Stop, Drop, and Roll…out Yammer

This post was contributed by Tanya Loh, Marketing Manager at Yammer.

Imagine the warm autumn sun rising against the craggy outlines of Mount Vesuvius. You’re at a quaint sidewalk cucina, about to tuck into a plate of fresh-baked bombolini when suddenly, the ground begins to vibrate and your cappuccino starts to roil. You look up and the once dormant volcano appears to be gasping plumes of smoke. As others run away, you leap into action: for you are one of Derek France’s Natural Hazard Management students. Over the next 45 minutes, you and your fellow Hazard Analyst Officers must grapple with a major disaster. Looming not too far away, the mighty volcano threatens to erupt for the first time in 60 years. All around this natural landform, millions of lives are at risk. You immediately grab your laptop and get onto your Yammer network to respond and coordinate with your team.

Welcome to the University of Chester’s hazard assessment response scenario, an annual exercise for final year students in the Department of Geography and Development Studies. Based on the hypothetical eruption of Mount Vesuvius, this assessment introduces students to real-time hazard situations, where they must apply their experience and academic coursework to respond appropriately and immediately. After visiting the Bay of Naples for onsite exploration and in-depth study of the territory, students are subjected to an emergency simulation spanning quadrants of the volcano. They receive a resource pack consisting of emergency plans, communication protocols, geological and topographical maps, event trees, and scenarios involving ashfall and pyroclastic flows. Within the silence of a classroom, equipped with only Yammer to communicate, students must then act decisively in managing the situation. In doing so, they must effectively communicate with tutors playing the roles of scientists, politicians, and frightened civilians.

For the past two years, this special program has relied upon Yammer as their primary communication tool, preferring Yammer’s closed-loop privacy and usability to other solutions. France and his colleague Servel Miller have documented the use of Yammer extensively in a forthcoming research paper entitled “Real-time Emergency Response Scenario Using a Web 2.0 Technology”. To paraphrase the benefits they’ve found in using Yammer for these scenarios:

• Effective risk communication: students are able to understand the importance of communicating effectively during disasters.
• Critical decision making skills: students learn how to make accurate and timely decisions under pressure and duress.
• Resource utilization: students gain instant visibility and access to resources and front-line information.
• Experience and confidence-building: students gain first-hand experience and self-assurance they can handle comparable real-life emergencies.

Following the exercise, France and Miller’s students analyze Yammer activity and assess student feedback to deepen their collective understanding of each incident, response activities, and alternative scenarios. Earlier this afternoon, France and Miller presented their findings about the use of Yammer to support their work at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in Seattle. Yammer is proud to support the work of institutions such as the University of Chester, in facilitating these critical educational and emergency planning activities.

We look forward to following their Yammer network story as it develops. This example is representative of several exciting use cases we’re observing among customer networks across sectors, public and private: reliance on Yammer for training and development as well as crisis communications. Recent real-life situations where Yammer’s been a trusted tool for the latter include GE Money’s reliance on Yammer in the aftermath of Christchurch earthquakes as well as Deloitte Digital Australia’s use of Yammer in response to the severe floods that deluged Queensland.

Interested in using Yammer to better prepare for and respond to emergencies? Whether you’re from an educational institution or a private corporation, there are a number of steps you can take to ensure the well-being of all your colleagues. Here are a few recommendations:

Before: in order to plan and promote crisis preparedness…

• Ensure all your employees are on Yammer: sync your network with your corporate directory, and encourage all to complete their profiles
• Ensure all your employees have Yammer mobile apps: available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile
• Create a public Crisis Communications Group: to promote and facilitate planning and preparedness
• Share plans, hold offline activities, and promote involvement using Events, Polls, Ideas, Questions
• Share informational links, and tag relevant content with Topics
• Create a private Executive Communications Group: for aligning decisions and communications among your organizational leadership
• Run emergency drills using Yammer, utilizing Broadcast notifications and inviting two-way responses from your staff in the field

During: in utilizing your emergency action plan…

• Broadcast an alert to your employees: bring immediate awareness and assuage concerns
• Account for the well-being of all your employees: invite status updates
• Access any coworker through the Yammer mobile app directory
• Gain access to frontline information to make more informed decisions
• Coordinate decisions and communications
• Coordinate emergency responses through partner Communities

Afterwards: assess and understand each incident…

• Run an aftermath report, by exporting Yammer data into a CSV file for analysis with other online / offline content
• Review response metrics and efficacy of your plan
• Collect direct feedback from your employee base, and from your Groups and Communities
• Examine conversation threads and gather insights
• Revisit your plan and strategically refine it
• Promote the new plan, run drills, be even better prepared for next time

The use of Yammer for crisis communications is one of the many reasons why I am proud to work here. I appreciate how Yammer enables employees to find each other and help each other out, whether they have a problem to solve, a question to answer, or a fallen beam blocking their way to a fire escape. The relative urgency of each situation may vary, but Yammer’s abilities in providing real-time communication, continuity, and extensive access that ranges from 1:1 to company-wide are powerful factors in supporting an organization’s ability to respond in an appropriate and timely manner to any issue – large to small, urgent to ongoing.

How does your organization prepare for emergencies? Do you feel ready?

Photo sources: Stuck in Customs, indiamos