Wiley - Don’t take Yammer, or yourself, too seriously
“They come to Yammer for the cats and dogs, but they stay for the work.”
These are the words of Ron Perazza, Director of Communications at global publishing company Wiley, as he shared how his team rolled out Yammer to 8,000 employees around the world.
Ron’s top tips for a successful Yammer network are to not take yourself too seriously, allow people to interact in casual ways, and use analytics to be informed about how people are working and engaging.
Wiley actively promotes fun and socialisation on Yammer amongst its 8,000 users. The result of doing so has led to better business value and stronger two-way relationships across the organisation.
The global publishing firm was among the top six organisations for multiple Yammer Communities in SWOOP’s analysis of almost 9,000 Communities. It boasted five communities in the top 1% from the 8,916 Communities analysed.
Ron said what was interesting about these top five-ranked communities was that while they were each focused on work, they also had a distinct “personality” – a unique way of doing things – that make them successful.
“They don’t go about their work in quite the same way. That’s okay. We can’t say, ‘Here’s a top Yammer Community, therefore this is how to use Yammer’,” Ron said.
“They each carve their own path to success based on their unique community.”
Ron Perazza, Director of Communications, Wiley.
What is common among these top five Yammer Communities in SWOOP’s benchmarking is they all have a sense of fun mixed in with purely work-related posts. It’s something Wiley has promoted since introducing Yammer in September 2017 as part of a move to Microsoft’s 365 suite.
“We actively promote Yammer as a casual platform and these top communities are a reflection of that,” Ron said.
“Engagement and diversity are connected. You have leave room for informal conversation and fun. It can’t just be like a black and white newsletter.”
One of the surprises for Wiley’s Yammer community managers, Ron and Thomas Dent, was that a global sales partnership group was amongst Wiley’s top five communities, according to SWOOP’s benchmarking. There are 22 people in the group, and it turns out every one of those 22 people are engaged, collaborating and connecting with each other.
“Every single person in that group has responded to others in that group,” said Tom.
Ron and Tom had never before heard of the private community and are keen to learn more from them to showcase the community to other sales teams as an example of best practice.
Staying connected during the COVID-19 crisis
Wiley has regularly been among the top performers in SWOOP’s previous benchmarking reports, with a thriving Yammer network across the 200-year-old publishing company.
When many of the offices transitioned to work from home in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ron said analytics from SWOOP became key to see what topics were generating interest, which then allowed the communications team to react and focus on those topics of interest.
“Yammer usage exploded during the transition to remote work,” said Ron.
“It was pretty fascinating to watch from an analytics side, to see the increased activity, and to see the increased interest in Yammer as a platform, not only for social communication, but as a way to stay connected for business as well.”
Ron said it was also interesting to see how people used Yammer differently.
One common theme was the interest on Yammer in wellbeing communities – parenting groups, wellness groups, and exercise groups.
“People were sharing advice on how to create healthy work-from-home routines that also left room for meals, time to support kids with school-work, or other ways to break up the work-day for other obligations. Sharing resources for different online learning also became popular,” Ron said.
“Yammer was the focal point for that activity in a way that was very different from when we were all going to the office every day. And it was something that we saw happening globally, across all of our offices.”
Using SWOOP data to target campaigns
The communications team capitalised on the engagement on Yammer during the pandemic to promote learning and wellbeing across the organisation with things like “Technology Tuesday” or “Wellness Wednesday”.
They would post on these topics and encourage responses and interactions. All of this was measured with SWOOP.
For example, information about a Microsoft Teams training session would be shared on Technology Tuesday, encouraging people to engage in that topic.
“As remote work became the norm, many people had questions about using Teams for different types of meetings, or how to collaborate on a file in OneDrive,” Ron said.
“They were interested in how to do things virtually that they might have otherwise been done in person.
“We established Yammer topics for the different applications in our M365 community. We could then use SWOOP to track that activity, see where people had questions, which of those topics were generating the most interactivity, and then react to that.”
A common theme to the questions were around different functions of Teams.
“Knowing that people wanted to have a better understanding of Teams led us to create a series of videos about the different features; for example, how to host a live event or how to add external users to your Team,” Ron said.
“The data we could see using SWOOP let know what was happening so we could then react to it in a meaningful, targeted way.”
Encourage connection around topics of interest
Even though Yammer is a tool for work, Wiley never pushed this angle when Yammer was introduced back in 2017, instead encouraging people to connect on it about anything they wanted – cats, dogs, photography, parenting groups.
Three years later, Yammer is a strong player in Wiley’s suite of collaboration spaces. The fact Wiley had five business-based Yammer Communities in the top 1% of SWOOP’s benchmarking is a clear indication that work is being done on Yammer.
“When we launched our Yammer network there was a lot of debate about what would it be used for and what value would it bring?” Ron said.
“It’s easy to think that because you have a work tool it can only be used for work.”
Ron said Wiley’s communications team was successful early on in convincing people not to limit themselves to talking only about work at work. He said it was important to acknowledge there was a community on Yammer, just as there is a community in any workplace, that exists beyond the work being done.
“Yammer became the digital version of that community,” Ron said.
“A place where people can engage and interact with each other in real, meaningful, informal, ways. A place where you can talk about parenthood, talk about your pets, your hobbies or your other interests outside work.”
Ron said these activities allow people to connect and bond in ways that are deeper than just working together on a project.
“Getting to know your co-workers, interacting and engaging with them beyond work often gives people a greater understanding and builds personal bonds in ways that work doesn’t,” he said.
“Regarding SWOOP specifically, once you create that environment, the analytics allow you to have multiple views into that environment. You can see what’s working or what’s not working or where there might be challenges or where employees might have questions.
“The first step is not to take yourself too seriously and let people interact in casual ways so that they can get comfortable with the platform. Be forgiving and leave space for mistakes and messiness. Then use the analytics to get informed about how people are working and how people are engaging.”
Learn more about Wiley’s journey with Yammer and SWOOP in our case studies on ROI and executive leadership.
Hear directly from Ron on how Wiley is using SWOOP to measure success.
