Like most organisations, FrieslandCampina used a bottom-up approach when they initially launched Yammer. And as is the case in other organisations, the platform never really took off, lying dormant for several years. In late 2019, the communications department, in partnership with IT, wanted to increase its reach and improve employee engagement around important topics in the organisation. They quickly realised that Yammer was just the tool for the job and contacted OrangeTrail to help relaunch Yammer and achieve their goals.
Re-activating Yammer through JAMs
To bring people back to the Friesland Campina Yammer platform, we ran a JAM – one of our key engagement instruments. This is a 30-60 minute long orchestrated, online conversation around a key topic. JAMs are often fast-paced and involve tens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of participants.
This project coincided with the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020, and so we designed a JAM to help the CEO empathise with his 20.000 employees and get a sense of how they were coping. After hundreds of responses, we directed the conversation towards the future, asking employees about learnings from the experience that they wanted to carry with them to the future. This dialogue also revealed great innovations around teamwork and getting products to market. And it achieved the main goal of increasing employee engagement and establishing Yammer as a tool for meaningful conversation. After the initial JAM, we worked with Friesland Campina’s HR department to plan and run several JAMs on topics such as Diversity & Inclusion, internal mobility, and continuous dialogue.
Developing content architecture and providing comms training
In the summer of 2021, we continued our work with the Friesland Campina communications department. This time, focusing on designing a content architecture for Yammer – this is the mapping of audiences in the organisation followed by creating communities to best serve them. OrangeTrail also ran a number of training sessions to equip the communications team with skills to run successful communities and support leadership in engaging employees.