Workplace by Facebook —

creating a more connected

charity

Sophie Bennett / @sophbennett1

David Hunt / @d_p_hunt

@LeonardCheshire

About Leonard Cheshire Disability

• Charity providing disability support

services and programmes across the UK

and internationally

• 200 locations in the UK, plus projects in

14 countries

• 6,500 staff — most not desk-based.

– two-thirds of staff don’t have email

addresses

Motivation

• Staff survey results: communication, openness and leadership need to be improved

• Workplace provides both desktop and mobile solution

• Familiarity: works like Facebook

• New chief executive supportive of using Workplace– formerly worked at RNIB, who were

pilot partners of Workplace

Pilot stage — two weeks

• Launched within corporate affairs directorate (around 30 people) in early December

• Access also given to senior leadership team and key IT staff

• Helped us get a feel for Workplace and potential issues

Launch phase one (1)

• Champions identified and given early access (13 December)

• Remaining 2,500 desk- and home-based staff added a week later (19 December)

• Communications plan leading up to launch

– emails from chief executive and HR director introducing Workplace

– showed support from the top

Launch phase one (2)

• Full support from Facebook

– suite of resources —guides, videos, etc.

– helped us develop roll out/comms plan

– conducted hour-long webinar with champions

– regular catch-ups to generate ideas for maximising account activation and engagement

Early engagement on Workplace• Organic engagement motivated

by Christmas activities at

services around the UK

• User generated ideas

– ‘Freecycle’ group for care homes

to exchange equipment they no

longer need

– 2017 is centenary of our

founder’s birth

– Workplace provides natural

place for internal sharing of

ideas and successes

• Two-way communications

• Created a place for our staff to

feel less isolated

Challenges (1)

• Quality of data

– no single source of truth

– non-standard use of record fields

– difficulty creating auto-sync tool for

accounts

So. Many. Email. Notifications.

• Overwhelming number of email notifications– by default, as soon as a

person is invited, Workplace sends email notifications multiple times per day about recent activity

– over time, notifications get ignored or moved into clutter/junk folders

Challenges (2)

• Engagement– lots of people sharing

good news stories which is great for morale and our brand, but we’d like staff to work more collaboratively

– staff not buying into Workplace and are addicted to email —say they don’t want a ‘social media’ account

Overcoming challenges

• Crucial to have IT on board before launch

• FAQs and regular communications — set up a

Workplace email address for queries

• Use your champions

• Handle individual cases quickly

• Encourage projects to use Workplace — cross-

team working

Next steps

• Add 4,000 remaining staff!

– email accounts created

– Workplace accounts can be

created — but no easy way to

communicate activation link

– make sure there’s enough

engaging content when people

log in

– create the FOMO (fear of

missing out) effect

Top tips for Workplace

• Leadership buy-in

• IT support, willing to improve their

systems

• Be flexible

• Be prepared — not everyone likes change

• Keep up the momentum

• FOMO — avoid duplication

@d_p_hunt / @sophbennett1 / @LeonardCheshire

Any questions?

Visit the CharityComms website

to view slides from past events,

see what events we have

coming up and to check out

what else we do:

www.charitycomms.org.uk

23 March 2017SeminarLondon

#charitydigital

Digital trends: how

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shifts in the digital

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