As you may have already heard, Meta is shutting down Workplace, the enterprise version of Facebook that enables employee communication and social interaction in organizations. As reported by Techcrunch, Workplace will work as usual until the start of September 2025 (specifically August 25). Then, it will be read-only until May 2026 after which the service will be completely decommissioned.
Facebook Workplace was deemed to fail
Meta launched Facebook Workplace in late 2016. As they used Facebook internally, they figured every company could also benefit from their own internal version Facebook. The platform was not designed from the ground up with employees in mind but was rather a re-skinned version of their popular consumer platform. Although quite a few enterprise Facebook Workplace alternatives like Yammer, Slack existed, many organizations flocked to Workplace thinking that a pure social platform would engage their employees. However, there were several issues at play.
- Workplace was always a side project and not a core product for Facebook / Meta. So it had to make a decent percentage of their revenue to be considered successful.
- Facebook / Meta is notorious for monetizing data and privacy issues which resulted in lack of enterprise trust. Back in 2017, Craig Le Clair, analyst at Forrester, said “Several companies that conducted pilot deployments of the application subsequently ended them due to inflexible terms and conditions that indicate a lack of maturity in enterprise agreements. Others do not trust Facebook with internal proprietary communication.”
- Facebook / Meta is associated with fun not productivity. While the platform may offer employees to share updates with each other, it wasn’t necessarily designed to improve productivity like our platform HubEngage or Slack for example. A platform is considered productive when employees spend less time on the platform (not more) but get the key information they need to do their jobs well.
- Lack of customization and multiple Apps – Facebook Workplace never offered a lot of customization which is needed in the enterprise space. They also had 2 Apps to download – one for social and the second for messaging which lowers adoption.
HubEngage is the #1 Facebook Workplace Alternative
There are many platforms in the employee communications and engagement segment that could potentially be an alternative for Facebook Workplace especially for the enterprise social network. However, it may be worth thinking beyond just replacing and instead upgrading to a platform that can offer much more than Facebook Workplace.
HubEngage offers all the modules required to drive 360 degree employee engagement in one single App.
- Employee Communications Hub: With this hub, organizations can deliver all their top down content similar to a legacy traditional intranet portal. This includes custom branding, custom menus, content targeting and personalization, document repositories, knowledge bases and more.
- Enterprise Social Hub: With this hub, organizations can set up a social and collaborative environment similar to Facebook Workplace. Employees can share updates along with media, participate in various channels (groups) and interact with each other.
- Employee Recognition Hub: With this hub, organizations can automate employee milestones like birthdays, work anniversaries and new hires. Organizations can also set up their own recognition program – top down recognitions like employee of the month, manager of the month to peer-to-peer recognitions like a simple thank you.
- Employee Surveys and Forms Hub: With this hub, organizations can digitize all their forms to collect information. They can create quick pulse surveys or detailed engagement surveys using pre-built templates.
- Instant Messaging Hub: Using this hub, organizations can set up messaging where employees can privately message each other or create groups and message between groups similar to WhatsApp.
- AI Chatbot / AI Search: A ChatGPT like search which can organize all your information into FAQs and Topics and answer your employee questions directly.
HubEngage also offers multiple channels through which you can reach 100% of your employees. You basically create or manage your content in one place but target employees through any channel.
- Fully branded Mobile Apps
- Web App / Intranet for Desk based employees
- Emails (Fully automated email newsletters and email campaign creator for custom designed bulk emails)
- SMS / Text Messages
- Digital Signage
If you are not in the market to replace or buy all these modules today, you can still pick what you need now and upgrade to other modules as needed in future. A consolidated platform like HubEngage also saves you money by cutting your license costs by 5X.
See a demo of HubEngage platform to learn how it can not just replace Facebook Workplace but offer much more to drive holistic employee engagement in your organization
