Facebook at Work?

Some say it adds to company culture. Others say it’s a distraction and waste of time and resources. What we can all agree on is that internal communications is a vital way of distributing vital information between departments within a business. How effectively and efficiently this is done though can often come down to the software and systems in place. Enter Facebook for Work – the new corporate enterprise communication medium for your business. Not convinced? You’re not alone.

Firstly, what is Facebook at Work? It is not a tool which is designed for B2B communications. It’s an internal communication platform only visible to employees of the company which uses Facebook at Work, much like how an Intranet works. However, Facebook, being the company that it is, would not launch a new platform unless there was something in it for them – so what it is it?

The trouble is people see the name Facebook and think social media, or rather; it’s so ingrained in their lives that people look past the brand name now and think of their own social online interactions. Are companies really going to want to encourage a social media company to provide them with an internal communication system? There’s no denying that people are familiar with Facebook, but the way in which information is communicated does not lend itself to the corporate environment. Will being on Facebook at Work only remind people of their own personal profiles and encourage them to check their profiles more often at work?

A key question is what is its Unique Selling Point (USP)? Why will companies use it when there are other platforms already established in the corporate enterprise world? Yes, Facebook has access to an unbelievable amount of data to create a framework for the new work platform; however, the data comes from people using Facebook for an entirely different reason.

The main concern is understandably privacy and security. With recent social media accounts within the US Military having been breached and hacked, albeit not Facebook accounts, what parameters are there to stop cyber hackers accessing not only personal information of employees, but valuable company information as well? Companies will want to know they have extra security if they are to invest.

The new venture leads us to pose the question; are Facebook aware they have reached their saturation point? Facebook have 1.3 billion users and growth of the social media site continues to slow. Every company wants to see growth, but every company is also aware that growth becomes harder to achieve at such a fast rate when the target market is pretty well spoken for in its entirety. It means finding new ways, new avenues, to expand and grow into. Facebook at Work is that answer for Facebook.

While there may seem there are more questions than answers at this stage, it should be noted that Facebook at Work has only been rolled out to a select few who are testing the usability of the platform. Businesses can enter in their company details here to learn more about the platform.

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