Since the 2020 pandemic, more people have been working from home or far from office headquarters — so corporate communication with employees has changed.
CEOs have been taking advantage of technology to propel their businesses forward by optimizing communication, employee engagement, and data organization.
Employee communication software is used for private or internal communication between employees and managers.
Yammer became a popular choice for connecting leaders, communicators, and employees.
However, in just two years, Yammer competitors rose to the occasion with better features, serving as a possible, better alternative option.
Each one has different features and enhanced functions, so it’s good to be informed about all the best choices as an HR leader or CEO.
Table of contents
What does Microsoft Yammer have to offer?
Why some businesses are seeking alternatives to Yammer
The 5 Best Yammer Alternatives
What does Microsoft Yammer have to offer?
Yammer is a unique social networking communication system made with enterprise companies in mind. Its function is to connect you with people in your organization and to help with faster decision-making through multiple ways of communication.
The connectedness that Yammer provides makes it easier for anyone in a company to get in touch with experts and creatives within their company.
This allows you to gain quick inspiration, answers to questions, or collaborate quickly and effortlessly.
How does Yammer work?
This Microsoft product has been referred to as the Facebook of the corporate world.
The platform allows each staff member to make an account, post project updates, and share ideas in a place where others can comment or encourage content ideas with likes.
Yammer Functions:
- Community announcements
- Create virtual events
- Track each other's progress through status updates and company check-ins
- Join communities on a page (like a Facebook group page)
- Safely collaborate and share knowledge with sister companies, customers, and contractors.
- Q&A
- Polling
- Chats and postings for employee recognition
What is the Yammer App
The Yammer application is available on iOS and Android devices.
This option allows employees and managers to easily access the home feed on the app wherever they are, plus receive notifications directly to their phones.
Why some businesses are seeking alternatives to Yammer
Some companies have begun looking for a Yammer alternative and the list of Yammer pros and cons, down below, can give you an idea of why some companies are searching elsewhere for a better employee communication software option.
It seems that Microsoft has been listening to people’s complaints and has improved some things, however, these are the advantages and disadvantages of Yammer.
Pros:
- Allows knowledge workers to collaborate and share information more effectively.
- Anyone in the company can publish news updates.
- Private one-on-one conversations are available, plus discussion boards and comment threads.
- Micro-blogging.
- Task tracking.
- High-security levels.
- All team members can see what is going on in company discussions on the home feed, so there is a better understanding of how it all works and who does what.
- Helps coworkers to feel closer to each other, which makes the company culture tight-knit
- Engaging on the platform makes employees more productive because they get pumped about new ideas and new ways to get their work done.
Cons:
- Yammer can cause information overload since there is so much content to see.
- It’s easy to lose track of certain information through so many channels.
- Searching for specific topics can lead to unrelated or confusing results.
- It can be distracting because you have the option to follow companies that are outside your own, which can take your focus away from your projects that need to get done within your company (this can be helpful and also not, depending on the type of personality or work ethic the employee has).
- Deleting old posts is an issue because there is content overload.
- The tools integrated through Microsoft 365 are currently too confusing and limited.
- Not the best option for small companies focused on remote work, or start-up, growing companies.
The 5 Best Yammer Alternatives
These are 5 of the top employee communication software options in close competition with Yammer.
1. Workvivo:
Brings remote teams together through a social network, intranet, and employee app all in one. You can connect with teammates, get updates on real company news, and track your employee’s engagement. There are chat features that allow you to nominate the right person to answer a specific question, feedback management, Google apps integration, cloud deployment, and more.
Integrates well and can be used easily with Microsoft teams, Slack, and Zoom.
2. Google Workspace:
The admin console lets you manage company data, users, and apps all from one single portal. The user experience is fully customizable, the dashboards are intuitive, add and remove people from specific groups, create roles, manage devices, assign permissions, and configure security settings.
This platform includes all Google services, including Gmail, Meet, Drive, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and more.
Best for all types of workers, including frontline and remote.
3. Igloo Software:
A cloud-based, Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that helps employees engage with one another through different content types, share information and get answers to questions easily.
Features allow you to manage your daily work, target content to specific user groups, create polls, broadcasts, and read tracking that makes users confirm if they had read and understood the content or not—plus more.
4. Workplace:
This is a workforce platform made from Meta with Facebook. It’s functional because everyone is already familiar with how Facebook works, so it can be easy to get staff on board.
Features include your intranet, group pages, employee analytics tools, third-party app integrations, knowledge library, chats, and live video broadcasting.
Works well with companies that have remote workers.
5. DeskAlerts:
All-in-one tool for sending urgent messages to employees. Best for remote, desk-based, and frontline workers.
Tools available include desktop notifications, mobile app, and more.
Emergency messages can be pre-planned and sent with one click through several channels.
There are desktop pop-ups with allowing managers to send corporate messages with 100% confidence that each one they send out will be read and comprehended.
The employee feedback and survey tool will alert managers if an employee is having trouble understanding a message or is choosing to not participate.
If an employee is ignoring corporate messages, it is noticeable when using the message delivery statistics tool that tracks employee readership engagement.
DeskAlerts does not allow a home feed with discussions amongst employees, because its main focus is to keep everyone informed without causing unnecessary information fatigue— this keeps operations organized without any important information getting lost.
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There are several business collaboration tools available these days, and it’s important to pick the one that fits your specific company the best.
Whether you choose Yammer or an alternative option — it is smart to evaluate different communication solutions based on their specific product capabilities, and how they can solve the problems your company is currently wanting to transcend.
FAQ
Is Yammer a good tool?
Yammer has its benefits, such as being able to communicate with the entire organization easily and quickly.
You can send documents, images, videos, and more content through the platform which cuts down on busy or messy Email traffic.
What are the disadvantages of Yammer?
Yammer takes place in a separate app from the Microsoft Office apps that are being used for projects— so communication can be slower if you have to open the app to check your direct messages or comment feed.
Check the list of Yammer disadvantages in this post, to learn more.
What are the benefits of Yammer?
The home feed allows for team communication, knowledge sharing, productivity, employee onboarding, employee engagement, and company culture.
The increase in collaboration will increase productivity as well.
