TalkingHeadz with Julien at Workplace by Facebook
A dirty secret about enterprise communications is that it’s rarely the same thing as “enterprise-wide” communications. That’s because most enterprise communications solutions don’t include all of the employees. It has not been practical to include all employees — at least that was true in the past. Most solutions focus on what’s called “knowledge workers.”
There’s no simple definition of a knowledge worker other than they often have a desk, and desks make great phone stands. Employees known as frontline workers often don’t have desks, nor work provided phones, email accounts, or other work-related communications services. This group includes a variety of employees such as retail, agriculture, delivery, and factory workers. It turns out there are more of these deskless (firstline or frontline) workers than knowledge workers. In fact, knowledge workers may only represent as little as 20% of the workforce.
It’s not that enterprise comms excluded this silent majority, but it just wasn’t easy or practical to service them. Thanks to smartphones, that’s no longer the case. Workplace by Facebook is the first solution that is specifically designed to provide enterprise-wide communications. Workplace is available for desktops (web or client) and mobile devices. Part of its value is that it can enable all employees to directly interact with the head office and/or each other — often without training.
The whole MS Teams vs. Slack thing is a distraction. Workplace by Facebook is moving quickly into enterprise comms with a different message-centric solution. A powerful one that is disruptive, familiar, and inexpensive.
Julien Codorniou shares in this podcast how Workplace by Facebook is a startup SaaS play with a unique mission that is surprisingly compatible with its parent.