Early Champions & Training

Workplace champions help build your community and promote Workplace to their peers.

Why it's important
Why it's important
Champions are a key part of your Workplace launch. They are the early adopters who help shape your Workplace community and the behaviors you want to see within it. You can think of Champions as the Workplace ambassadors inside the company who make your launch experience richer and easier.
Prior to launch, champions will help build your community by creating groups and adding content before to inviting the rest of your organization. Throughout the pre-launch, launch and post launch stages, your network of champions will be promoting Workplace to their colleagues and moving key team and project communications to the platform in order to drive adoption and engagement.
By activating your network of champions, you can focus on the strategic parts of the launch such as your internal comms plan, developing your messaging and gathering relevant use cases.
Tactical how to
Tactical how to
Choosing your champions
You should aim to select 10-20% of your organization as champions to create a meaningful and welcoming Workplace when you fully launch. These champions should be a representative sample of your organization, with all departments, locations, generations and levels of management represented.
Your champions should also be chosen for their influence within your organization and early adopter behaviors (network savvy, visionary, motivator). It can be particularly powerful to bring on people managers who can immediately influence working behaviors within their teams.
Pre-Launch
  • Host a training session with champions to walk them through their role in the launch, key Workplace features and your messaging for deploying Workplace.
  • Create a secret Workplace group for all champions where you can share important campaign actions and new use cases for them to use within their teams.
  • Use the group and your other communication channels to share resources such as The New User Guide, Group Admin Guide, and more.
  • Champions should be given early access (we recommend 7-10 days) to help prepare the community for launch day. Knowing your goals and the content that employees in groups would find helpful, your champions can create groups and post content to ensure a welcoming experience for all your coworkers. They can also help share key information about the arrival of Workplace and build excitement among their peers.
Launch
  • Champions are key to getting all coworkers to activate their profiles. As early experts, they can share knowledge and raise awareness regarding Workplace's features.
  • Get champions involved in the planning and execution of your launch day event. They can provide valuable input from their teams to make launch day fun for evryone.
  • Encourage champions to have face-to-face conversations with coworkers about Workplace, and to bring their own team and project communications to Workplace to promote adoption.
Post Launch
  • Champions continue to play an active role in Workplace engagement campaigns after launch. They allow you to reach and inspire all your coworkers, especially the ones that are lagging behind in engagement. We've seen a lot of success in engagement with champions leading contests by region or department to boost claims through friendly competition.
  • Continue champion involvement in Workplace initiatives and campaigns after launch, and use your champions to be your eyes and ears, seeking examples of use cases on Workplace. Your champions should feel empowered to share these use cases in your champions group which you can then share across the whole organization.
Key takeaways
Key takeaways
  • Champions that are bought into why you're deploying Workplace will be more effective at conveying the excitement and mission — give them an incentive and ownership over certain groups, which will empower them to promote community and engagement with their coworkers.
  • It takes a village to build community — the more passionate early adopters, the better. You can share the responsibility of creating groups and adding content with the whole champions team in the run-up to your launch day.
  • Launch is just the beginning — champions will need to help their colleagues on launch day, but you should encourage them to stay engaged and report ideas and suggestions back to the project team to continue evolving how you use Workplace.