Facebook Workplace Now On Its Fifth Year, With 7 Million Paying Subscribers

This week marks the fifth anniversary of Facebook Workplace, with the company's professional platform now assisting over 7 million employees at hundreds of firms in staying connected to critical internal updates and collaborating on projects in new and evolving ways.

It still appears to be something that many firms would avoid, especially given the company's recent controversies. However, Workplace's popularity is growing, with the site experiencing a 40% rise in users as a result of the COVID pandemic.

According to Facebook:

“Since 2016, some of the world’s most innovative organizations, including Walmart, Vodafone, Banco Galicia and Vision India Foundation, have now experienced that Workplace effect. In the past year we’ve welcomed companies including BT, C&A, English National Opera, Petco, Sephora and Virgin Australia along with countless local businesses.”

The transition to hybrid work patterns, in which employees split their time between home and work, has helped the app gain traction, while Facebook has continued to add features to its Workplace offering, including a growing number of utilities and tools to assist employees maximize productivity.

Workplace is essentially Facebook, but just for corporate messaging and interaction. Because the vast majority of individuals are already familiar with Facebook's tool and communication choices, this saves organizations a lot of time in training, while the increased capability for live-streaming, file-sharing, internal announcements, and more gives considerable benefits straight away.

However, as previously said, there are worries about the Facebook branding.

As Facebook points out:

“Five years ago, this was a hard sell. It took early, visionary leaders to trust us and come onboard. It was hard to explain the 'Workplace Effect' - you just knew it when you felt it. But we saw our customers empowering people to turn their companies into communities and had faith that the rest of the world would soon see it, too.”

I mean, the term "Workplace effect" is a little exaggerated, but the point is that Workplace has helped many firms enhance their cooperation and communication through familiar, effective technologies that are simple to implement.

Whether you'd trust Facebook with your corporate data or not, many organizations now do, and it appears that there will be increasing demand for such tools in the post-pandemic environment, resulting in Workplace usage continuing to rise.

In short, Facebook appears to be on track to become an even greater part of our daily lives through every way, with Workplace's functionality giving more options for businesses to improve connection and community in the app.