How to get coworkers to use intraoffice social media?

[applecrispy]

My manager's boss (I'll call him W) has tasked me with trying to get my coworkers to use Salesforce Chatter. For those not familiar with Chatter it's basically a social network for employees where you can upload photos, files, get notifications, etc. (like Facebook but only people within your company). I've posted my own weekly updates, done polls, a contest for the cutest pet, etc. I get a fair amount of posts when there is a prize involved (usually an Amazon giftcard provided by the company) but can't get anyone to use it on a consistent basis. W would like to see all employees using it on a weekly basis to say what they've accomplished and what their goals for the next week are. We are a fairly large company with offices all over the US and about 1/3 of the company works 100% remote. I can't force people to use it. I've asked nicely, posted every week to show how easy it is, but I can't get people to post. Any ideas? And yes, W has asked people multiple times to use it but their excuses are they are too busy and this isn't high on their priority list. 

[konapoppy]

I think the big thing to ask is why you want people to go there and the benefit to them. Is it meeting some kind of need? Is it helping to drive business? If it is just more busy work, people are going to deprioritize it.

I have seen sites be successful when it is truly a collaborative work space and leadership is involved. Announcements might only get posted there, resources/discussion for career progression, etc. If it is purely social, I get why people aren’t using it.

[applecrispy]

Mar 3, 2019 12:48:00 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

I think the big thing to ask is why you want people to go there and the benefit to them. Is it meeting some kind of need? Is it helping to drive business? If it is just more busy work, people are going to deprioritize it.

I have seen sites be successful when it is truly a collaborative work space and leadership is involved. Announcements might only get posted there, resources/discussion for career progression, etc. If it is purely social, I get why people aren’t using it.

It is supposed to help drive business and be a collaborative tool instead of getting 9 million emails. People should be able to go onto it and search a key term and see where an internal project is at and what milestones it's hit. The cutest pets and polls were just to introduce people to Chatter once they had joined to get them used to posting anything at all. I think it's a great idea to have announcements and things ONLY get posted to Chatter instead of posting on Chatter and having a joint email go out. It would force people to check Chatter and may lead to them posting on it as well. Thanks!

[konapoppy]

Mar 3, 2019 13:30:12 GMT -5 applecrispy said:

Mar 3, 2019 12:48:00 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

I think the big thing to ask is why you want people to go there and the benefit to them. Is it meeting some kind of need? Is it helping to drive business? If it is just more busy work, people are going to deprioritize it.

I have seen sites be successful when it is truly a collaborative work space and leadership is involved. Announcements might only get posted there, resources/discussion for career progression, etc. If it is purely social, I get why people aren’t using it.

It is supposed to help drive business and be a collaborative tool instead of getting 9 million emails. People should be able to go onto it and search a key term and see where an internal project is at and what milestones it's hit. The cutest pets and polls were just to introduce people to Chatter once they had joined to get them used to posting anything at all. I think it's a great idea to have announcements and things ONLY get posted to Chatter instead of posting on Chatter and having a joint email go out. It would force people to check Chatter and may lead to them posting on it as well. Thanks!

Yep! You can send an email that says “check out this post on chatter about xyz!” If you have an email go out with a project status, have it be a link to the site for the info. You have to drive people there!

[goldengirlz]

Also, people hate doing this:

“W would like to see all employees using it on a weekly basis to say what they've accomplished and what their goals for the next week are.”

It doesn’t feel natural and it takes time away from actual work. The only reason we do it (and take it seriously) is because it becomes part of the record for how we’re evaluated. If you’re going to have people do this, it should serve a larger purpose and people need to feel like their contributions are actually being read and acted upon.

[VillainV]

Can you form a small focus group of people you know from different departments and ask for their help and ideas? Often when this seems like it’s an edict from one person, it’s harder to convince people to implement. But if one department posts their ongoing schedule of events, one department hosts a “suggestion box” of ideas for upcoming social events, etc, it might catch on.

If you are asking people to stop using and old process and start using the new platform, then it would be helpful to show people how this new system will save them time or make their lives easier (and if it doesn’t, then it’s not the right tool).

[minionkevin]

My company uses Yammer and I think my 7 cw would laugh at our boss if he requested we post on it more. Our time is billable so any time we spend perusing Yammer and posting is time we can’t do actual work, or can be done on time outside of “work”, like lunch.
There is a question of the week that we get an email blast about, and I basically delete and move on. Luckily, my boss does not care at all about this - and is very into promoting the company culture and objectives otherwise - and I think it is strange to promote social media usage on work time (if you don’t work for a social media company, that is). All that to say, I’m not sure how you make this enforceable. If anything, the few times I have looked at my company’s Yammer feed, I see the same people posting and wonder why don’t they have better things to do?

[CrazyLucky]

My company has chatter and almost no one uses it. I get nothing out of it, and there is no real reason for me to participate. In your specific examples, no one cares what I accomplished this week. Most people in the company wouldn't understand what I do, and I wouldn't understand what they do.
My company is big on prioritizing using the big rock method of prioritizing:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5ZvL4as2y0
So you have really important things, the big rocks; somewhat important things, stones or pebbles; and not super important things like returning emails immediately. Anything that pertains toward your annual goals is a big rock. So is anything that has to do with production. Chatter would count as sand. The trick would be to increase its importance. Does upper management use it? If it's not important to them, it's not important to other people. You have to make it seem useful. I'm not sure how to do that.

[ellipses84]

Is using a tool like this a big change for your company’s culture? What do you want to accomplish by using it? Does upper Management use it, from department managers to the CEO? I think a lot of people view social media like platforms as something they shouldn’t be doing during work time, even to the point of discipline or getting fired. Obviously they have permission for this but they might still feel they will be judged for not working as much if they use it during work hours. Even for other physical social activities/spaces, staff will only use them if the leaders of the company use them and make everyone else feel like it’s ok to use them. Encouragement from Sr. Staff helps, too. Like a department manager saying, “Mary, what you shared in that meeting was fantastic! Can you please post it to share with more people at the company? I think it would be valuable for them to see.” Your Sr. Staff may need to be coached to learn to do this.

My work has an internal website we share content on and they recently revamped it. People share about projects they are working on, whether actual work projects, side projects, volunteer work, etc. It’s good when people send out an email link to look at what they post. It’s also set as the homepage when we open our internet browsers.

[nessness]

I think you need to get your manager's buy-in, and any other managers in that boss's chain of command, and get them to make requests of their staff directly, in addition to the things you've been doing. If my supervisor requested that I use a certain tool to update my project status, I would do it, but if a coworker made the same request I might not.

[ECB]

I agree. - is W using it? You want cultural change, it needs to come from the top down.

But i also agree - the idea that people should post their weekly accomplishments and goals?? I don’t want to do that nor do i want to read about others.

If there are important updates/ general news, sure, i want to know that. But people aren’t going to want to read personal weekly updates from all other employees.

[ESF]

How long have you been trying?

In my experience, it can take months before people get used to a new system and just start using it out of habit.

Also I think the stuff like pet pictures is counterproductive. People will see it as forced company fun and disregard it. If it’s actually going to be a serious part of your overall work, then skip the cutesy stuff.

[mokes]

Do you guys use another tool for IMing or would this be it? (I've never used Chatter, but we use Teams for IM, video calls and general team news/office updates/etc. Can't imagine not having an IM tool!)

I agree with pp who said the "forced fun" is counterproductive. I also would focus on the info that's project related/of value to the team vs. individual goals that others won't really care about? If I were tasked with this (which stinks lol), I'd put together a team is of people across departments and roles to champion it and model the types of info you guys would like to be posted to demonstrate the value and encourage engagement. You alone posting all the stuff in the world isn't going to do it IMO. Content also can't be duplicative ... It needs to be the home for something, otherwise what's the point of it?

[ribollita]

My company tried very hard to get us to use Yammer and it unsurprisingly flopped. We have office IM that we actually use.

[k3am]

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of chatter.

Is this your only method for tracking internal milestones? Because that seems... ineffecient and ineffective.

Unless you have a valid business need that can only be served by chatter and isn't duplicative, the only way you're going to get people to use it is by either penalizing for not using, or rewarding for using.

[hocus2]

Mar 3, 2019 13:30:12 GMT -5 applecrispy said:

Mar 3, 2019 12:48:00 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

I think the big thing to ask is why you want people to go there and the benefit to them. Is it meeting some kind of need? Is it helping to drive business? If it is just more busy work, people are going to deprioritize it.

I have seen sites be successful when it is truly a collaborative work space and leadership is involved. Announcements might only get posted there, resources/discussion for career progression, etc. If it is purely social, I get why people aren’t using it.

It is supposed to help drive business and be a collaborative tool instead of getting 9 million emails. People should be able to go onto it and search a key term and see where an internal project is at and what milestones it's hit. The cutest pets and polls were just to introduce people to Chatter once they had joined to get them used to posting anything at all. I think it's a great idea to have announcements and things ONLY get posted to Chatter instead of posting on Chatter and having a joint email go out. It would force people to check Chatter and may lead to them posting on it as well. Thanks!

  We have chatter and I think it really isn't the best tool for tracking projects. There are off the shelf project trackers that are going to meet this need in a more superior way. I also think having everyone post what their working on in an informal channel seems really odd. Someone mentioned slack and I have slack which would be better than chatter but I find it too unstructured.

  If you want to stop having emails go out to the company then ask current email writers to post their updates to it or have them send them to a chatter team that can post them and enforce and standards you want. Or you could send a consolidated bi-weekly email so folks aren't getting so many. 

[y4m]

1. Chatter is the worst.

2. Ask yourself what is in it for these people to use it? Do they need information they can get more easily now? Does it work better for them the way they are already working (e.g. it's mobile, or they are in SFDC already so it's right there?) - emphasize those elements. If the answer is it's going to be a searchable one-stop shop, but not until they put info in there, then you need to start populating the info for them so that they see the value and take it over long term. If there's no good answer in this section - their leadership is going to need to make them do it and it's going to be a serious uphill battle.

3. How do they do this stuff today? Can chatter work into that cadence?

4. Can you just use Slack instead?!?!

[steamboat185]

I’m going to agree with the other people chatter is not a very useful feature of Salesforce. My work tried to tried to get people to use chatter for about a minute before realizing that it wasn’t something people found value in. Can’t your boss use the other features in Salesforce to track where people are in their projects?