For the majority of people, Facebook is a daily exercise.
Whether it’s using Messenger, posting to friends, finding new businesses and events or just scrolling.
With this continual use on a daily basis, it’s no surprise Facebook’s latest offering is gaining momentum rapidly. Enter, Workplace from Meta.
Workplace is Facebook’s entry into enterprise communication, connecting whole organisations with familiar tools which, quite simply, makes sense. And by helping everyone in a business turn ideas into action using familiar tools, it’s looking to reduce the inefficiencies which plague business.
When you think about the prolific use and love of Facebook by over 2 billion people around the world, it is obvious that this move will be beneficial.
So, what was my experience like?
I have just started working for Enablo, a pure-play Workplace from Meta partner. This has been my first experience of using Workplace and it’s clear the platform will shake business up. As soon as you log in, it’s a familiar space, albeit with less cat memes and GIFs.
Within hours, you clearly see the benefits of Workplace – and they continue to come. The biggest thing I noticed, was the increased speed of communication, targeted at the right people. Having worked for both startups and large corporations over the last five years, this is a genuine problem.
Decisions traditionally take time.
This should not be the case for any decision, whether it be large or small, and this is where Workplace seems to smash it for me. This communication loop is significantly quicker, and in a familiar setting, makes it so easy to keep track of.
At the core of Workplace are Groups. These allow businesses to have any number of projects or teams with their own space to communicate, post content and ultimately make decisions. With Enablo on Workplace, I am a part of over 10 groups, all of which serve different purposes ranging from internal discussion, to engaging with clients. There have been shared files, weekly updates from team members, successes, failures and general communication which would otherwise take days to convey. It’s pretty damn cool.
And I learned the easy way how quickly new team members can be onboarded and up to speed, thanks to the knowledge base and documents which you can see previously in any group. This allows anyone new to quickly get up to speed on issues, company dealings and anything of note – much better than the usual full-day meetings which come with a new role or company.
I’ve seen decisions – which would usually require two or three meetings in any other organisation where I have worked – resolved within 15 minutes. And for a remote employee base, this is gold!
And I can’t stress enough the refreshing move to Work Chat, an echo of Messenger which has been hugely successful. With email and Slack the primary chat channels for business (I’ll be honest, I am not a fan of either), it’s nice to see an alternative which was sitting in front of us the entire time. Again, it makes sense.
The updates keep rolling in, and I’m excited to keep using Workplace to see its potential. After a week, I dread the day I am required to go back to traditional enterprise software – hoping that won’t happen.