Virtual Collaboration Made Easy: Leveraging Facebook Workplace for Remote Team

The boundaries of the workplace have been pushed beyond the physical office. Remote work is more popular than it ever was and businesses need virtual collaboration tools to give remote employees the best shot possible at success. Facebook Workplace has become a great option to fill this need. 

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You might suspect that it’s just an extension of the social media giant, and you’d be dead wrong. Facebook Workplace has a cache of excellent tools made for professionals. It functions as a digital hub that allows for real-time communication and fast, slick workflows. It also is great for bringing teams together despite their geographical distances. 

Facebook Workplace for Virtual Collaboration

Creating Dedicated Groups

Even as recently as one decade ago, email was the prime way of internal communication. The problems with that have become obvious - cluttered inboxes and overlooked messages are an inevitability. Facebook Workplace allows teams to create groups dedicated to specific projects or departments. The groups are centralized spaces  where the members can ask questions and conduct discussions, without the normal problems that come with sending email.

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For example, a marketing team can create a separate group for an upcoming product launch. All  communications related to that campaign are thus neatly organized. Compartmentalization brings with it clarity and gives team members a go-to place for their specific questions and needs, which in this case leads to more effective marketing. 

Live Video for Meetings and Presentations

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One of the drawbacks of remote work is the lack of socialization. Humans communicated face-to-face for hundreds of thousands of years, and having that kind of communication is still important. Facebook Workplace's live video feature is a conferencing tool, sure. But it’s become a spot where spontaneous brainstorming sessions and presentations can happen. 

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What makes it unique and sets it apart from other apps is how easy it is to create and join a video session. It’s also simple to take live sessions and broadcast them to gain a wider reach and get more participation from employees. 

Source: Workplace from Meta

Collaborative Features - File Sharing and Project Management Tools

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To collaborate effectively, you must be able to share your resources easily and track any progress made. Facebook Workplace shines here as well. Workers can easily share and edit documents like PDFs, design prototypes and spreadsheets, and more to threads or groups.  

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Its project management tools are also incredibly helpful to keep everyone on the same page. You can assign tasks and set deadlines, monitor progress and send reminders as well. Usually, these functions would need to be juggled across multiple apps, but Facebook Workplace gives it to you in one place. 

Best Practices for Leveraging Facebook Workplace

Setting Clear Guidelines

It’s probably clear to you at this point that Facebook Workplace has a large swath of usable features. That said, in order for them to work for your team, clear guidelines have to be set. You’ll likely need to define the purpose of each group, or provide guidelines for posting protocols, or set a code of conduct at some point.  

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A prime example here could be if you proactively set a rule where all agendas must be posted a day in advance. Your team members will have enough time to prepare and the productivity of your meetings will rise. 

Encouraging Active Participation

Without active participation, even a tool as good as Facebook Workplace becomes useless. Leaders and managers should make it a priority to promote engagement with the tool as much as possible. A couple of good ideas to accomplish this could be hosting weekly discussions or taking time to celebrate team achievements. 

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The beauty of Facebook Workplace is that it provides a familiar environment for users. It is highly similar to the regular Facebook interface. One way you can take advantage of this familiarity is to create polls and quizzes or even chat sessions. The users will feel like they’re on the social media side of Facebook, and you can keep engagement high that way. 

Fostering a Sense of Community

Probably the most obvious challenge facing remote workers is the feeling of isolation. Your online workplace could be bustling at a blistering pace, but it doesn’t change the lack of physical closeness that an office provides. This can lead to a sense of detachment and can ruin your team’s morale and lead to easier burnout. Luckily, Facebook Workplace comes with social features to help offset this. 

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Taking advantage of its familiar Facebook environment, Workplace allows you to create interest-based groups that appear informal. Some employers have made groups such as 'Book Lovers' or 'Weekend Chefs'. These groups are not directly related to work, but they play an important role - fostering a sense of community. When your employees have a place to share and connect over shared interests, they’ll feel more connected to their coworkers. 

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Workplace Live is another feature that can allow for interaction beyond the usual work topics. Many employers use it for hosting team-building activities or informal catchup sessions. 

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Source: Workplace from Meta

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Case Studies and Success Stories

How useful a tool is can be best measured by its impact in the real world. There are plenty of organizations that use Facebook Workplace as their go-to platform for their online collaboration, and their success stories can provide some great insights into its use. 

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Consider Nestle - a multinational company with teams scattered across various time zones. They’ve taken full advantage of Facebook Workplace and have managed to shrink their email clutter substantially by using dedicated groups for their projects. Their managers have been able to seriously increase the amount of employee engagement via surveys and informal discussions. They’ve reaped the benefits of clearer communication and a bridged gap between time zones as well. 

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Another example is the Save The Children organization. They recently transitioned to remote work due to global challenges that went even beyond Covid. Their need was twofold: effective communication and a strong sense of community. Facebook Workplace allowed them to create and spread deeply impactful campaigns while collaborating on important strategies. They also were able to more easily hold virtual fundraisers by using the live video feature.  

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These are just a taste of some real-world applications that show how powerful Facebook Workplace has become in serving the various needs of different organizations.  

Conclusion: Streamlining Communication and Enhancing Productivity

The digital transformation of the workplace is not just about adopting tools but about integrating them in ways to increase productivity and create a better workplace. Facebook Workplace truly stands out here as an option.

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Its strengths lie in its adaptability. You can be a small team working on a startup idea. Or maybe you belong to a large corporation with a global footprint. Facebook Workplace can offer solutions to you regardless. It centralizes your communication and encourages participation. It helps foster community and remote collaboration. 

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And it’s constantly evolving. Facebook keeps taking feedback and advances in technology to refine its features. Remote work isn’t going away - on the contrary, by all indications it will continue to dominate the work world for some time. Tools like Facebook Workplace will certainly be irreplaceable in shaping the dynamics of collaboration going forward.

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