We are a specialist Facebook advertising company (with a few special divisions I’ll touch on later) and have always had an issue with our internal communications and employee engagement, especially with team members from all over the world.
In our business we have over 15 staff, and communication is key in what we do – to ensure that we get the best results possible for our clients. On a daily basis we need to communicate on client updates, the next step in our YSV Methodology, general house keeping, HR and more.
When we first started in our business all we used was Facebook Messenger and Facebook Groups. It was so much easier for us than any other form of communication, and it allowed us to have all the different people that needed to work on a project communicating in one central spot and then have it searchable.
As time went on we started to realise that it was too easy to get distracted within usual Facebook. From friends and family messaging us, to notifications, to the good old newsfeed scroll, we found that we had a decrease in productivity and it made people a little stressed logging in wondering if they were going to get work messages or personal messages and there was never really an option for them to ‘switch off’.
It was there that we had come to a crossroads. We had to look at all of the different messaging and communication platforms that were available.
We had settled on Slack – as it seemed to have all the functionality that we were looking for such as;
Channels – to organise team conversations for projects
Direct Messages – sending direct messages to other people in the organisation
Calls – call to other people in the organisation
Integrations – integrates with google drive and others
However, after 6 months of use we identified there were some limitations.
– No ability to voice chat
– No abilitiy to video chat
– No way to record training live into slack
And engagement with our team actually went DOWN!
They saw it as another piece of software that they needed to learn, and person to person communication went down – and we saw an increase in internal emails – which made things harder to track as people couldn’t remember if they had sent messages on email, in our project management software or inside of slack and we had a TON of extra man hours.
Enter Workplace by Facebook.
WORKPLACE BY FACBEOOK
The immediate advantages I saw as soon as we were able to access the platform was that I had my favourite method of communication with the team back, voice and video message.
It also was a platform that everyone already knew how to use and were familiar with.
Almost immediately engagement went UP. Our ‘social’ channel on Slack had almost been dormant, however on Workplace its one of the most used groups – and people are even creating their own groups to share their passions with other team members.
ENGAGEMENT + HAPPINESS = PRODUCTIVITY
Its been reported that nearly three quarters of the workforce is DISENGAGED at the moment according to a recent study (hyperlink to http://www.dalecarnegie.com/white-papers/engaging-employees/) by Dale Carnegie Training .
So by choosing a platform like Workplace that actually increase engagement, coupled with a happy team means that productivity will actually start to INCREASE as a by product.
Our employees already have so many distractions, and workplace allows you to use current technology, tools and interaction methods to get more done.
Another feature that we utilise regularly is the live streaming into our team training groups.
This allows our teams that are all over the world to be able to join our training in real time, as well as build a database of training videos that can be leveraged for our new team members, adding to the engagement of all our team across the world.
MULTI-COMPANY GROUPS
Due to the immediate communication process and search ability we have began to roll out Multi Company Groups (MCG) for all of our clients.
To avoid cumbersome emails going back and forward, cc’ing other team members, FORGETTING to cc other team members and then trying to follow up on what’s actually happened we decided to make it easier.
MCG’s allow us to have a Workplace group with each of our clients, to provide them with client updates, communicate and share what new strategies we have devised for their lead generation campaigns, bounce ideas off one another and allow our clients to really get the feeling that we are a marketing PARTNER as opposed to just another digital marketing agency.
WORKPLACE AND AUTOMATION
Workplace already has a slew of integrations available and more in the works such as;
– Sales Force
– Google Drive
– Dropbox
– Quip
– Box
– Onedrive
What we are most excited for is taking our already existing skillset in BOTS and automation through our division, YOUR SOCIAL BOTS to increase automation and engagement in our business, and for our clients as well.
Here is an example of how we have used BOTS in an If This Then That (IFTTT) fashion in a commercial sense, and we will update this article once we have our first Workplace Bots deployed.
JUST DO YOU
We truly believe that a business should just focus on doing what it does best, serving its clients. That is why we do our best to allow our clients to have a more engaged team, have world-class marketing.
If you haven’t already started utilising Workplace by Facebook you can get a trial of it through the link here;