10 tips to satisfy the skeptics and nail your Workplace deployment
Business transformation can be hard — especially if new IT software and deployment is part of the plan. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Here are 10 tips to make your Workplace roll-out a success.
At one of our Workplace Transform events, we brought over 60 professionals from different backgrounds and industries together to discuss how to deploy Workplace successfully. The goal was to encourage people to trade ideas and success stories about how to drive Workplace engagement across their organizations.
We were not disappointed!
Events like this give people the chance to voice their honest, personal opinions and it’s amazing to see what happens when diverse minds come together to share. Here are the top 10 ideas from the event to help you overcome skeptics in your organization and make your Workplace roll-out a smash hit.
1. Use the ‘Seen By’ feature
See that little grey text that says ‘Seen By’ at the bottom right-hand side of each Workplace post? Leverage it to show your company leaders that 100 people in the business have seen your important post on company policy in just 10 minutes.
2. Promote new processes
Show impact by highlighting new employee-driven processes that work better on Workplace than they did before. For example, instead of sending emails around to different staff, Renault Retail Group employees now use a “Shift Swap” group in Workplace so that technicians can arrange last-minute shift changes in one place.
Tip: Create a group in Workplace where people can share examples of these processes that work well and come up with other good ideas.
3. Demonstrate the beauty of cross-functional collaboration
Win hesitant executives over by showing them how cross-functional teams and offices work better together. Using Workplace groups, project teams can get more done. They can collaborate on shared documents in real-time or share knowledge and best practice tips. People can get to know new colleagues, create new initiatives and project ideas, and innovate fast.
Example: Booking.com Customer Service teams used a Workplace group to hold a brainstorm to identify ways to improve customer experience. People could share ideas with the business, and this inspired a hackathon that resulted in new personalizations for their website.
4. Focus on speed
Show examples of how using Workplace on the desktop and mobile app helps increase the speed of work (along with issue resolution time and overall decision-making).
Example: Save the Children used groups in the aftermath of the hurricane in Haiti. In the past, ground-based teams were reliant on 1:1 email communication (thousands of emails) with many regional representatives to share updates, needs, photos, and reports. Using one Workplace group instead revolutionized this process. Also, because of the group, each region had visibility of the demand from ground staff and could easily consolidate requests in bulk by ‘liking’ a request. Workplace proved to be a great way to support the ground team.
5. Let there be polls
Use Workplace polls on your company News Feed to show managers and executives how quickly you can gather feedback from large groups of colleagues and make faster business decisions.
6. Never underestimate the power of FOMO
Sometimes people don’t want to join ‘yet another’ new platform. But once most of their team is using Workplace and they understand the reasons for the change FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) can be a positive force. 80% is an ideal claim rate, so aim for that!
7. A little socializing never hurt anybody
Social groups are a nice way to inspire skeptics to buy into the Workplace spirit of togetherness. Some skeptics simply have posting anxiety — so sprinkle a few social groups into your Workplace roll-out strategy. Once people are comfortable sharing posts, they can start to engage with team and project groups. And that’s where the work gets done.
8. All aboard for people managers
Get all of the leaders on board early and let them know how important their part is in driving change. The best ambassadors for change are the people in your organization that others look up to. Make sure they set up a group to connect and share things with their full team (an end to the group email distribution list!) and some 1:1 groups with their individual reports to discuss personal and professional goals.
9. Share the pulse
How do people feel about the roll-out? Run a survey before you press ‘go’. Then you can review sentiment a few months after launch. You’ll learn to what extent people feel more connected to their teams and the organization. Are they clearer on team and company objectives? Do they feel they have more impact now?
Then share the results with the skeptics for instant impact. Download the Workplace sample survey here.
10. Focus on the benefits
Focus on messaging that highlights the various benefits that Workplace delivers for employees. How it supports the company culture, mission, and objectives. Workplace is the tool that brings people together. It’s the people — empowered by the right tools — that make wonderful things happen at work.
And surely that’s something even the most skeptical of skeptics in an organization can agree with.
Sophie Gonin is a Strategic Partner Manager at Workplace. Passionate about helping customers meet their objectives, Sophie’s happy place is rediscovering the world through her very Instagram-able son’s POV.
