.svg){kind=small}
by Aware
Workplace is a great tool that shapes a culture of positivity and peer recognition. Around the world, organizations use Workplace from Meta to increase their product innovations, build stronger cultures and enable more efficient, effective teamwork.
What is Workplace from Meta?
Workplace is a dedicated and secure space for companies to connect, communicate and collaborate. Organizations of all sizes can use familiar features such as News Feed, groups, messages and events to get things done.
In order to reap the many benefits of Workplace, change managers need to drive wall-to-wall employee adoption of the platform. Keep reading for 6 strategies that will help you drive–and protect–a thriving Workplace from Meta community.
6 Strategies for a Thriving Workplace from Meta Community
- Attain (and Maintain) Executive Sponsorship of Workplace
- Post Consistently and Engage Generously
- Highlight Employees Who Embrace Workplace
- Proactively Manage Collaboration and Human Behavior Risk
- Respect Your Users’ Data Privacy
- Demonstrate ROI of Workplace from Meta
1. Attain (and Maintain) Executive Sponsorship of Workplace
Because a successful Workplace community requires employees to change their behavior, adoption requires a good amount of hands-on change management. This means that challenges will inevitably arise and adoption may take longer than expected, especially in a large community.
An executive that truly believes in the power of Workplace is a key piece of a thriving Workplace community. Their job is to keep organizational enthusiasm high, even when obstacles arise.
2. Post Consistently and Engage Generously
In addition to the executive sponsor, community managers help maintain a productive, healthy community, Their job is to keep key groups active and model cultural norms.
Keep in mind that engagement goes past being a serial commenter or reactor. The best community manager ask questions and listen to their community.
Start conversations and let the community take it from there.
When possible, bring others into conversations and give your colleagues the opportunity to be subject matter experts! Using this strategy helps foster workplace connections, while also bringing employees onto the tool to answer colleague questions.
3. Highlight Employees Who Embrace Workplace
It's fair to expect a healthy amount of resistance when rolling out Workplace from Meta. Change is uncomfortable and, as a community manager, you are asking employees to shift their day-to-day communications onto the tool and even change some of their routine processes.
When you publicly celebrate employees who do adopt Workplace, they more likely to repeat their actions. You are also reinforcing the message to other employees that top-performing workers are embracing the tool.
Some examples of activities to celebrate include:
- When a team connects their distributed members to complete a project.
- When you have a company event (e.g. an all-company service day) and employees share their experiences on Workplace.
- When employees turn to Workplace to find an answer to their question.
4. Proactively Manage Collaboration and Human Behavior Risk
Workplace is an enterprise-grade and secure collaboration platform. However, the potential risk in any collaboration tool is what people might share on the tool. Examples of potential concerns include sensitive information sharing, bullying or sexual harassment.
Keep the platform on the trusted and approved list when you partner with departments who manage risk (e.g. HR, compliance, infosec).
Work with them to understand the liabilities that keep them awake at night and then define a plan for how to respond to these areas of risk:
| Department | Category of Shared Content | Approved Areas | Response Plan for Unendorsed Sharing |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Human Resources |
Personal Topics |
Closed Groups |
If shared in inappropriate open group, reach out via Work Chat and coach a more appropriate location for the personal content. |
| Human Resources | Swear Words | Work Chat Only | If shared in public channel, reach out to content author and coach on appropriate communication practices. |
| Compliance | Customer PII (e.g. social security #) |
None | Remove automatically and send note to content author explaining that it is not appropriate to share customer PII of any kind in Workplace. |
| InfoSecurity | Uploaded Files | None | Remove automatically and send note to content author explaining the file upload policy. Recommend Box or Dropbox to share documents in Workplace. |
5. Respect Your Users’ Data Privacy
Once you have achieved a thriving Workplace community, employees will connect with their colleagues, share experiences and accomplish day-to-day tasks on the public and private areas of the tool.
That means your Workplace community will hold a lot of employee data and it's essential that you protect both your organization and your users with a proactive strategy for maintaining compliance with data privacy regulations.
In the United States, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will take effect on January 1, 2020. This regulation will afford California residents the right to access their personal data, say no to the sale of their personal data and request a business delete any of their personal information.
However, one of the most sweeping and stringent data privacy regulations is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to any business that processes data from EU citizens (even if that business is outside the EU!).
Because the GDPR protect both consumers and employees, administrators of Workplace should consider two primary data rights outlined by the GDPR:
Right of Access by the Data Subject
People have the right to obtain: confirmation that their data is being processed and access to their personal data
Right to Erasure
People have the 'right to be forgotten' when there is no compelling reason to continue processing their personal data
Work with your Data Protection Officer to put a plan in place in the event that an employee files an Employee Subject Data Access Request.
Learn how Aware enables Workplace customers to achieve GDPR compliance.
6. Demonstrate ROI benefits of Workplace from Meta
At some point, your leadership team will ask the inevitable question:
Was this worth our investment?
Your job is to show the tangible benefits of your Workplace from Meta community. The more you can tie the measurement of organizational gains to business revenue, the better.
Some example stories you could tell include decreased time-to-knowledge, shortened on-boarding periods or more connected remote workers.
Building an ROI story may take some creativity, but identify a business challenge that leadership is tackling and tell a story around how Workplace from Meta is helping solve for it. As your Workplace community continues to thrive, you’ll see the benefits come from every corner of the organization!
