If you are a Workplace from Meta customer still trying to get to grips with what its discontinuation means for your business, you are likely being inundated with content to encourage you to try other employee experience solutions. We aren’t here for the hard sell, but we are here to say that this is an opportune time to explore the capabilities of a range of intranet platforms that go beyond an enterprise social network. There are a variety of internal communication tools that could be suitable alternatives to Workplace by Meta, but it all comes down to what you need.
Social connections are key to employee engagement, but is there more that your internal communications platform can do to embody your company culture, wherever your employees are based? An intranet that acts as a single source of truth and a central hub for employee communication and collaboration will help to achieve and sustain strong internal trust, connection and engagement.
Choosing the right Workplace alternative
When you have spent years building an engaging communication platform, encouraging user behaviours, gathering data and creating content, it will feel frustrating to lose it and have to start from scratch. While you can export any data and key content you may want to keep, this could be an ideal time to review and revamp your internal communications strategy.
With over a year before Workplace is discontinued on 31st August 2025, you have plenty of time to shop around for the best suited Workplace alternative and explore potential new features without rushing to switch onto a similar platform.
While you have the time, we encourage you to weigh up a range of options and get a few demos to identify which platform best aligns with your future employee experience and engagement goals. Evaluate your current situation and what your internal communications strategy looks like. Which features are you happy with and where are there opportunities to expand your employee communication and collaboration horizons?
As well as the products you’re exploring, you can also get a feel for the level of service you could receive by the customer support teams. These people will help you to make the most of all the best suited features you can use to achieve your communication and collaboration objectives, so it is important to know that they will have your best interests at heart.
Key features of an alternative to Workplace
1) Integrations
Whether you’re looking for a solution that integrates with Microsoft or is completely separate from it, choose a workplace alternative that has strong capabilities and integrates seamlessly with hundreds of third party tools.
This way, you can continue to utilise the platforms your teams need to do their job, but they become easily accessible through one central space and can complement any other internal communications and engagement initiatives you may have in place.
2) AI powered content creation and delivery
Go beyond the social aspect and find a tool that makes responsible use of AI powered content and homepage creation to complement the user experience without bombarding your employees. Explore tailored delivery of content so that your people only see what is relevant and of interest to them.
If you have an internationally based workforce, consider looking for a workplace alternative that uses AI powered auto-translations to ensure your messaging is completely understood by your people.
3) Surveys and feedback
Build your new intranet from the ground up, and encourage your employees to have their say in how they use it. Look for an employee experience platform that has the capability to gather and analyse feedback, from quick polls to broader surveys. Let your people help you to shape the future of your internal communications strategy.
4) Mobile and deskless colleagues
To sustain the social and community aspect that you will be familiar with, your ideal alternative to Workplace should have seamless integration on mobile. Ideally, this will be through an intuitive mobile app that adapts the desktop experience for employees who are often on the go or in frontline roles. Look out for an app that has multiple options for verification without requiring a work email address, to ensure you can get maximum participation through a simple Single Sign On.
Do you need help sourcing a Workplace alternative?
We hope this has given you some food for thought, and brought to light some positive opportunities in an unsettling time.
We wish you the best in finding an alternative to Workplace that suits your business needs, and if you would like to sample the capabilities of Oak we would be delighted to chat with you and walk you through our award winning platform.
For now, why not see what we have done for our customers here
