Microsoft Viva Engage vs. Workplace from Meta

Yammer provides a social network experience for the enterprise, providing a "Facebook for work". Its mobile app provides an excellent user experience, showing the full mix of communications happening across topics and teams. The web app, while it hasn't evolved much in the last few years, provides a good experience consuming news. Personally, I use Yammer every morning to see what's happening across my company and comment, like, and share to interact across silos. As long as the size of the network inside of Yammer is managed - likely partitioning a large organization into business units, etc., - then Yammer provides an excellent platform for social news and "bottom up" collaboration across teams. Its free-form posting style, including articles and polls for interactive content, helps break down silos across the organization. Contrasted with the boring world of email, Yammer is a tantalizing world of pictures, GIFs, and videos. At LiveTiles, we share company and team news via Yammer, enabling others to see the progress and milestones - from a new office to a new customer - without the heavy burden of a company newsletter or similarly curated content. Even though we have fully adopted Teams for day-to-day, intra-team communication, Yammer is still the gold standard for inter-team communication.

Incentivized

I think Workplace by Facebook is a great communication vehicle for any mid-sized to large company. (Since it's more groups-oriented than "regular" Facebook, it might not work well for smaller companies.) I also don't have any idea what the cost is for having it, but that also be a reason that it wouldn't be worth the expense for smaller companies. For larger companies, I think it's a terrific way for folks to communicate with one another and for "the powers that be" to communicate with employees. Facebook Live is only suitable when you have a limited number of people who need to be on screen and it wouldn't really be suitable as a vehicle for instructor-led online training -- it's really most suitable for presentations (although, via the comments area, does allow for questions to be asked in writing)

Incentivized

• No one likes getting a long thread of reply-alls. With Yammer announcements and updates can be shared — without cluttering your inbox.
• Yammer's mobile apps are great for our on-the-go sales team to stay in touch with our office staff.
• Yammer's social aspect makes it incredibly easy to use, even for our less tech savvy teammates. If you've used Facebook, learning Yammer will be a cinch.

Incentivized

• It is so easy to introduce to employees because it has the same look and feel as Facebook, which the majority of our employees are already familiar with.
• It's a communications, collaboration, and file/document sharing tool all rolled up into one. It eliminates the need for other software.
• Our HR team uses it constantly to keep employees up to date on company news and for polling to get feedback on new initiatives.

Incentivized

• While Yammer has been an easy transition from SharePoint, it's still relatively new and unknown. Some employees claim that feel like the product was just another "add on" to the entire Microsoft Office experience.
• When introducing new employees to Yammer, they are not as receptive because of how widely used SharePoint is across businesses and industries.
• Functionality is simple, but still vastly different from SharePoint, thus creating a learning curve.

Incentivized

• Limited project management options - no good way to track tasks or projects, so other tools are needed.
• Easy to dismiss for people who don't see the value - the Facebook-like nature of the tool can be a liability when it comes to wanting management to take it seriously.
• Chat interface has downsides - the standalone chat applications can be a bit buggy, and the chat interface within the web view is not ideal.
• No intuitive way to message a group - chat options like Slack are better at easily messaging a group or department, where in Workplace you have to be a member of a group to start a conversation.

Incentivized

Microsoft is dedicated to continual improvement on Yammer. They realize the value that Yammer brings to the table with their clients. In the short time that we have had Yammer implemented, we are just now beginning to see the strong impact it has on becoming more effective and efficient around collaboration.

Overall easy to use and intuitive, although limited in the possibility to personalize layout and look & feel of a site. Some functionalities are not easy to use, like document editing, but some others are quick and effective (posts and tagging above all). Performance and responsiveness of the Yammer site is typically acceptable, in my experience.

Having to download multiple apps just to use the tool is very cumbersome. Facebook would have make this better by wrapping it in as a main feature within their app, but having to use multiple apps to see discussions and walls is so frustrating.

Incentivized

Very available

It's a simple product but it does provide value.

We have never had to use the support for Yammer. The tool works well and we have not come across any bugs. User Interface is simple and easy to use, similar to other forum type products, thereby removing the need for any extensive training. Team members are invited in and immediately are able to start using the tool.

Incentivized

Workplace by Facebook is an excellent fit in respect of support and documentation. It has excellent tutorials and documentation, as well. The UI and UX are already great as it is developed and maintained by Facebook, so most of the times, there is no need for any support or documentation.

Incentivized

The training that Microsoft provides is very generic training for Yammer. I like the fact the training is short and easy to understand

We organically implemented the product

I like how Yammer has functions that are fun and interactive, which can give you much more to do than using Teams or even Microsoft Forms. Yammer helps people feel included and gives people a better sense of how their friends and co-workers are feeling on certain issues. Yammer is a lot more like a social media platform than a work tool even!

Incentivized

We can compare Workplace in general from email communication (we use Bananatag tool for this). Our email communication and Workplace communication are sometimes competitors. RIght now, we have much higher analytics of email read rate/open rate than on Workplace activity. It may be connected with the fact that there is a lot of communication going on on Workplace. And with the emails we have a dedicated unit to monitor and balance the daily/weekly official email load on the associate. Workplace is a live network. Of course, we as admins balance the posts in official groups. But there are lots of other groups where people post whatever they want (like local communities or communities by interest). Why we keep focus on increasing Workplace engagement instead of email communication is definitely because of this instant feedback that we can get with posting. Email communication cannot create this feeling - it's always a one-way communication in our case.

Incentivized

• Nothing negative. But what we tend to forget is that Yammer is just a product, not a vision for change. The true and deep implementation and adoption of an enterprise network needs work and commitment, just like everything else. The true benefits will only emerge over time.

Incentivized

• Workplace offers a free version and a more enhanced, and really enhanced, paid version. The free version is a nice place to test the waters out and see if you can get it working at your company. We have only had a positive return on investment, measured in time.
• The on-boarding is where you will see the greatest positive gain. You will quickly be up and running and so will the staff. This will decrease the training and implementation period and for many that means a substantial cost savings.
• The only negative return that might be realized is if too much time is spent monitoring and policing the content. If trust is there, then employees can share and enhance the use of this tool to be a positive force. As with any communication tool, set guidelines and let the community police itself to some extent.

Incentivized