Finding the right alternative to Meta Workplace: What to look for in an engagement platform

04 Feb 2025, posted in

Now is the time to find your perfect replacement for Workplace by Meta. But where do you start in the search for a new system?

You need an engagement platform that not only provides the features you use in Workplace, but one offering extras that will elevate how you engage with your people. This is your opportunity to find a system tailored to your business’ communication and engagement needs.

Here are some of the capabilities you should be looking for in your business’s new colleague platform.

Consumer-grade technology

While Meta has devoted its time and money to exciting projects like extended reality, Workplace has missed out on the latest technological developments and fell behind competitors.

Your ideal colleague platform should embrace consumer-grade technology to provide the best user experience. By making your platform available as an app, your people can access everything they need, from anywhere in the world and at any time of day. After all, we use state-of-the-art technology every day in our personal lives — from the phones in our pockets to the laptops on our tables. So, why wouldn’t we use the best technology possible in business, too?

Too many companies rely on old-fashioned intranets that aren’t optimised to how they work, which can be detrimental to colleague productivity and engagement. If your colleague platform is easy to use, people are more likely to use it. It’s common sense.

And a consumer-grade platform allows you to explore the latest technological advancements. Colleague platforms can use features like AI to provide personalised content feeds for all your people, meaning they can stay in the loop, receive the updates most relevant to them, and be shown the content they’re most interested in. Customising the colleague experience in this way means that your people receive the information they need most, and that they are most likely to engage with.

Custom branding

Customisation is a great way to stimulate engagement. A significant feature of Workplace was its design emulating Facebook, another Meta platform. While this made Workplace’s user interface seem familiar to users, it meant companies were limited in their ability to tailor Workplace to their unique communication and collaboration needs. They couldn’t really make it their own.

The ideal colleague platform should let you truly make your mark by offering advanced flexibility and customisation capabilities. You can tailor your app or website to your business with personalised dashboards for all your people, creating workflows corresponding with how your team works best. To help your team feel more connected to your business, you can customise your platform to include your brand’s colours, icons, and images.

Secure social networking

To build real engagement, it’s not enough for your people to interact with corporate updates: they need to connect and engage with each other.

The ideal platform empowers colleagues to create profiles, join group discussions, participate in topic-based chats, and connect through private messaging. Customisation should be at your system’s core, allowing you to boost morale with peer-to-peer recognition and celebrate achievements unique to your company. These features let businesses foster vibrant, engaged communities — all within a secure, trusted space.

Easy integration

Nowadays, colleagues can connect in various ways, often across multiple apps. However, when essential documents and conversations are scattered across different platforms, the risk of important information getting lost or misplaced increases significantly.

The best colleague platforms allow you to seamlessly integrate the apps and websites your people use most — another example of the advanced capabilities in platform customisation and flexibility that you should be searching for. By integrating all your people’s key tools, your platform becomes a powerful, centralised resource and communication hub that is unique to your business.

This integration streamlines workflows, making work more efficient and boosting team productivity by reducing time spent hunting down important files. With less time wasted, your people can focus more on engaging with your business and with each other.