09 Aug Social Network to Monitor Staff Benefits Mood

By Julia Rampen

Source: Workplace Savings and Benefits

Yammer is launching a tool to analyze employees’ reactions to company initiatives such as benefits.

The Microsoft-owned social network for businesses has introduced technology which tracks the emotions expressed in employees’ comments, allowing employers to monitor the mood of staff in different departments and locations from a central dashboard.

The tool would analyze all employees’ responses in order to gauge the overall reaction – allowing HR managers to quickly view the staff response to actions such as changing health benefits.

Underpinning the tool, created by digital technology company Kanjoya, is “emotion-aware sentiment analysis” which retrieves data from Yammer groups and can distinguish between 80 different emotions.

Users can then compare the level of different emotions expressed by employees and visualize them via a word cloud.

Its influencer analysis tool may also allow companies to pinpoint the most praised and well-liked individuals.

Yammer chief product officer Jim Patterson said: “By enabling this integration, Yammer customers will be able to recognize when something has affected employees either positively or negatively – and take action.”

The tool is now available for all Yammer Enterprise users.