Implementing Internal Social Media: A Yammer Case Study

Rebecca Jackson – Intranet Specialist @_rebeccajackson

Overview

• About Melbourne Water

• What is Yammer?

• Our journey

• Implementation

• Measuring success

• Where to from here?

About Melbourne Water

• Owned by the Victorian Government

• 850 employees across numerous sites

• Significant business, responsible for managing $9.4 billion in assets

• Manages Melbourne’s water supply catchments, removes and treats sewage, and manages rivers and creeks and major drainage systems

What is Yammer?

• Enterprise microblogging platform

• Sites open to users with the same company email

• Some key features:

– Microblogging– Profiles

– Groups

• Easy to set up

• https://www.yammer.com

Our journey

• First user October 2010• Took off in March 2011

• First Community in July

• Peak uptake days March/August

• 108 new members in May, biggest month

• Key communications late July/August

rj8

rj9

rj10

rj11

rj12

rj13

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Slide 5

rj8 First userjacksonr, 19/08/2011

rj9 Took off in March 2011jacksonr, 19/08/2011

rj10 First communityjacksonr, 19/08/2011

rj11 Biggest month in May 108 new membersjacksonr, 19/08/2011

rj12 Key comms messages July/Augustjacksonr, 19/08/2011

rj13 peak uptake march augustjacksonr, 19/08/2011

rj14 peak uptake march augustjacksonr, 19/08/2011

Our journey

• Currently 458 members (53.8%)

• 2,466 messages

• Average followers 25

• Average messages 4.9

• 164 users with more than 1 message (35.8%)

• 61 users with greater than average (11.8%)

• 4.37% (top 20 users) have generated 60% of content

Our journey

• Sharing updates

How are our people using it?

Our journey

• Asking questions

How are our people using it?

Our journey

• Common interest groups, work and personal

How are our people using it?

Our journey

• Crowdsourcing information

How are our people using it?

Our journey

• This was something they had been asking for!

– “Technical forums for sharing best practice, asking questions and getting feedback”

– “Internal Twitter so you can follow colleagues with good ideas”

– “Stakeholder, alliance or project partner pages”

– “Facebook style individual… pages”

How are our people using it?

Implementation: soft versus formal

• Personal Yammer strategies

• Viral can be okay but…

• Monitoring– Watch, nurture and tend to weeds…

– The first “Yammer incident”

Soft approach

Implementation: soft versus formal

• Rewarding users

– 200th, 300th and 400th user prizes– Information Management competition

– Yammer photography competition

A more formal approach

Implementation: soft versus formal

• Weekly Yammer Tips

A more formal approach

Implementation: soft versus formal

• OnTap article

• Yammer guide

• Yammer as a communications channel

An even more formal approach

Measuring success

• Observation and analysis– Members statistics

– New users, new and useful conversations

• Senior leaders getting involved

• Generating discussions outside of Yammer

Where to from here?

• Continue to nurture the community

• Build formal business case

• Investigate (and hopefully move to) paid version

• The bigger Social Media picture– Social Media policy

– Community of Practice– Intranet upgrade

Questions?