At Facebook, we’ve had an internal version of our app to help run our company for many years. We’ve seen that just as Facebook keeps you connected to friends and family, it can do the same with coworkers. We started testing a version of Facebook for the workplace with a few other organizations over a year ago.
Now, more than 1,000 organizations around the world use Workplace (formerly known as Facebook at Work). People have created nearly 100,000 groups and the top five countries using Workplace are India, the US, Norway, UK and France. We’re excited by the progress we’ve made and the level of adoption and engagement we’re seeing.
So today we’re announcing that Workplace will now be available to any company or organization that wants to use it.
For Everyone, Around the World
The workplace is about more than just communicating between desks within the walls of an office. Some people spend their entire workday on the go, on their mobile phone. Others spend all day out in the field, or on the road. We’ve been amazed by the breadth of organizations who’ve embraced Workplace — from a shipping company that can now connect with their ship crews using Live video, to a bank that now uses Workplace instead of fax machines and newsletters to share updates with its distributed bank branches. Large multinational companies like Danone, Starbucks and Booking.com, international nonprofits such as Oxfam, and regional leaders such as YES Bank in India and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore have all embraced Workplace. People work in different ways, around the world, and Workplace’s mission is to help them stay connected.
The Best of Facebook, Plus New Features
We’ve brought the best of Facebook to the workplace — whether it’s basic infrastructure such as News Feed, or the ability to create and share in Groups or via chat, or useful features such as Live, Reactions, Search and Trending posts. This means you can chat with a colleague across the world in real time, host a virtual brainstorm in a Group, or follow along with your CEO’s presentation on Facebook Live.
We’ve also built unique, Workplace-only features that companies can benefit from such as a dashboard with analytics and integrations with single sign-on, in addition to identity providers that allow companies to more easily integrate Workplace with their existing IT systems.
Today we’re also announcing Multi-Company Groups, shared spaces that allow employees from different organizations to work together, to extend collaboration beyond your company in a safe and secure way. These will be rolling out to all customers in the coming weeks.
Scaling the Solution: Introducing the Workplace Partner Program
To help more companies get started with Workplace, we are announcing the Workplace Partner Program, a group of technology and professional service organizations such as Deloitte who will work with us to bring Workplace to even more businesses across the globe. This means that companies will have more ways to access Workplace — by working with our teams directly or via our approved and trained partners.
Workplace will be priced competitively — companies only pay for people who are actively using the product. See details of pricing here.
The new global and mobile workplace isn’t about closed-door meetings or keeping people separated by title, department or geography. Organizations are stronger and more productive when everyone comes together. For more information, or to get Workplace by Facebook for your company, visit workplace.fb.com. Or stay in touch on our Facebook Page at facebook.com/workplace.