Are you ready to launch Workplace to your organisation but not sure where to start? Enablo has developed a Workplace deployment methodology that has been refined over time from experience on the ground delivering successful Workplace launches.
Having successfully launched Workplace to many organisations we believe these considerations will help you plan for your launch and set you up for greater success beyond your launch.
1. Start with your leaders and show their sponsorship of Workplace
Visible and active Executives on Workplace.
Create a program of engagement activities and planned posts to make your Leaders lead by example on Workplace. It’s important that Leaders are visible and active on Workplace early on so employees can see how easy it is to engage with their senior leaders on the platform. A good sponsorship program starts with early engagement with your Executive team to get their buy-in followed by an 1:1 onboarding sessions. Simple actions like making sure they have a profile picture and completion of their profile cover helps to open up the lines of communication. Note: a head and shoulders profile picture is recommended as it gives the impression of being more open and approachable.
Pilot them on the platform prior to launch
Use opportunities like Leadership conferences to get them all on Workplace and use a closed (or secret) Workplace Group to run the session. Work closely with the Executive Assistant (or equivalent) to build a content plan for each of the Executives. Include the use of features like Polling, Live, 360 Photo/Video, Recorded Video and the power of mobile. Example: Get the Exec to go Live from a site and bring-in an employee in the video. “Today I am in our Geelong Factory looking at the massive operation here…. with me I have the Site Supervisor …..”Work closely with your Leadership team and get them to listen, engage and show employees that they value their contribution by liking (reacting) and replying to interesting posts/comments.
2. Positioning Workplace in your organisation. Why Workplace?
Try not to make your Workplace Launch project about the platform. It’s not just another tool. Focus on the benefits it will bring to the organisation such as open and transparent communication. Build an elevator pitch which positions Workplace to deliver your business objectives and resonates with your user base (think WIIFM – what’s in it for me?). You can even get creative and engage your branding/marketing experts to theme Workplace communications assets and language to align with your business values.
When building out your message sets remember to give examples of when to use this tool and how Workplace works amongst other tools and software in your organisation. A clearly articulated visual may help users to decide when and where to use Workplace in their day to day work.
3. It’s all about first impressions
Needless to say, most users will judge Workplace within the first few seconds of using it and this impression will stick with them. Making a great first impression on Workplace is extremely important to ensure you have a successful launch. It’s easy to get sidetracked by launching Workplace quickly and not fully considering your user experience. You don’t want a user to login to Workplace for the first time and find no content that relates to them.
Here are some starting community design and content building activities to help create a great first impression on Workplace:
Make upfront investment to design communities (Groups) which will make everyone feel at home when they first log in.
Work on at least four to five Groups per person.
Include some organisation-wide open Groups and at least one Business unit/team-based closed Group.
Identify champions for each of these identified baseline Groups and work with them to build a content plan.
Aim to publish a minimum of three to four posts in each group. Try using as many different feature-set (hashtags, @mention, video, photos, Live, poll, formatted posts, Group doc, hyperlink, etc) in these initial posts.
Encourage champions to react and comment.
For closed team-based Groups, try finding a topic which will generate interest and get the conversation started.
Enablo launch considerations
