Workplace From Facebook Tops 7M Paid Subscribers

Enterprise platform Workplace From Facebook topped the 7 million paid subscribers mark, up 40% in the past year, and introduced several new features. Vice president Julien Codorniou discussed the pandemic’s role in the platform’s momentum with Adweek, saying, “What used to be a ‘nice to have’ for companies, connecting everyone, turning the company into a community, has become a ‘must have’ in the world we live in right now.” Companies that have onboarded over the past year include BT, C&A, English National Opera, Petco, Sephora and Virgin Australia. Codorniou wrote in a blog post Tuesday, “While we’re happy and proud that we’ve reached 7 million paid subscribers on Workplace, an increase of 40% over the past year, it goes way beyond that. We’re excited because we believe this growth is an indicator that more and more companies are really thinking about how to build communities at work. How they can create great employee experiences. In short, how they can connect the unconnected.” Workplace said the new products it is introducing mark a renewed focus on employee experience with the aim of helping people become more connected to their company’s purpose, giving employees a voice, enabling managers to hear what employees have to say and helping company leaders become influencers. “When you give a voice to everyone, it makes a difference,” Codorniou said. “It took a pandemic for companies to realize that it was important.” The platform said it will double down on live video, adding a new question-and-answer experience that enables any presenter to click on a question submitted by viewers and bring it into the middle of the screen for the hosts and the audience. Those question cards will give the presenter the profile information of the person asking the question so that responses can be personalized. Workplace said the first step of the enhanced integration with Cisco’s Webex, which was revealed last December, will be a new flow between the two platforms that is more seamless and easier to use, enabling hosts to begin in Webex and broadcast live to Workplace. The platform introduced a new Plugins functionality, enabling users to share content securely to third-party sites such as Microsoft SharePoint. Codorniou said the goal was “making sure that whatever you have in your IT stack, Workplace is plug-and-play.” Workplace events can now be synced with third-party calendars such as Gmail and Outlook, giving users a consistent view of their important events no matter which tools they use. New functionality was added to the Workplace application-programming interfaces to enable users to pull content from other platforms into its Knowledge Library, smoothing migration of existing intranets and giving people access to important company content via a single destination. Codorniou said, “Knowledge Library has been the big surprise of the year for us. Companies are ditching their intranets and going to Knowledge Library. Years ago, if you had told me that Facebook would be in the intranet business, I would not have believed you. Every company has a need for static content.” Finally, Workplace took steps to focus on diversity and inclusion on its platform, adding the capability this month for employees to include their name pronunciation on their personal profile—which will be incorporated into the live Q&A experience detailed above—and rolling out new skin colors for emojis, which can be set as a default option. Codorniou said Workplace began on a foundation based on traditional Facebook features, such as News Feed, and the company has been “investing in developing pillars on top of that first generation of Workplace. Companies knew that what they had was not enough to embrace the new ways of working.”

Platforms

Workplace From Facebook Tops 7M Paid Subscribers

The enterprise platform added a host of new features with a focus on employee experience

David Cohen

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

David Cohen