Common Misconceptions About Workplace

by Harriet Muir
Published on May 21, 2019

We’ve heard it all before. You’re sceptical about Workplace. You might think it’s just one of those hypes that will blow over or that just doesn’t work for your organization. But now we have your attention, we’d like to explain some things. Because before you turn down Workplace, there are some common misunderstandings we hear all the time which we would like to set straight. So, grab a coffee and let us share our thoughts. Happy to hear yours as well!

“It is just a distracting waste of time. Employees must focus on their work instead of using a Facebook platform all day.”

It takes (a bit of) a company cultural change to use Workplace as the new collaboration platform. It’s breaking silos, stimulating cross-department conversations, and reducing the amount of e-mails. Having the same interface as Facebook, Workplace might look like fun, and it sure is sometimes, but that’s not the core. It will save you money, it will increase your productivity, it will bring you happy and loyal employees. Want to understand more about the dollars, read all about it in our previous post ‘Writing the business case: the real benefits of Workplace’.

Since most of your employees probably know how to use Facebook, they know how easy it is to share information, to search for information, and how to collaborate right away. Either behind their laptops or on their smartphones. They do it in an efficient and in fact time-saving way. How would you call that time-wasting?

“Workplace is Facebook. I don’t want to use my own Facebook account for work related stuff.”

Here’s the good news: you won’t even be able to do that! Your Workplace account is a totally new account with new login credentials, which makes both of them completely separate. Therefore, no information or data of your private Facebook account will be exchanged with your Workplace. And on your phone, you have a separate Workplace and Facebook application.

“Community management can be done by anyone who has some time left”

Yes and no. There is no particular degree which makes someone an official Community Manager. But don’t underestimate this essential role and the time it’s taking. Engagement on Workplace doesn’t come by itself. It requires a lot of time, patience and love to achieve this.

Please don’t think any employee can handle this besides his or her own day job. Take it more serious than that. And remember, here at Enablo we can assist you with Community Management as a Service offerings.

“Workplace is only relevant for bigger companies”

We’re a member of the Multi-Company Group ‘Workplace Users Community’, and we’ve seen loads of different types of company sizes coming by. From small business to international corporates. Employees of any kind of business agree that Workplace really changes the way of working in a positive way. It helped them work more productive, sharing news and ideas faster and getting in touch with colleagues from all over the company or even world so much easier.

So, no matter what type of business you’re in, or how many employees it has: it is relevant, without a doubt.

“My data and privacy are not safe at Workplace”

Facebook only has the right to use your data as necessary to provide the service to customers, and for related support and improvement purposes, and as otherwise set out in the Enterprise Agreement. This is clearly stated in the terms of your Enterprise Agreement with Facebook.


“Workplace is cluttered”

Oh boy, luckily we don’t agree. Otherwise we wouldn’t be using this at all. We all have time-consuming day jobs, using a new platform must make that easier. Not more frustrating. The main timeline is a collection of all the updates posted in groups you’re in. This is pre-set to Top Stories, but adjusting it to Most Recent is done in one click. Navigating to groups is just a click away, either on desktop or on mobile. We also use the well-developed Search function a lot, and if we see a post we’d like to follow or just access quickly, we save that particular post.

Still have any questions or doubts about Workplace? Let us know in a comment and start a healthy discussion on your and our ideas. We’re keen to hear your thoughts!

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Meet the Author
Harriet Muir
Harriet discovered the power of Workplace when she rolled it out at a large energy company while in their internal comms team. Now she gets to bring together her love of collaboration tech and internal culture with her experience in marketing and storytelling as Enablo's Marketing Manager.

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