Yammer Sycophants

My employer's yammer isn't that bad tbh. Lots of different sub-groups, eg there's one where people just post pictures of their dogs, and others about special interests relevant to the work we do etc. Most of the groups seem to get used as a news comment area where someone will like a news story or maybe a scientific paper and people will chime in (often seem to be a small number of committed yammerers with strong opinions though).

General announcements and policies etc are posted in the intranet though, not Yammer.

In theory I can see yammer being used as a tool for fostering communication between people interested in a topic across the organisation, or getting a sense of general sentiment about an announcement across the organisation maybe. In practice it is basically a work-Facebook used by a small minority and I'm not sure what value the organisation really gets from having it (compared to the risk of a toxic atmosphere developing, which Tbf I think may have happened in some groups based on a post about that happening) . I've not encountered any behaviour as insufferable as that described by OP though.
 
Dis86 said:
Used to have something similar when I was at GE. Asian staff, particularly Indians constantly posting saying how excellent the company was, how brilliant x individual was, how y project was inspiring etc.
Then you'd get a delightful circle jerk, oh it was great to work with you, you're ideas were genius, no yours were, no yours were.
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Isn't that LinkedIn? Makes me barf....especially the people projecting this professional persona of caring and sunshine when they're actually self-obsessed narcissist bullies.
 
Freefaller said:
That seems more sensible - though we just have a teams channel for that (i.e. "general discussion" equivalent). However I can see how it can be used but to me at least it just seems like an extra layer. I guess if it's used properly it can be good, but most times it's not implemented in a way that lends itself to productivity.
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Teams is a bit messy for 2000+ people to use one combined 'General' channel, where Yammer being structured more like social media rather than a chatroom seems less prone to complete carnage erupting :p

Teams works much better on a team level (captain obvious here), whereas Yammer fills the space for wider scale business. In smaller places I can see it'd be completely redundant to have both.
 
Dis86 said:
Used to have something similar when I was at GE. Asian staff, particularly Indians constantly posting saying how excellent the company was, how brilliant x individual was, how y project was inspiring etc.
Then you'd get a delightful circle jerk, oh it was great to work with you, you're ideas were genius, no yours were, no yours were.
Click to expand...

This is my experience of Yammer. I have it installed, and currently have 76 unread notifications, a number comprised entirely of Indian and Filipino staff blowing smoke up the company’s **** I’m willing to bet, and a number I’m only going to let grow. It’s all utterly wretch inducing.

They actually emailed me when my daughter was born in 2020, by emergency C-section while I was trapped on one of their ship’s in the Gulf I might add, asking whether I could send them a photo of my daughter so that they could post it on Yammer about how the company’s family etc, while I was still stuck onboard. My answer was less than polite, shall I say.
 
Kenai said:
Teams is a bit messy for 2000+ people to use one combined 'General' channel, where Yammer being structured more like social media rather than a chatroom seems less prone to complete carnage erupting :p

Teams works much better on a team level (captain obvious here), whereas Yammer fills the space for wider scale business. In smaller places I can see it'd be completely redundant to have both.
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Yes that does make sense - we have an intranet page where we have that sort of thing, it might be yammer, but it's not called yammer from what I can see. I guess the places Iv'e seen it wasn't implemented as well as your company. :)
 
Kenai said:
Teams is a bit messy for 2000+ people to use one combined 'General' channel, where Yammer being structured more like social media rather than a chatroom seems less prone to complete carnage erupting :p

Teams works much better on a team level (captain obvious here), whereas Yammer fills the space for wider scale business. In smaller places I can see it'd be completely redundant to have both.
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Yeah that's what we use (Yammer / Teams / Sharepoint now) across out 55k staff global financial services company - MS have made a big push into FS corporate space recently
 
The Funktopus said:
This is my experience of Yammer. I have it installed, and currently have 76 unread notifications, a number comprised entirely of Indian and Filipino staff blowing smoke up the company’s **** I’m willing to bet, and a number I’m only going to let grow. It’s all utterly wretch inducing.
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I guess that's the culture in some asian countries then.
 
I was at a job that tried to use this.

It was heavily promoted
I think a small range of extroverts used it. It got work unfriendly and then quickly disappeared!

Obviously I didn't use it. I do not want to connect with randoms at work I wouldn't connect with any other way!

:D
 
Freefaller said:
Yes that does make sense - we have an intranet page where we have that sort of thing, it might be yammer, but it's not called yammer from what I can see. I guess the places Iv'e seen it wasn't implemented as well as your company. :)
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We have (IMO) too many 'communication channels' but viewed in isolation, each does make a reasonable case for existing.

Sharepoint - This is all file storage, project or function based, not for interactive communication
Intranet (built on Sharepoint) - this is where you find 'fixed' information, policies, standards, news etc, not for interactive communication
Yammer - company wide interactive communication, including social and work related discussion
Teams - local team level interactive communication, for stuff where sending emails with 20 recipients and having dozens of reply-to-alls doesnt work
Email - individual level interactive communication, as you'd expect from email, with occasional high priority 'broadcast' information

The only real problems arise when people aren't clear if something ought to be asked/shared at a Teams level or Yammer level or could be found on the Intranet.
 
Kenai said:
We have (IMO) too many 'communication channels' but viewed in isolation, each does make a reasonable case for existing.

Sharepoint - This is all file storage, project or function based, not for interactive communication
Intranet (built on Sharepoint) - this is where you find 'fixed' information, policies, standards, news etc, not for interactive communication
Yammer - company wide interactive communication, including social and work related discussion
Teams - local team level interactive communication, for stuff where sending emails with 20 recipients and having dozens of reply-to-alls doesnt work
Email - individual level interactive communication, as you'd expect from email, with occasional high priority 'broadcast' information

The only real problems arise when people aren't clear if something ought to be asked/shared at a Teams level or Yammer level or could be found on the Intranet.
Click to expand...

If it was used like that in all companies then I think it would probably be useful. When you put it like that it seems quite sensible!
 
One of my previous employers used it and it was almost exclusively used for virtue signaling and brown-nosing.

Utterly pointless platform as you can't use it to say what you actually think.
 
Lol. Get stuffed with this rubbish. I moved in to a new role recently and HR updated my records and Yammer was somehow notified. I got emails every day with highlights of what people were saying on there. It's hard to not respond with sarcasm on it :p
 
Work keeps trying to get us to use it, or at least their own implementation which sits on top of it, rather than WhatsApp which suddenly got wide adoption in the last 2-3 years. Obviously being external to the company there is concern about what is posted on WhatsApp but you just can't beat it for convenience and most people don't want to install a work developed app on their personal phones.
 
I used Yammer at a telco I worked at until about 8 years ago, it was pretty handy for things like recruiting internal testers. Didn't realise it was still a thing though!
 
I've never heard of Yammer, but from this thread it basically sounds like any other social media i.e. full of people trying to kiss arse and look good.
 
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