So my work has suddenly gone yammer crazy. It’s a big company but won’t say who it is as they can be a bit precious.
From what I can gather yammer is a sort of business Facebook. The question is why would a business encourage people to not work and go on social media instead? I’m very wary of it and have decided to keep it St an arms length .

they’re looking to sack people and inviting them to incriminate themselves?

Morrisons…. By any chance

Exactly my thoughts. Seems to me it’s going to be a monitored Facebook scenario. Big brother is watching me!

It is supposed to be “social networking” for business so rather than posting comments and pictures about your weekend/dog/hangover, you post work content or questions.

The theory is it gets people talking to each other and reaches people who you wouldn’t normally talk to due to being in different locations or departments. It can be quite useful if enough people use it, the issue we have is getting people to use it because there isn’t a lot of content but this content only comes from people using it….

Used it a lot at my old work. It was a very small company (<10 employees) but had people scattered over a few locations.

The way we used it mainly was to replace group emails as well as eliminating the need for stuff like post it note lying around (minimalist, paperless office). It worked pretty well- it was possible to ‘tag’ people in post so that you were sure they would be notified, or you could just scroll through every department (at least the ones you were allowed to see) to see what stage other projects were at etc.

Come to think of it I might suggest it at my new place!

Our company did the same a few months back… it quickly became full of “Good morning everyone, may jesus be with you throughout your day” and that kind of crap. Followed by “Likes” on that kind of crap.
One day, I posted “I thought this was supposed to be a business tool. It’s just full of Facebook rubbish” and it kind of died after that.
Just had a look – it’s still there, but hardly used.

(Yes, I’m a powerful guy in this organisation 😆 )

We’ve tried to use it at our place but it’s only any good if lots of people embrace it. If a business has multiple different locations it’s a good way for people to exchange ideas and ask questions.

The cynic in me suggests it’s just a way of making email inboxes smaller by moving/hiding the problem elsewhere.