Internal communication has a direct impact on employee morale and retention, knowledge and adoption of important policies and procedures, and goodwill ambassadorship. Unfortunately, memos and emails are not always the best way to reach employees, especially at organizations where a large part of the workforce consists of first-line employees who do not sit in front of computers all day. That’s where Yammer comes in. 

Understanding Yammer

Yammer — a Microsoft product — is an enterprise social networking service used for internal communication. Yammer can be used to

  • Send and receive messages to and from colleagues
  • Engage in chat-style communication
  • Conduct live, one-on-one or group conversations 
  • Create and join communities such as project-based workgroups

Yammer’s features include

  • A user-specific home feed
  • Communities, such as for specific projects or departments
  • Search functionality for locating people, files and conversations
  • The ability to react to, respond to and share posts
  • People tagging 
  • The ability to attach files to posts
  • Live virtual event hosting and recording
  • Poll creation and dissemination

Consider Yammer your digital watercooler. Not only does it help people feel more connected to others across the organization and to the leadership team, it also creates engagement while facilitating efficient communication.

The Role of KPIs

However, it’s not enough to simply use Yammer. You also need to understand how your messaging on Yammer is being received. Key performance indicators can help you measure the performance of your communication efforts against key business objectives. Yammer KPIs are good indicators of how effectively your company is meeting its business communication goals as well as what’s working and what’s not. That allows you the insight and opportunity to pivot as needed.

Yammer metrics are important, but which ones matter most? In other words, of all the things you can measure, what should you most focus on measuring? Following, we provide an overview of the Yammer engagement metrics you should be paying attention to. 

Yammer KPIs to Follow

Yammer KPIs should be customized to your organization and your internal communications department’s specific goals. However, some foundational Yammer KPIs include 

  • Adoption: First things first. If you’re trying to communicate with employees on Yammer, you first need to determine if people are actually using the platform. Take a look at adoption of the platform across your institution, as well as across different workgroups. Are certain kinds of employees using Yammer more than others? This can also help when it comes to segmenting your communication efforts to reach a specific audience or to tailoring how you deliver the same core message to different internal audiences. 
  • Reach: This Yammer metric looks at unique views for your individual messages to give you an idea of the number of people you are actually reaching. Take, for example, a message targeting 100 employees that gets 100 views. That’s 100 percent reach. On the other hand, if your messaging went to 1,000 people but only 100 viewed it, your reach is just 10 percent. By understanding your reach, you can determine whether messaging segmentation is necessary. 
  • Views: This Yammer KPI is about determining how well your message has been absorbed by its intended audience. Employees who don’t view your messaging at all may require a different approach. Employees who view your messaging just once may require follow-up messaging to ensure comprehension. Those viewing your messaging more than once likely have a good grasp of the content and what it means for them. 
  • Engagement: Yammer engagement metrics relate to the number of comments, likes and shares your messaging triggers. By understanding the number of reactions in comparison to views, as well as what those reactions were, you can tell how your messaging was received. Additionally, looking at the percentage of unique viewers who liked or commented on your content gives you the ability to compare engagement across different types of Yammer communications, such as short written posts, videos, etc. 
  • Time spent: This Yammer KPI tells you how long viewers spend on a message from the time they open it to the time they close it. This can tell you a lot about which formats, such as video or text, work best. Additionally, because time spent may vary across user groups, looking at such differences can be a good indicator of whether segmentation is needed. 

How Tryane Can Help

KPIs for Yammer require data. Tryane helps communications professionals extract that data that Yammer alone can’t provide, so you can better determine whether

  • Your Yammer communication efforts are having their intended effects, such as leading to specific employee behaviors
  • Certain employees respond better than others to your messaging
  • Different kinds of content work better for different kinds of message dissemination or employee groups
  • Your efforts are supporting overarching business goals, such as improved employee morale 

Yammer metrics can help you show company leadership the value of your communication efforts. If you’re looking for an effective way to gain insights into your Yammer KPIs, contact Tryane today to learn more about our powerful analytics solutions.