, need to be honored, respected and endorsed. Celebrate what they are achieving and they will feel connected to you and your organization.

Intranet + Yammer

We couldn’t pass over in silence about the importance of the way, how your business social media can be implemented. Of course, your digital workplace charged by Yammer will be much effective in collaboration process and incredibly fruitful with idea generating.

LS Intranet Solution has many widgets based exactly on social media communication and Yammer serves as an informational source for the messages on the home page.

If social media are so popular, so make it serve to grow your business. But if you already have one, then you’re ready for the company intranet to discover. This is the way, how you can evaluate all the advantages in figures. Such functionality is provided in our product as well.