Aker BP, Prepp and more talk setting up for success with Workplace at Transform Nordics
CEOs, Chief Workplace Officers and digital disruptors from all over Scandinavia descended on Oslo last week to join us at Transform Nordics.
CEOs, Chief Workplace Officers and digital disruptors from all over Scandinavia descended on Oslo last week to join us at Transform Nordics.
As a group of nations with a reputation for progressive work practices, digital innovation and the highest rates of job satisfaction in the world, Scandinavia was the perfect setting for the region’s leading companies to share insight on how they work better with Workplace at our most recent Transform event. Here are some of the highlights.
Aker BP on the key ingredients for a successful Workplace launch
Aker BP’s Senior Internal Communications Advisor, Camilla Hatleskog, and Senior IT Analyst, Jan Edvardsen, took the stage first up to share about their Workplace journey. For Aker BP, there were four simple objectives of rolling out Workplace:
- Build a stronger ‘one team’ culture
- Adopt a mobile-first approach
- Break down silos
- Have management be more visible within the company
Aker BP’s ambition is to become the leading offshore oil company. And there’s no way that could happen by clinging to traditional internal communication channels like email and the intranet, as Camilla pointed out.
“It’s safe to say that all the feedback we’ve had about Workplace has been positive. It says a lot.”
For Aker BP, the key to successfully implementing a modern, mobile-first communication tool like Workplace was to use the launch to generate buzz and gather company-wide buy-in.
They timed the Workplace launch to coincide with an annual summer party on 7 June 2018, and within just five days, 80% of employees had adopted Workplace.
They now have 2,450 staff in the Workplace community, have secured excellent executive engagement, and have successfully killed off the intranet.
So how did they do it?
Aker BP did five things to set themselves up for a successful launch:
- Trained over 50 end users and Workplace champions within the business
- Hosted one-to-one training with all members of the executive team
- Produced consistent, quality collateral for the launch
- Created a Workplace launch page on SharePoint to answer any questions
- Printed brochures with Workplace rules and placed them on everyone’s desk the day before the launch
“Within 1 month of launching WP, 95% of our workforce was using it. Really good quality content is being shared on Workplace every day without us having to push for it.”
Prepp’s top ideas for automation
Next up was Amin Fard, CEO of chat bot company Prepp. Amin delivered a crash course on bots and highlighted some best in class examples of how Nordic companies are putting them into action to work smarter.
Workplace bots, keyword recognition (e.g. to fill in forms) and automation (e.g. to trigger a flow of messages) are the three most common types of bots.
- Employee surveys
- FAQs
- Onboarding new hires
- E-learning courses
- Customer support tickets
- Forms
- Compliance
Find out more about how your company can get on board with bots – and the benefits of doing so right here.
Securitas Sweden’s digital transformation with Workplace
Jens Granath, Head of Marketing Communications at Securitas Sweden, held a captive audience in the afternoon talking about their recent adoption of Workplace.
Surprisingly, 80% of Securitas Sweden’s employees work during the night. Prior to Workplace, two-night guards could be working the same shift on alternating nights and have no way of communicating with each other.
In the pre-Workplace era, the pinboard was the central communication hub at local Securitas Sweden offices.
What has changed with Workplace?
- The company has become “a lot smaller” – it’s given everyone in the business a better sense of what’s going on and has brought people much closer to their colleagues
- A significant increase in the volume of grassroots innovation via the Workplace community
- Noticeable reduction of emails
- Lowers “threshold of contact” so that people feel more comfortable approaching and collaborating with each other
- Quicker feedback and input
- Better crisis management
- It’s created a hub of original content for marketing purposes
“With Workplace, we have seen that ideas come to people when they work closely together.”
One example of innovation from the Securitas Sweden Workplace community is the idea an employee had to jazz up a vacant wall in an office.
Rather than having miscellaneous safety equipment spread throughout the office, this employee came up with an idea to gather it all together and display it neatly on a free wall.
He even painted the wall in the Securitas Sweden brand color to finish it off and shared it on Workplace.
The image of the branded wall received a lot of likes and praise on Workplace, and soon it went viral. Other offices began replicating the branded wall, and before long Securitas Sweden decided to turn it into an official item of collateral.
They have now created a moveable, pop-up branded wall that they use at events and other mobile displays.
Insight from the Workplace leadership and core teams
To finish off the day, four leaders from Workplace got up on stage for an open Panel Session to share advice, product insight and practical tips on how to get the most out of Workplace day-to-day.
Here are their favorite Workplace tips.
Julien Lesaicherre, Director of Workplace
Take advantage of scheduled posts and draft posts. These are great features to utilize from a time management point of view, with scheduled posts helping you to plan ahead and push posts out first thing on Monday morning or at a regular time each week.
Draft posts make it easy to manage long posts that you want to edit or add to multiple times, without leaving Workplace.
Christine Overby, Product Marketing Director
Create a ‘Just Me’ Group on Workplace. This Group is perfect for taking meeting notes throughout the day and is really easy to go back and search in when you’re looking for certain notes or thoughts from a previous meeting. It also makes prep for future meetings much easier.
Jennifer Hunt, Solutions Architect
Use the Notifications Hub. And be sure to fine-tune the notifications you receive, so that when you are in the Hub, you get 100% relevant notifications every time.
This makes working through daily notifications much more manageable, and you can turn to the News Feed for anything else you want to see.
Namit Chadha, Product Designer
Set up one-on-one Groups. Create a one-on-one Group with your manager or someone you work closely with, and post to each other without having to use email or Workplace Chat.
It’s an easy, searchable way to keep each other in the loop. It also means you can see if they’ve seen an update you’ve shared and if they like it or have reacted to it.
