Workplace or Facebook at Work: a more fortunate LinkedIn?

"Engagement".Let us stay with this word. Engagement means commitment.Determine the degree of involvement, dating, emotionally, with a company, brand or product, whatever.It's very relevant.

That a worker wants to remain in his position or, on the contrary, asks for the dismissal, depends circumstantially on the engagement.That the first thing you do when opening the laptop daily is to consult Facebook, also is throwing data on our affinity with that platform .

Workplace: DO WE NEED IT?

With an average per user of 51 minutes a day in front of Facebook, outperforming any leisure activity except the consumption of movies/series, it was clear that Facebook had to move in some direction: that that well of procrastination, "likes" and improvised comments would offer some more practical function.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg does not intend to stand still.Jessie Baker, spokesman for the company, says that «the time you spend on Facebook is a good measure of whether we are delivering something valuable.How much better we do it, giving people what want to see, more likely we will have to come back and spend more time in the app ».

But Workplacle, known as Facebook at Work in its trial period, comes at a time when collaborative applications for work environments have met that need: 'Yammer', owned by Microsoft, has a very nice ecosystem; 'Convo', which also provides a good handful of satellite tools ; and 'Slack', the queen of the crown who, as her own creators say, is even used by NASA.

So what does Workplace bring back? Your data, simply and simply.Facebook wants to be associated with a productive object and knows how to get it because it knows you.From the first tests started a year ago until today, with clients such as the 100,000 employees of the Royal Bank Of Scotland or Facebook itself, the Workplace launch has taken almost two years.

18 months in which they have studied the competition, made agreements with more than 400 companies and proposed a model that does not need plugins , but integrates the entire management system of files, tasks and calendars within the app itself .Besides a backup in the cloud or audio and videoconference calls.

THE PRICE OF INDEPENDENCE

Social networks opened a slightly awkward revolving door: let your boss know where you are, what is the last purchase you have made on Amazon, or if you are connected on WhatsApp until too late. It may be a dangerous throwing weapon and can be the determining element that connects and humanizes our relationship with the rest of our companions.

Towards this second scenario, the Zuckerberg company points out: not to mix work and leisure, but to make leisure more productive .Sigve Brekke, president and CEO of the Telenor Group, believes that thanks to Workplace they are « eliminating hierarchies between sections, and creating an organized chaos where ideas can flourish ».

This is something that Facebook can achieve better than anyone.Let's look at LinkedIn: its failure as a social network-in Spain-is given by its abstruse design and its mania for compartmentalizing all the elements.A great idea smeared by an excess of confusing features.It is still the only way to communicate thousands of professionals, but not because of its virtue, but because of the absence of competitors .

On the other hand, it is obvious that in a conducive environment, communication, problem solving and internal discussions are not as tense as through formal emails.This is the reason why the Royal's visible head Bank of Scotland, Kevin Hanley, has confirmed that 90% of users continue to use it month after month .

SAFETY BEFORE EVERYTHING

"Your personal updates will not be included in your profile", that is to say: nothing you do in one service will appear in another.And, if Facebook has experience, it is handling algorithms, although the company has not published under which security protocols it operates if it has confirmed that it does not have third-party systems, but with its own infrastructure, although it uses third-party standards promoted by the Cloud Security Alliance itself (CSA).

Facebook has proclaimed its manifesto for security and trust in a series of points, backed by the auditor Ernst&Young LLP.Both her consultation forms (Soc2) and the public (Soc3) are validated and reviewed from the own In any case, what the potential user is interested in is not so much the indexes or tools of 'IT risk management' but the reality: as a new app helps in our day to day .

Although until now the final price of the application has not transcended (three dollars per user up to 1,000 monthly active members), from Facebook they had already insisted that it will be a fairly "friendly" app.If you look at Slack as a reference-6.67 dollars per active user or 12.40 for the plus service-, none of these services supposes monthly expenses that cannot be assumed.Much less for companies.

In just a few days we will know if we face a revolution in virtual offices , or if it will simply be a tool for the most faithful, for those who sign up for all events.Go later or don't go, engagement.

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