Yes.

Okay you can stop reading now.

Seriously, it didn’t take long for the new announcement by Microsoft for people to start pinging me at work and on the phone (thankfully, I’m off social media or else my notifications would have been out of control).

“Helen, you’re a Yammer fan, what do you make of this?”

– every man and his dog

So this is something I was half expecting truth be told. Part of me thought that I would have to, yet again, reach for my Teflon Coat to deflect all the jaunts, jibes and “I told you so’s about the death of Yammer!”

After more than 10 years of it, I’m starting to get a little bit jaded, truth be told.

Yammer’s Identity Problem Was The Result of Others – Not By Yammer

Yammer has always had a bit of a stigma about it made worse after Microsoft acquired it back in 2012.

The stigma relates that many organisations never saw the the true value of it because their traditional business operating models and organisational cultures don’t – and still don’t – align with what this platform inspires....the employee voice.

I’m going to go out on a limb to say that many organisations “don’t get it”. (Or maybe they DO get it and deliberately stifle it because they’re unable to CONTROL what employees say on it it).

Why?

Their entire business model, how they’ve always operated based on hierarchy, power, competition, secrecy and individuality goes against the spirit of a platform that espouses openness, transparency, knowledge sharing, collaboration and relationships.

It’s oil and water.

Some organisations did see its value and these were the ones where it was actively supported, endorsed by senior leaders who were active on it; but unfortunately Yammer always seemed always to belong to the Corporate Communications, Marketing or Human Resources departments which lets face it face challenges of their own to “show their value” to the business.

Over time, when Microsoft Teams was created and rolled out, organisations questioned why you would use one over the other. Add into the mix, different situations regarding to how technology was implemented and rolled out to an organisation, messages started to get understandably, confused.

In the recent announcement, Microsoft is now going to call it Viva Engage if it’s accessed within Microsoft Teams (but keep the Yammer name if it’s accessed by desktop and web) along with some changes in the user interface and the new function of a Storyline and Stories (that failed on LinkedIn). I wrote about how Stories can be used for workplace learning back in 2020.

I lament that we’re still going to go around in circles once again trying to explain its value because we are missing the bigger picture.

In all this confusion what we aren’t talking about is the nature of our relationships at work, to work and of work today.

We were instead, all myopically focused on the tool itself.

What is Yammer?

Yammer is an enterprise social network inside companies for employees to engage, contribute and participate in knowledge and experience sharing, solving problems and building their networks inside a company. (It’s how social networks SHOULD have been like before the platform capitalists and our data over to advertisers – but that’s another story).

It crosses organisational silos and boundaries allowing the free flow of ideas from colleagues from diverse backgrounds, experiences and knowledge. Rather than just speaking to your direct team members, you can speak with people from across your business (and even external networks) who provide you with context, application and awareness.

It’s been around for over 10 years and I’ve been sharing stories of how this platform has built my career in the learning and expanded my networks globally. Yammer for me, has allowed my work to be completely transformed thanks to the brilliant people I’ve connected on it. I would say that it’s why I started down this path of doing what I do and sharing what I share.

It was a game changer when it came to my work because I finally had a voice.

I could show and share what I was working and learning about and I’d be connecting with people all around the world who gave me new ideas and insights about how to improve my work; and they returned the favour by sharing theirs.

It was all about reciprocity, authenticity and collegiality – words that seem to have disappeared from our competitive workplaces, (if they were ever there).

Where I didn’t always get connective opportunities with diverse team members to discuss, deliberate, pontificate and reflect sometimes, Yammer provided me with these that in turn, made my work stand out and that fed my need to be continually learning, continually improving, continually questioning.

Talking with people outside your direct team about your work makes you question the status quo. It makes you challenge how and why you do things a certain way and do them better. Why would any manager NOT want their team members to do that?!

But here’s the thing. It could have been named anything. Yammer, Schwammer, Max or Timbuktoo. That’s not the issue.

That’s where we lost our way.

So What’s the Problem with Yammer

Nothing, nothing’s wrong with it. That’s just the thing.

Saying something’s wrong with it is like saying that you don’t believe in giving employees a voice. That you think it’s pointless to have people from across the business talk to each other.

Instead, maybe it is its branding that sucks?

Maybe it was also a timing issue when Microsoft pushed Teams more as the be all and end all of modern work?

Maybe calling it two different names depending on whether you access it via web and desktop (Yammer) or via Teams (ex-Communities now Engage) is the issue here?

The thing is, we’re focussing on the wrong thing.

Forget what it’s called and where it sits or whether you access it via the desktop, app or in Teams. Forget all that.

Forget what Microsoft is doing or will do with the name now, in one month’s time or in the future. Accept that it’s about big business. We get that even if they don’t express that it’s about that. If they’re going to change the name again in future and weave a narrative around that, so be it. They’ll do it but it shouldn’t stop us from using it or more importantly, displaying the behaviours of community building, knowledge and experience sharing in our workplace. In fact, we shouldn’t delay this any further as despite having all the collaborative technology in our workplace and at our fingertips, we’re still as isolated from each other.

The only thing we need to be looking at here is how to help teams have a voice, make their environment safe to do their best work, to help them build connective relationships across the silos and networks in their company and most of all, to feel safe when they share their ideas, insights, knowledge and experiences openly with their colleagues.

At a time when we are seeing a multitude of systems in organisations that don’t speak to each other or are disjointed, fragmented, replicated or outdated, let’s not do the same with our people.

Let’s not stop people talking to people wherever they are, whatever job they do and whatever position they hold.

So whether you choose to use Yammer, Viva Engage, it doesn’t matter. Use what you like because it’s the behaviours that count. If you cannot show these behaviours at work because you feel uncomfortable, unsafe or your manager will use what you write against you, then it’s not the platform’s fault – it’s the fault of your company’s culture and models.

I don’t know what the future holds for Yammer/Communities/Viva Engage/<insert name here> because if there’s anything I’ve learned in my 25+ years of working life and seeing what is happening around the world, is that grass roots movements can change governments.

Can these tools do the same for traditional hierarchial business models?

If we focus on the trivialities of the name, what it does, where it sits, what is its business value, we’re not focussing on the real heart of the matter in a modern workplace: and that is people speaking to people.

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Image Credit: Emily Perina, Microsoft, https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/yammer-blog/introducing-viva-engage/ba-p/3571377