Slack vs Viva Engage (Yammer): Which Communications Tool is the Right Fit?

With all of the messaging apps on the market, it’s hard to know which one is best for your organization. Although they all seem similar, there are distinct differences between each of the tools, which will affect how effective they are for your employees.

Depending on your company culture and what type of communication you’re looking to encourage, you will discover the differences between these deceptively similar tools.

In this blog post, I’ll focus on the differences between Viva Engage (Yammer) and Slack, two popular internal communications solutions that are both useful depending on the type of communication that you’re looking to foster.

What is Viva Engage (Yammer)?

Viva Engage (Yammer) is a social and internal communications tool that facilitates engagement and collaboration between employees. It is a quick and easy way for end users to share resources, have conversations, provide feedback and stay informed.

What are the key features (benefits) of Viva Engage (Yammer)?

• Seamless integration: Since Viva Engage (Yammer) is in the Office 365 suite, it’s simple to share and edit content from other Office 365 products right within Viva Engage (Yammer). This is a great time-saving feature that makes it easy for users to edit Word documents or Excel spreadsheets without having to leave Viva Engage (Yammer). Also, since Viva Engage (Yammer) is integrated with Office 365, you can search for certain subjects and find results across all of the Office 365 products, including OneDrive, SharePoint, and Viva Engage (Yammer).
• Clear communication: Instead of relying on email and meetings to stay up to date with your employees, you can send a quick message on Viva Engage (Yammer). This real-time communication is more efficient than lengthy conversations over email, which may not include all of the relevant team members. A survey done by Microsoft found that more than 75% of those surveyed, responded that Viva Engage (Yammer) helps their teams to communicate more effectively.
• Increase engagement: Viva Engage (Yammer) makes it easy to get your employees involved in conversations or brainstorming around a topic. Instead of emailing specific people, sending a message in Viva Engage (Yammer) gives everyone the opportunity to share their opinions and insights on a common topic. You can also gather this type of feedback by creating polls in Viva Engage (Yammer) or having users vote on company-wide changes.
• Foster company culture: Since everyone in the company has access to Viva Engage (Yammer), this promotes the opportunity to create new connections between your employees as anyone can answer a question in Viva Engage (Yammer), not just someone from your department or team. According to the previously mentioned Microsoft survey, over 80% of respondents said they feel more connected to their coworkers because of Viva Engage (Yammer).

What is Slack?

Slack is a collaboration solution that consolidates all of your company’s communication (messaging, files, and tools) in one place. It helps your employees save time and drives meaningful and productive conversations.

What are the key elements of Slack?

• Organized communication: With Slack, you can neatly segment your conversations into channels. These channels can be created for teams, projects, announcements, or anything else relevant to your company. Another helpful feature is that team members can join and leave channels, ensuring that only relevant people are involved in the channel’s discussions. This prevents other people’s time from being wasted, which is a common occurrence with email.
• Powerful integration: You can connect different tools to your Slack account, such as Salesforce, JIRA, and Google Drive. This allows your users to create and comment on these files from within Slack, saving your users’ time and effort. Instead of sending the link through email and going back and forth with your responses, you can simplify this by communicating about the file directly in Slack and completing the task in a shorter amount of time.
• Boost collaboration: With Slack, you can communicate with more than your direct employees. You can create or share channels with other companies that you routinely work with, such as vendors, partners, and customers. This shortens the process of getting in touch and makes it easier to stay connected. Another way to stay connected with Slack is the voice and video calls directly from Slack. Without needing to open another tool, you can quickly host a meeting and finalize decisions with your team.
• Collect feedback: Having a channel for customer feedback is a great way to have an accessible area where everyone can see current issues and provide actionable suggestions for customer support. Since Slack is very easy to search, this is an area where your Customer Support team can quickly search for keywords and reply to customers in real-time with feedback from previous cases.

Viva Engage (Yammer) vs Slack: What’s the Difference?

Viva Engage (Yammer) and Slack are both useful internal communication tools that serve very different purposes. Viva Engage (Yammer) is more of a social networking site for your organization.

Discussions are created when someone posts a message and then people respond with comments to that post. It eliminates the need for company-wide emails as it allows you to message your entire company directly with tips, company announcements, or general questions.

On the other hand, Slack is more of a messaging tool for your company. It is used more for real-time messaging and answering questions on projects or other essential tasks.

Since people answer faster, Slack is more useful for working within groups and discussing interdependent projects or deadlines.

Mistakes to Avoid with Viva Engage (Yammer) and Slack

• Not enough training: Before implementing a new tool, it’s important to make sure your users know how to use it. Otherwise, all of the money and time you spend on implementing the tool will go to waste, as your users will be less likely to use it.
• No support from leaders: Having your leaders set the tone and show how they use the tool is a vital step to getting your users to use the tool. Once they see the CEO is using Viva Engage (Yammer) or Slack, they will be more motivated to be active on the platform.
• Not enough encouragement: Without explaining to your employees the value and purpose behind implementing a new tool, none of your employees will understand the switch and will be hesitant to use the new technology. By showing how it makes their work lives easier, employees will be quick to hop on the bandwagon.

Viva Engage (Yammer) vs Slack: Which Tool Should You Use?

Deciding what type of communication is most important for your company will help you to determine whether you need to use Viva Engage (Yammer) or Slack.

If you’re looking for a tool to send company-wide messages and encourage informal communication between your employees, Viva Engage (Yammer) is the way to go.

If you’re looking for a solution that allows team members to send messages about projects and tasks and get real-time answers, Slack is the better option.

Another factor is the tools your company is currently using. If everyone uses Office 365, Viva Engage (Yammer) is the better choice since it integrates with all of the Office 365 products.

However, if your company leans towards Google Drive, Slack is the more logical option as it integrates with the Google Drive suite.

By analyzing your organization’s culture and communication style, you can choose which communication tool is right for you.

FAQs about Slack vs Viva Engage (Yammer)

Is Yammer better than Slack? 

Yammer and Slack serve different purposes in organizational communication. Yammer, integrated into Microsoft’s Viva Engage, focuses on social networking and company-wide announcements, fostering engagement across the organization. Slack, on the other hand, excels in real-time messaging and collaboration within teams and projects.

What are the key differences between Yammer and Slack? 

Yammer (Viva Engage) emphasizes broad social engagement and integration with Office 365 products for seamless collaboration and file sharing. Slack, known for its organized channels and extensive integration capabilities, is geared towards team-based communication, real-time messaging, and external collaboration with third-party tools.

Why do companies use Yammer? 

Companies use Yammer (Viva Engage) to enhance internal communication by facilitating transparent updates, feedback gathering, and fostering a connected workplace culture. It helps in reducing reliance on email, promoting employee engagement, and integrating with existing Office 365 tools for enhanced productivity.

Is Microsoft stopping Yammer? 

Microsoft has announced that Yammer will be integrated into its Viva platform, with Yammer functionality being gradually transitioned into Viva Engage throughout 2023. This move aims to streamline employee experience and enhance collaboration within the Microsoft ecosystem.

What is Viva Engage? 

Viva Engage is Microsoft’s social networking and internal communications tool, designed to connect employees through communities, conversations, and shared resources. It integrates seamlessly with Office 365, enabling efficient collaboration and communication across the organization.