Workplace from Meta is closing, names Workvivo by Zoom as ONLY preferred migration partner.

Meta Workplace Retirement: 6 Tips for CIOs Choosing a New EXP

Ashima Bhatt

Product Marketing Manager at Workvivo

June 4 2024

Are you a CIO tasked with finding a Workplace from Meta alternative? Here are six tips for choosing a new EXP.

As Meta retires Workplace and organizations look to replace it, culture, engagement, and corporate alignment are all at risk of disruption. The current marketplace for employee experience platforms (EXPs) is rapidly evolving, with both large incumbents and emerging startups offering tools. 

Point solutions focused on very particular capabilities are already mature, but there’s a need for a ‘silver bullet’ approach to internal communications, culture, and corporate knowledge sharing. 

As you evaluate your options, the following tips will help narrow your decision-making to those best suited for your employees’ needs.

1. Get the right stakeholders involved

The first step to implementing any sort of change is to get the right people around the table. This will help define what the ideal platform looks like for your team. 

Internal communicators, for example, need a tool that simplifies content creation, reaches all employees, and provides robust analytics to measure effectiveness. They also want two-way dialogue (think top-down, community-led) and dynamic content creation tools. 

For HR teams, a tool that amplifies employee engagement and peer-to-peer recognition, and strengthens employee alignment to company values, is key. They also need to conduct employee listening analysis through a variety of inputs and easy-to-digest outputs.  

Finally, alongside these stakeholders, the IT department or CIO will need a place at the table to ask the right questions. This is crucial for evaluating the vendor landscape and narrowing down your options to a few providers. 

The goal is to make sure the winning solution meets the needs of every stakeholder, balancing such priorities as integration, user experience, and future scalability.

2. Zero in on the business problem you’re trying to solve

Employee experience apps can have many different flavors, so getting specific is important. For some, bridging communication gaps with frontline workers will be the top priority driving decision-making. Other companies may be better served by a dynamic intranet-first approach, or a culture and engagement-first app

Other business problems could be…

Shifting from office-centric to digital-first: The rise of hybrid work has fundamentally changed employee experience and digital investment needs

Employee retention and wellbeing: Supporting your workforce in light of labor shortages, burnout, and changing workplace dynamics

  • Gen Z will account for 27% of the workforce by 2025
  • 46% of workers feel overworked and disconnected from colleagues, highlighting the need for organizations to prioritize employee wellbeing
  • 46% of respondents say they’re considering quitting in the year ahead. And in the US, LinkedIn studies show a 14% increase in job applications per role since last fall, with 85% of professionals considering a new job this year

Onboarding efficiency and productivity: Improving time-to-value on full-time employee investments

  • Per Forrester, when intranets are effectively used, organizations can decrease the employee onboarding time by an average of 20%
  • Per Glassdoor, it costs at least $4,000 to onboard a new hire. Centralizing forms, training videos, important documents, and policies sets a uniform experience for every new person 
  • Employees spend an estimated 28% of the workweek managing email and nearly 20% looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. When companies make use of internal social channels, this time searching for information can be reduced by as much as 35%

Silos in large enterprises: Large enterprises face confusion and silos due to disparate systems and fragmented communication

  • Missed insights from cross-functional teams mean failures to leverage different perspectives
  • Poor coordination and communication lead to duplicated work and wasted efforts
  • Disengaged employees (probably the highest cost) lacking purpose and vision struggle to find meaning and connection to the enterprise
  • A report by Gartner found that poor data quality, often exacerbated by data silos, costs organizations an average of $12.9 million annually​
  • According to Forrester, knowledge workers spend an average of 12 hours per week “chasing data” due to silos

3. Consider your tech strategy 

Existing vendors might make billing and supplier setup easier, but this could come at the cost of capabilities, futureproofing, and user experience. 

Here are some things to consider when evaluating employee experience apps within your current tech strategy. 

Usability

Does the solution require switching between multiple tools, creating a disjointed user experience? Context-switching and sprawling tech stacks can be tiring and inefficient for employees.

Fragmentation

Does managing content in the app increase or decrease administrative burden? Does it improve or dilute communication effectiveness? 

User roles and permissions

Does the app have flexibility and customizations for different kinds of user profiles and the permissions they need, or does it restrict the flexibility needed for communication campaigns? 

Analytics

Is the app equipped with robust analytics capabilities? A good employee experience app should provide detailed insights and easy-to-understand reports that can inform strategic decisions and highlight areas for improvement.

Frontline strategy

How well does the app cater to frontline workers? Frontline employees often have different needs and work environments compared to office-based staff. An ideal app should offer strong mobile UX, support offline functionality, and provide intuitive interfaces that don’t require extensive training.

Manageability

The app should offer seamless integrations with your current tech stack to avoid data silos and ensure a unified user experience. Additionally, look for solutions that provide centralized management tools to simplify administration, updates, and support, thereby reducing the IT burden and ensuring long-term scalability and performance.

4. Ensure data and integrations are seamless (and two-way)

The EXP landscape ranges from worker-specific tools to full-suite enterprise platforms. But it’s critically important that whatever solution you choose has the functionality to connect with other enterprise apps,  both to source data and push it into other solutions.

A key concern is ensuring that your chosen solution will be able to access data from the wide range of systems necessary for reporting purposes, as well as to send data back to other systems for performance enhancement decisions.

Lastly, if you’re migrating from Meta Workplace, you must consider data migration requirements, limitations, and fees from all vendors. 

Read more about our migration process here

 

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5. Factor in employee training requirements 

Any sort of corporate shift requires engagement at every level of the organization, from the CEO to frontline employees. Is your company culture change-ready? As we’ve rolled out new initiatives internally, we’ve relied on internal communication champions at all levels to lead by example and spread enthusiasm.

But employees can’t be expected to effect change on their own. Ask your suppliers what kinds of training and onboarding are needed for their solutions, and what level of support they’ll provide.

Give employees a central hub to learn, share knowledge, and start to skill up, with pages and spaces for specific use cases catered to different roles and functions.

6. Choose with an eye on the future

When deciding on an employee app, consider your organization’s employee experience journey over the next five years. Then, I recommend digging into any vendor’s planned product development roadmap to ensure a long-term fit.

Developing close relationships with EXP vendors is critical, not only because their products will grow over time, but also because the employee experience itself will continue to evolve.

Pick a provider that acts like a true partner and extension of your team so that they can best customize their solution for your company’s needs. Flexibility and scalability are also crucial selection criteria, especially in a space where most products aren’t yet mature. 

Although there may be no perfect solutions today, smart decisions and good partnerships will lay a solid foundation now and for the future.


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