Yammer’s Culture: Culture of Dissent, Winning And Fun!

Culture is everything. Time and time again, we see culture as the #1 enabler and the #1 showstopper when our clients adopt a more open communication and collaboration platform like Yammer.

We drink our own champagne here, and our culture is very unique and central to everything we do. We have an extremely supportive environment where good ideas are free to come to fruition. Regardless of title or functional area, we communicate and collaborate via Yammer, and good ideas are given the space and resources to flourish. We don’t hoard knowledge, but rather share what we know. Hierarchies have been obliterated, as any employee can receive an answer from any exec on any topic, and even in public. In regular YammerTime townhalls, we (all 200+ of us) sit down, share news, while execs share important strategic directions and company vision. During YammerTime, anyone can feel free to ask any question — nothing is off-limits.

That’s not to say that we agree with each other all the time. We pride ourselves on a culture of dissent – as aptly put by David Sacks in his New York Times interview.

This type of communication got us into the “50 Most Engaged Workplaces” designation by Achievers, and last night we were recognized as one the “Elite 8.” Each of the Elite 8 stands for one of the foundations of an engaged company, and we took the award for — you guessed it! — communication!

In her acceptance, Dawn Nott, Yammer’s HR Manager said:

Our product promotes open communication at all levels across the organization. Junior employees and senior managers can ask questions, share ideas, and collaborate. As a result, this open communication is self-perpetuating and leads to more approachable, loyal and engaged employees. From an HR perspective, I’ve seen employees asking questions on Yammer about things like our benefits or new policies… I get to see where I might need to educate folks a bit more (on something like our benefits), and I also get some fresh perspective and feedback.  This openness and collaboration helps me do a better job and engages everyone.

We work hard, very very hard. We take work home, we live and breathe Yammer. I’m pretty sure if you opened one of our veins, you’d see Yammer blue This is only possible when you feel an incredible connection to each other and believe passionately in the vision and the higher ideal of paving the way to the future of work. To us it doesn’t feel like work — it’s not what we do, it’s who we are.

And we have fun being ourselves and letting our multifaceted personalities shine. We have an open cubicle-less environment, couches and common areas where we allow for some serendipity. And we have a lot of fun! We are a pet-friendly environment…

…we have quirky parties and traditions, party together, sit on bouncing balls…

…we even skydive and jump on trampolines!

…we run and play basketball…

And here’s the best perk! We get catered lunches and dinners brought in every day. Yammer15 is a very real threat here… So, we got a workout room! We also have a soccer team, Yamchester United, are also super competitive with other startups in the league. We all know who the winner is though…

They say a video is worth a thousand words, so feel free to check out Yammer for yourself, MTV Cribs-style.