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Alignment & Engagement
August 2, 2022
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10 minutes
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Unlock the Value of Workplace - Your How To Guide

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Recently, organizations have left behind hierarchical structures in favour of becoming more flat. As a result, employees are now expected to work and collaborate with multiple teams at any given time. As businesses become so global, workers are now required to collaborate across multiple offices and multiple countries. However, this does not come without its fair share of challenges.


Collaboration tools have become critical for any organization hoping to keep up in a data-driven digital world. The tools have features that range from  project management dashboards, chat tools, document sharing and video that promise to help employees collaborate more efficiently in today’s changing landscape.

When it comes to creating a fully-functioning digital collaborative environment, many organizations end up piecing together solutions from several tools, trying to find the right solution. It’s time for companies to take into consideration what their workers need and focus on a tool that meets those needs right from the start. 

Why Workplace from Meta?

With Workplace from Meta, go beyond basic communication and tasking and enable a real workflow transformation. At its core, Workplace is a communications platform that helps teams and organizations collaborate and get work done. However, many companies find that Workplace helps them do much more than just simplify communications—it inspires all levels of a company to embrace digital and mobile.

Workplace from Meta is the #workstream collaboration platform perfect for the #futureofwork. Workplace from Meta is a communications and collaboration platform for businesses that use familiar Facebook features, such as chat, groups and posts to connect everyone in an organization.

Workplace is the modern enterprise social communication platform built to change the way people communicate at work and foster community. With over 2.4 billion people using Meta every month, the transition to Workplace is simple because of the familiar user experience, interface, and features.

If implemented and adopted successfully, your organization can enjoy the following benefits:


At ServiceRocket, not only are we a seller and partner of Workplace, but our organization has been using the #workstream collaboration platform for just over 6 years now, so we know our stuff. Those thinking about Workplace and existing novice users typically have a plethora of questions around the value of the platform. Value to the organizations can be realized through:

  • Successful implementation of the platform
  • Driving adoption through employees and leadership
  • Increasing engagement with dispersed teams
  • Driving cross team communication and collaboration
  • Enabling problem solving and innovation

Let us help you leverage the features in Workplace. We'll show you how to track, measure and lead your organization to success. Let’s begin.

Your Organization Just Got Workplace from Meta…Now What?

Your organization just got Workplace and you suspect the platform will roll out soon. What ca you do in order to make sure employees are actually using it and that there’s good levels of engagement? You look at your business drivers. Your business drivers are the main reasons for adopting the platform. Here is a list of the top challenges organizations are looking to solve with Workplace:

Do your drivers fall within the list above? This is a good starting point to uncover what kind of KPIs you are looking to track and measure.


Run a Value Assessment Workshop

Run a value assessment workshop to help you figure out your goals. The Value Assessment Workshop is an internal workshop you run with your Workplace project team to define the business drivers and value Workplace will bring to your organization.

Get sign-off from your executive team on the business drivers you have identified in the workshop. A great way to get executive sign-off is to include the executives in your Value Assessment Workshop, so their ideas are taken into account during and not after. These business drivers are not only the core of your business case to launch Workplace, but they will also guide what you measure when you assess the value Workplace has brought to your organization.

Resources:

Workplace from Meta's Value Assessment Workshop
Workplace Value Assessment

Invest in Executive Leadership Training


It’s worth noting that having your executive team lead the charge by actively engaging and using Workplace is a great path to success. A critical aspect of getting Workplace from Meta up and running is making sure your executives know how to use the platform, and that they actually use the platform too.

This can have numerous benefits which include:

  • Enhancing employee engagement and help create leaders that can effectively lead teams
  • Creating a positive work culture, encouraging more employees to learn at the job and work towards acquiring leadership roles
  • Helping drive norms that leaders can reinforce and perpetuate to drive adoption  and derive the most value out of Workplace from individual contributors.

Resources:

Workplace Academy - Get up to speed quickly and get the most out of Workplace from Meta
Be the Best Boss Ever Training
- Learn how to run your team or department through Workplace
Advanced Theory of Postology Training
- Learn how to post effectively in Workplace
Using WP as an Executive
- Gain insight into employee morale and engagement

Nailing your Communication Strategy 

No matter how obvious the need for collaboration software is and no matter how easy it is to use, if you try to implement it without a well-planned communications strategy, you will struggle to gain adoption. A strong communication strategy ensures that differing perspectives, understandings, and expectations can be brought into greater alignment before the roll out even begins.

Here are some factors to consider including within your communication strategy:

Identify your target audiences: It is important to identify each of these groups and be as specific as possible because each target group will have its own way of using Workplace, and therefore, you will need to craft a unique message to each.

Create messages to communicate to each target group: You will communicate one message to executive teams and another message to store managers. Each has unique goals, and they have different jobs. Each needs to be persuaded in a way that relates to those uses. 

Identify the communications channels that match the audience: Workplace from Meta has features like chat, live stream, groups, and video recording to match the style of each unique group within your organization.

Your Champions


Champions can help convince the rest of the employees to use the new platform. It’s important that you find people who will be naturally comfortable with the platform’s concepts, features and benefits, and encourage them to advocate on its behalf. You can do this by selecting a small and diverse group of people in your organization and enlist their support in building groups, driving adoption and educating the rest of the organization on how to use Workplace.

Workplace from Meta suggests selecting roughly five champions for every 100 employees in your company. Champions should be chosen for their influence and early adopter behaviours. People managers make great champions because they influence working behaviours in their teams.

Seeing the enthusiasm of these champions will help convert employees who are more skeptical or hesitant. Ask them to share their experience of learning the new platform and offer help to struggling employees.





Resources:

Communication Blog
Activation Instructions

Challenge Cards

Welcome to Workplace - New User Video

Launch Posters

Launch Pillar - Champions Session

You’ve decided on your business drivers and your leadership team is trained. Your communications strategy is in place and your champions have been selected. What is the next step?



How to Increase Adoption of Workplace from Meta

The most challenging part of rolling out new technology to your company is two fold. The first, (you’ve most likely already accomplished at this stage in the game) is getting executive buy-in with a leadership team that is on board and ready to go. The other is getting employees to actually use Workplace. Many organizations struggle with the adoption of new technology and collaborative tools. 

Not only can the adoption of collaborative tools be a slow process, but it can also be a challenging one—with employees struggling to understand how to manage the technology and integrate the new collaborative tool into their day-to-day workflow.

With Workplace, high adoption and engagement can mean better access to knowledge and information, improved reach for your internal communications, and more opportunities to build relationships across teams and locations. Here are some tips to consider when rolling out Workplace to the masses.

1. Establish a user communication strategy

Oftentimes, the best approach to communication are short messages that are sent frequently to users. Start early and gradually communicate the benefits to your users. Also consider what communications mediums they currently use. If you are trying to change communications habits, use the new collaboration tool, Workplace for messaging your employees. You may need to duplicate some communications elsewhere (probably email) to make sure that messages do not get lost before your employees' habits change.

2. Providing Training Resources

Although many employees will already be  familiar with Workplace’s interface, training is an integral part of helping and supporting your employees' use and adoption of the tool. Focus upon the specific features that you want your employees to use at the early stages. You can hold your own webinars or live stream your sessions with options to record for asynchronous viewing.

3. Provide Easy Access to Documentation

Documentation is key for those users that are unable to attend live training sessions, and also for reinforcement. It is important to curate the information rather than rely on what others have prepared and have it all in one centralized location. An example of this would be to create your own Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). If you only have time to do one thing well, then make it your FAQs. Another would be to leverage the Knowledge Library feature, enabling you to put your organization’s most important documentation in one place for everyone to access, increasing the habit of document sharing via Workplace. 

4. Identify Targeted Use Cases for Improving Adoption

A common mistake when deploying a collaboration tool like Workplace is to simply roll it out and expect users to immediately adopt it the same way they would for personal social media tools. Unfortunately, that rarely happens in a work environment. You need to guide users on how to use the tool in their professional lives. 

To achieve this, identify a small number of simple use cases that can be quickly and effectively deployed. One example is to use discussion threads and polls to facilitate decision making between scheduled meetings. The result is that employees can participate and vote on the matters at hand more effectively on Workplace in real-time rather than using email.

 5. Remove Barriers to Adoption

You will get pushback from some. But this can usually be overcome by listening and refining. Take account of your user feedback to improve your communications, training, documentation and use cases. The beauty of a collaborative tool like Workplace is that it enables employees, wherever they are, whenever they need to communicate or collaborate with their organizations. 

6. Add Workplace to your Onboarding Process
Add Workplace to your onboarding process to introduce the platform early on with these simple and easy profile activation instructions. Create Welcome Groups for each new hire to streamline communications with the employee and populate the group with posts that train the new hire on information that specifically relates to their team and role within the company.

Resources:

The New User Guide
New User Essentials

5 Amazing Things You Can Do in Workplace Immediately

Strategies for boosting adoption

How do I share Workplace content to other platforms using Plugins

Setting up Microsoft SharePoint Integration on Workplace

Knowledge Management with a Knowledge Library

Access to information is paramount for employees at any organization. Did you know that the average employee wastes 9 hours a week looking for information? And it’s more than just time wasted. When information is not readily available, inefficiencies increase, productivity drops, and important knowledge is lost.

With Workplace from Meta, employees have the ability to find and share information within groups, provide real-time feedback through features such as Chat and Live Video, and engage with colleagues virtually. This speeds up the feedback loop with direct asynchronous access to information. Access through the Workplace from Meta mobile app is a key driver of these productivity gains.

By building your Workplace Knowledge Library, you can create a central home for your organization. A place for both essential company resources (in the Knowledge Library) and dynamic updates (in Workplace groups) that helps you drive alignment, preserve critical knowledge and engage your employees.

Workplace's Knowledge Library allows you to create a central home for your organization's essential resources, such as:

  • Benefits, expenses, travel policies
  • Employee handbooks and onboarding materials
  • Company mission and values, brand guidelines and annual and quarterly goals
  • Team and department resources

Storing these resources in one place will not only save employees time and reduce misinformation from spreading, but it will also allow more people to discover important company announcements, communications and community-building that are already taking place on Workplace.

Resources:

How to Build a Knowledge Library
Why use a knowledge library

5 Amazing ways to use Knowledge Library

Useful Features

Five years ago we implemented Workplace from Meta at ServiceRocket with the goal of improving communications, reducing friction, increasing focus, and putting the right data in front of the right person in a timely way. 

Here are some of the ways we’ve used Workplace:

Leveraged the live stream feature for company meetings: Live video creates immediacy, is more personal, allows people to ask questions, comment, and react in real-time. Accessible to all offices simultaneously, it eliminates the need for emails and wordy communications.

Live streamed to a Workplace group: If you don’t want to livestream to the entire company, you can also stream to just a specific group. If a live stream starts at noon Eastern Standard Time, it is the middle of the night in Australia. However, our Sydney employees can watch the recording during their regular work hours. Questions and ideas about the content can be captured for everyone to see and share with time stamps.

Gather insights and real-time feedback with Questions and Polls: Polls are a great way to gather insights and build a relationship with your workforce and it is a great way for executives to interact with their employees.

Groups: Groups enable the sharing of ideas across teams - whether you’re looking to communicate with the right people or collaborate on projects, everything on Workplace starts with a Group. At ServiceRocket, one of the very first things we did was create company-wide groups such as CEO Update, Everyone@SR, and Kudos.

Post and comment in team groups: Posts and comments are a great way to get immediate answers and connect with your employees. As teams work toward company goals, leadership has visibility into the process and can comment or ask questions. Or, save time trying to meet with teams and instead leverage Scheduled Posts or Campaigns (a series of posts) as we do at ServiceRocket. This lets our CEO draft updates for the global team and enables him to schedule it to go live at a suitable time.


Updates and statuses:
By posting in a group, executives quickly deliver their message to a specific audience in the company and solicit feedback. Employees comment or ask questions, and executives can clarify, follow up, and continue the conversation.

Video selfies: Executives can post a video selfie to communicate any message. The video selfies help leaders ensure their message is getting across to employees directly. Our CEO typically creates these to further break silos and help the workforce understand the bigger picture.

Asynchronous communications: As the leader of a fast-growing organization, time is one of the most important assets you have. Workplace leverages the ability for asynchronous communications, where your managers and employees can post information, record videos, and leave messages that you can pick up or respond to later on. Executives can feel comfortable never missing a beat.

Workplace chat: Workplace chat is ideal for quick conversations, allowing you to contact anyone in your business, and communicate with GIFs, stickers, emojis, or the iconic thumbs-up. Send voice clips, run polls, and even share your current location with colleagues if you're on the road.

Workplace is Where Work Happens

After more than half a decade of using Workplace from Meta, ServiceRocket has realized the benefits, value and agility the #workstream collaboration platform brings. The ability of Workplace to share the vision, goals, and guidance of our executives is unmatched by any other platform. It is quite literally the tool that brings us all together. Regardless of where a Rocketeer lives and works, Workplace is our common office.

Using Meta Workplace can transform how companies communicate, collaborate to achieve goals, foster a culture of innovation, and enhance employee satisfaction.

ServiceRocket, as a Workplace Partner, is here to help you develop a customized plan to implement, launch, and ensure successful adoption and usage.

Foster employee collaboration, innovation and productivity through Workplace from Meta by partnering with us.

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