Workplace Webinar – Part 1: Leading a Remote Team with the Help of Workplace From Facebook

Speaker 1: Welcome to the JMARK Business Innovation Technology Experience. Todd Nielsen: Okay, welcome. We are now broadcasting live on Facebook. We are now broadcasting on Workplace.We are recording for everybody who wants to listen and watch this later. I'm Todd Nielsen, Chief Strategy Officer at

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the JMARK Business Innovation Technology Experience.

Todd Nielsen:
Okay, welcome. We are now broadcasting live on Facebook. We are now broadcasting on Workplace.We are recording for everybody who wants to listen and watch this later. I’m Todd Nielsen, Chief Strategy Officer at JMARK Business Solutions. Also, along here we have … Jeff, you want to introduce yourself?

Jeff Bendure:
Yeah. I’m Jeff Bendure, I’m the director of client relationship management here at JMARK.

Todd Nielsen:
Dax?

Dax Bambrough:
I’m Dax Bambrough, I’m in charge of content strategy at JMARK.

Todd Nielsen:
Last but not least, Kristina.

Kristina Coons:
I’m Kristina Coons, and I do marketing and events.

Todd Nielsen:
Okay. Today we are talking about one of our favorite tools, Workplace. The topic of today’s discussion is leading a remote team with the help of Workplace from Facebook. A lot of people out there probably have never even heard of Workplace. I know that when I first heard of a Workplace, I’m like, this is owned by Facebook, really that same company, blue, billions of people on the platform? This one was a little unknown and now it’s becoming a massive, and I want to say a movement of sorts. But it’s getting a lot of progress and a lot of companies are adopting it. How about we paint a picture of what Workplace is for those who are listening or watching, so they can imagine in their mind and differentiate it from Facebook, which some people have mixed feelings about? Jeff, what are your thoughts?

Jeff Bendure:
Yeah, I think that’s one of the things I struggled with too when we were first introduced to the platform. We were really struggling from having all the employees using the same communication platform. We had different teams using different things and so when we were introduced to Workplace, it was challenging to put our heads around, why would I use Facebook in the workplace? But when we really started to learn all the things that it can do, it really became a no brainer. I mean, we’re really looking for something that has as close to 100% adoption rate as possible, it’s really easy to use, doesn’t require much training and really helps drive the culture and the collaboration.

Jeff Bendure:
I think from that standpoint alone, Workplace was just a no brainer because what we hope would
happen did happen. We have a really fantastic piece of software in collaboration tool sets that really drive our culture. We’re all using the same methodology. So if Dax wants to reach out to me, he knows that I will respond. Same thing with Kristina or Todd. We’re really able to collaborate a lot tighter together just because it’s so easy and so familiar in how it all works.

Todd Nielsen:
Right. What I want to paint a picture is that for those who don’t know Workplace, imagine Facebook but without all of the garbage, without all of the politics, without all the stuff you really don’t want to know about. Imagine a closed loop system essentially, that is just your coworkers, just your team that you can have groups with, whether it’s a group for a committee, a group for your team, a group for a department just like Facebook groups, but here in it is a group that’s just contained to those you work with. You have Chat just like Facebook, except it’s contained within Workplace. It has integration abilities with other software out there, but generally software that is more used in the Workplace, things like Trello and things like Smartsheet and Dropbox and Box and those kinds of things.

Todd Nielsen:
It’s essentially a collaboration tool for businesses of all sizes. It can be designed for hundreds of
thousands of users or dozens of people. We have groups that we use that are … Imagine a Facebook
group with two people, just Dax and I are in a Facebook group essentially, but it’s a Workplace group. We do our one on one stuff in there and we have … there’s just so many possibilities to what we can do. I really hope that people that listen to this today can really perceive the magnitude of what Facebook has done and learned over the years and brought it into a work environment that improves collaboration, that improves teamwork, that gives essentially more power to, and more of a voice to both leaders and those being led, just every employee in the company. It’s just an amazing tool. Back to the Kristina, any other thing to help paint this picture of what Workplaces is that I maybe missed? Jeff?

Dax Bambrough:
I would to add that for me, I’m full time remote even before the social distancing in this era that we’re in. Ever since I started at JMARK, we’ve been using Workplace. So for me, it’s being in essence, the remote version of the office. One of my monitors is 90%, that’s where Facebook is. Facebook is what’s on that monitor 90% of the day. The Chat feature, like Jeff mentioned, it’s my method of the idea of walking next door if I was in the office. Walking over to Jeff’s office and asking him a question. The Chat feature makes it, for me, feel like Jeff’s right there, Kristina’s right there, if I need something, and same thing for entire teams.

Dax Bambrough:
You mentioned groups, so there’s the group for our marketing team where I can keep tabs on things that are going on, but aren’t necessarily part of what I’m working on, but the rest of the team is. Same thing with maybe the business development team. I can go over that group, or there’s a team for each of the offices, for the Tulsa office and look in that group and keep tabs on everybody as if I was in their office, what’s going on and everything in Tulsa. For me, as a remote employee, it’s a huge advantage to be able to do that. It makes me feel, as much as possible, like I’m in the office with everybody, not thousands of miles away.

Todd Nielsen:
All right, I agree. It’s not the distraction that you might think that Facebook brings. There are things you can do in the system that make it fun. We have groups for those who like to grill. We have groups for those who like to go to garage sales. So there are some outlets for that and to get to know your coworkers more, but also it’s very focused. Intentional, you design it how you need to design it.

Kristina Coons:
Sorry, go ahead Jeff. I was about to …

Jeff Bendure:
Go ahead.

Kristina Coons:
Okay. I just actually want to ask you, Jeff and Todd, from the leadership standpoint, when it comes to maintaining collaboration within your team, how do you use Workplace for that?

Jeff Bendure:
Todd, do you want to go?

Todd Nielsen:
Sure. The collaboration, our team, we have six employees in four states. We’re just a small marketing team. I’m in Texas, our headquarters is in Springfield, so I am away from the entire company. Leading that team with Workplace, allows me so much greater collaboration. I can do video chats with people at any time just like you can do a video chat in Facebook. We do daily stand-up every day in our team. So we broadcast live with all of our faces and a video stand-up, so we can check on what’s happening. We have a chat group that’s always going that we can share and collaborate on things, whether it’s as a group or individuals. The collaboration aspect is just phenomenal.

Todd Nielsen:
One of the big advantage is that, maybe I hadn’t thought about before, but before when we were using a multitude of systems and we had a little bit of a sprawl in terms of all of the communication and collaboration platforms, Workplace does so much that allows us to contain all of that collaboration in a single system, so to speak. Of course, we have other systems that we use, but between, you can do phone calls, you can do chat, you can do video, you can do texts, you can share documents, you can share just about everything and it’s all in that one system. So for me, from the standpoint of leading a team, it’s allowed much more simplicity for me. Instead of going to a multitude of systems and emails and chat systems, it’s allowed focus. I can just focus on this one system and provide all the collaboration across all the different mediums.

Todd Nielsen:
It’s so personal. I mean, I don’t feel like I’m away from the main office. I don’t feel like Dax is in Utah. He’s literally about three inches that way on my screen and that’s how it is. Jeff, you might have a little different perspective.

Jeff Bendure:

No. I think you hit it really, really well. I think one of the things I like the most about it is the flexibility of the Chat feature, for one. I mean, you can spin up new groups as you mentioned, but you can actually name the groups too to make it easier to go back in your list and find who was in that group. You can add and remove people. I mean, it’s just really, really easy to use. Really quick, you can get answers quickly. What I love about it though is, if I’m at the office and people see me not in my chair, they may not reach out to me. If I’m in a meeting and they know I’m at a meeting, “Oh, Jeff’s not in his office, okay.” And then they may forget what they were going to ask me. But because we’re all remote, now actually they’ll jump on Workplace Chat and they’ll message me, and then they’ll move on. When I see it then I can reply. So we’re not losing that that we used to lose candidly.

Jeff Bendure:
So I feel like during this whole thing, our teamwork has really come together tighter because everyone is so integrated into Workplace and we’re all very, very easily accessible. I think that’s one of the biggest features. The other thing I really love is, within Workplace, Todd mentioned you can have different groups. I love watching what Todd posts every day in the marketing group. I love watching what our CEO posts for the thought of the day. You can create these different groups and be a different part of the groups and see the posts. You can see the posts that you want to see. There’s a lot of freedom in that, that I really enjoy learning the different aspects that other people in the company are doing because I know what me and my team are doing. But it’s really cool to see the posts from the marketing team every day and the service team when they post things. So I think, again, not to sound a broken record, but it really drives that cross team collaboration a lot more.

Jeff Bendure:
I think we’ve really seen that a ton with the recent pandemic that’s going on is, a lot of people are
scared that remote employees won’t be as productive. Todd, I know you hit on that before in previous sessions, but I’ve seen the exact opposite. Our productivity has gone higher than it was when we were all in one location.

Todd Nielsen:
Yeah. You mentioned one thing that too, that I hadn’t thought about today, but we have a group that we call marketing in the wild. Most of the companies are in that group, the reason we formed it, because when we were sending out an email or posting an ad out or doing some different campaign or initiatives, we constantly had people going, oh, I didn’t know you were sending this email out. I was like, well, it really wasn’t meant for you, it’s for all prospects, but okay. But it was essentially, we were not communicating to everybody in the company. They didn’t know what was going on to help us, to help promote everything that we were doing.

Todd Nielsen:
There is hundreds of tasks every day and different things happening on marketing. By using this group in Workplace, it’s allowed us to spread out our collaboration to the entire company. Where we can throw something out and say, hey, this is the video we produced. We’re going to be using it in this fashion. This is a webinar that’s going to be happening on this day. Please share it out. There is an e-book, please share it with clients. That’s just an example of taking our team’s work and be able to collaborate it across the entire organization, which I think has been pretty awesome. I’d like to hear actually, so I’m back to Kristina, coming from the standpoint that you’re in a little different boat in collaboration, how does it feel from your side? What are the pros, what are the cons? How does Workplace help with that?

Dax Bambrough:
I would say one of the thing that you guys mentioned, but you didn’t hit there just perspective of it,
which I really like is this idea that, when you get a message from somebody and they need something, there’s always a varying level of urgency with different things. I feel like Workplace gives us options to make that more clear. If I get a chat from Todd and he asked me a question, I know he’s sending it in a chat because he needs that document right then or an answer right away. But if you post it in our one-on-one Workplace group, that’s just me and him, then I know that it’s something that he’s basically saying this isn’t urgent right away, but I’d like to hear what you think about it. It makes that distinction immediately where, back in the day when it was just email… and email just piles up on itself and you don’t know what the urgency is. To me, that’s a huge like … it’s a small thing, but it results in a big helping efficiency because you know what to focus on first.

Kristina Coons:
Yeah, I totally agree. Another piece of the collaboration with Workplace by Facebook is, I’m pretty sure there were a lot of people at JMARK who I built relationships with entirely through Workplace that I had never even met in person once I started. And then I met them in person in our relationship went on from there, but it all started through Workplace. It’s truly amazing the way that it brings an entire company together, even when we’re all spread out.

Jeff Bendure:
Yeah. Dax, you bring up a really good point. I really hadn’t thought of it much till you said that, about the email. I don’t get really [hyper 00:17:42] emails much anymore and that used to be it’s pretty par for the course was get caught in email hell of, oh, geez, I’ve got 300 messages, which ones are important? If it didn’t have a little red asterix or a little red exclamation point, I probably missed it.

Jeff Bendure:
Nowadays, my email itself has probably gone down by at least 30%, if not more maybe it’s because I’m more accessible because of the platform or maybe it’s because people can reach out to me like you said, like Todd does like, hey, this is pretty important. We’ve got that communication code of conduct too, if you will, where if I see a chat pop, even if I’m not in a meeting, I’ll glance at it and be like, oh, okay. That’s pretty important. And I know I need to respond to it. Whereas if I get an email, like right now, emails down here on my list. It’s Workplace post, it’s Chat and then it’s email.

Todd Nielsen:
I just thought about something that I’ve never realized and that is regarding emails. I’ve mentioned
before, we have roughly 9,000 chats a day that are happening at JMARK and it goes up and down
depending on the day. That’s essentially emails that are no longer in our system. But what I realize is I get a lot of emails. I was chatting with Michelle over Workplace earlier, she’s one of our teammates. She was saying, hey, sorry about all the emails you’re getting from … whatever it was she was doing. She was doing some testing and I just laughed. I just sent a little LOL GIF or something and laughing like it’s a joke in the bucket.

Todd Nielsen:
What I just realized is that I still get a lot of email, but my email processing time has gone down by
probably 90% because I can go in my email and I can scan through 100 emails that maybe came in the last few hours and quickly get to any that are internal or important because most of the other ones I can quickly see are coming from outside resources or maybe they’re just not important or something I have to deal with at that moment. I can take an email where I might send an email out to our prospect list and have 800 emails auto responses come back. That along with emails coming from different systems like Trello and emails coming from the employees, and I can quickly just go, bam, bam, bam, bam, 900 emails and pick out the three emails I need to respond to.

Todd Nielsen:
While email has gone down, what’s more important for me is that the email processing time has gone down. So now I can do a select all essentially and be like move those over here. And I’ll look at those sometime later when I’m really bored, which will never happen. Anyways, I thought that was interesting.

Jeff Bendure:
It’s a good point.

Dax Bambrough:
I would say, especially, maybe right now with the pandemic and with everybody spread out, working from home for the first time, as leaders, Jeff and Todd, how do you guys use, or how does Workplace help you to keep morale high on your team?

Jeff Bendure:
For me, it really, I’ve said it before already today, but I think it’s my availability. Even when I’m in a
meeting, it’s not like I’m not available to people. My response time to them is faster than it used to be and they get answers faster, which I think in turn makes them feel more supported. We have a daily huddle as well, where we get together and we’ll start the day. I’ll pick some random music while people are jumping into the lobby. We’ll listen to music for a little bit and then we’ll start off with some good news and then we’ll go around the horn for some escalations that are going on.

Jeff Bendure:
But really every day you get to see people. We get to see each other every day and we laugh. We start the day out laughing almost every single day. I mean, somebody says something stupid or funny, or somebody posts a hilarious meme in the group before the meeting starts. It’s driving the easy going culture. I mean, what we do is very challenging, but we’ve got such a great group of people and we all get along so well that we really have a lot of fun collaborating together and bouncing ideas off each other. I think Workplace really drives that a lot.

Jeff Bendure:
We’ve got the CRM group that’s created that we post in. We’ve got our chat that we’re always in, and more and multiple other chats together. So I think for me anyway, that’s really what’s driven a lot of the cohesion, if you will, is just being able to see people and reach out and be immediately there for them.

Todd Nielsen:
I agree. If I had to break down the answer to that question in one word, it would be memes. A lot of
people might think that’s crazy or even stupid. But the interesting thing is when you send any kind of text communication, email, chat, whatever it is, it’s super easy to misread it and to just not understand the tone. You can’t really make fun of the text, which is a weird way to say it. But if I’m writing something and Kristina responds with some interesting thing like meme, that wouldn’t really be appropriate necessarily on email because you’re responding to a possibly a reply all, and it just gets sent and over and over and over again, and it’s a different feeling. But when Kristina shares a meme, and Dax shares a meme and Jeff does, and we’re all just laughing back and forth, it changes the tone of the communications and take the situation that is potentially stressful and makes it funny.

Todd Nielsen:
I mean, we’ve had many times on the marketing team when we actually laugh sometimes because we’re like, there’s never a marketing emergency and then there’ll be a marketing emergency. We just make fun of it all the time. I don’t know for me, there are times when I’m so glad I don’t have my video on. We’re just on a chat and I’m just sitting there just laughing so hard because of some stupid things that Kristina or somebody shared and it just makes my day. As a remote employee and as a manager, just little things like that just bring out the fun in our communication and collaboration. There’s a million other areas we could go on there, but JMARK’s fun is one of our values.

Todd Nielsen:
I can honestly say that with Workplace, I have way more fun than I had in the office when I lived in
Springfield interacting with people every day because you’re talking face-to-face to somebody, you can’t meme somebody, you can’t smiley face somebody in a live conversation. So it’s a little bit more serious. But at the same point, with chat going so quickly, it’s not unproductive because it’s just like … And then everybody moves on and goes on their things. It goes on their way and gets some of the other stuff. But I think it’s just, I don’t know, it’s been awesome.

Todd Nielsen:
Also, there is the quickness, you mentioned this a little bit, Jeff, in that I can … Right before this meeting, we made a major change to how we were going to do this webinar. I spun up a quick chat group with all of us and, bam, we talked through it really quick and we were done. I mean, if I were in an office or in email and had to pull everybody together for a conference call, you just could not do that that quick. Just the speed at which you has enabled us to move with the platform has been just a massive help for our productivity and just knowing everything will get done.

Jeff Bendure:
I hadn’t really thought about that before, Todd, when you talked about reducing stress because in the crazy times we’re in, obviously there’s a lot more stress for people and there’s a lot of uncertainty. But if you can bring that fun, which is one of our core values in to everyday, then you can decrease that stress level, it allows people to be more creative. I think that’s one of the things you guys do really well as a team, looking from the outside in is you guys are constantly having fun. You’re constantly challenging each other, and you’re really, really creative. I think your ability to keep that stress down and make each other laugh and have fun every day through the platform, I think helps a ton in your productivity and creativity.

Todd Nielsen:
Yeah, absolutely. And then your question, we’ve talked all around this, was more around motivation, is that right?

Kristina Coons:
Yeah.

Dax Bambrough:
… morale, yeah.

Todd Nielsen:
Morale, okay. That’s all right. The other thing that someone mentioned is that, Tom does a daily post to all company group that we have.

Dax Bambrough:
Tom, our CEO.

Todd Nielsen:
Tom, our CEO. He schedules a post, so that’s a cool thing you can do in the system is you don’t have to actually be up at 4:00 in the morning when often he’s posting these things, although he is up at 4:00 in the morning often. But he schedules a post and it’s a post that goes to everybody in the company every single workday. It’s just meant to inspire, it’s just meant to motivate, it’s meant to make you think. It’s just a way that he’s chosen to help start the day off right for everybody. There are other people in the company, Jeff shares, motivational quotes sometimes within his team. I share motivational quotes, but I do it a little bit different. I try to tie the quote into something that’s going on on the team. Everybody does it a little bit differently. I think it’s those little things like that that just help to start people’s days off right and help to keep morale up because you never know when some [inaudible 00:29:21] what you do.

Todd Nielsen:
During a typical day, there’s often people that worked late the night before on some project or some initiative. So coming in the morning to a message of inspiration or a message of hope is a lot better than just coming in and starting getting on your tasks. It allows you to refocus, I think, and get back into what you need to do and not be focusing on the dread of everything that maybe you were working on the day before. So, I think that’s a big morale boost as well.

Kristina Coons:
Yeah. Talking about all this stuff, I can’t imagine not having Workplace, honestly. All of the little things we’re talking about, add up so much. The little things are the big things. The memes, the GIFs, the thought of the day, the inspiration, the groups, the grilling, all of it, I can’t imagine working without it.

Todd Nielsen:
I have some thoughts, but Jeff, what are some other ways that you are leading your team? Maybe not so much from the collaboration side because collaboration really fits into everything within Workplace, but how are you leading the team using Workplace. How does that help you move things forward, in what ways?

Jeff Bendure:
One of the ways I didn’t consider when we first implemented it was the ability to post files to the groups that we’ve been talking about. So, developing training and then posting the files within the CRM group on Workplace, so that as we get new team members and we’re doing onboarding and they’re getting used to our systems, they’ve got a place to go to, hey, how do I do that? Well, you can go and look at the training videos that are posted there. So that’s something that maybe people don’t know about that really helps drive a lot of … everybody looking in the same place.

Jeff Bendure:
Todd, you mentioned the post within the group every day and setting goals and challenges, and you can do polls. You can do polls for like if we have a big team win, then I’ll do a poll to see what people want to do. Hey, do you want to go Axe throwing, bowling? Do you want to go out and get a big dinner together? And then people can vote in the poll within Workplace to really help quickly decide what we want to do. I mean, before Workplace, it would be 50 emails later and everybody would be like, I don’t care. Let’s just do something. Now, with the ability to have polls and things like that, you can ask quickly. People are like, yeah, I want to do it. I want to do it on this day and I want to go here. And then, okay, cool. That’s what we’re doing. So it really drives down any frustration that might happen.

Jeff Bendure:
It also gets people really quickly engaged like, sweet, there’s a pole. Yeah, I’ll do that. So I think from leading and making sure that we do have the fun, you’ve talked about, Todd, that really helps a ton. The training is something that I didn’t think about until we’ve been talking about it. You can post files there and you can point people to go here to consume the content that you need if you forget. So I think that’s a big aspect that maybe a lot of people don’t really utilize yet.

Todd Nielsen:
Yeah, definitely. I think over the years that we’ve been using Workplace on the marketing team, it’s
evolved and we’ve done different things with it. We started out with a marketing group that was just the marketing members and it was more of a closed group. We opened up that group to everybody in the company, not inviting them, but making it open so that others can view it. That’s allowed us to better lead from the front, so to speak, in marketing and make sure everybody’s aware of things and what we’re doing and what’s happening on the team.

Todd Nielsen:
Last year, we also set up individual one-on-one teams. So we use Workplace as our agenda and talking points and anything specific. We have them set up too as not closed and not open, but they’re actually a third type of group, which is called a secret group, which only myself and that employee have access to. Administrators can see that a secret group exists, but they can’t view any posts or join the group or anything like that. That allows us the confidentiality, so to speak, to talk about personal things. If somebody’s relative or spouse or somebody is having an issue, they can send me a message on there and say, hey, I’m going to be out tomorrow. Here’s some things I’m working on. Can you make sure these are taken care of? We use it as our agenda.

Todd Nielsen:
We also, I mentioned earlier we use it for stand-ups. Being in a remote team, we use it for stand-ups, but also our stand-ups are in our marketing group that everybody in the company has access to. So if our sales team needs to understand what’s the marketing team working on a certain day, they can watch the video for 10 minutes. It was just really about how longest it is and exactly know what’s going on and anybody else in the company can as well. So from the standpoint of, I mean, just leading, it’s provided just so many more avenues to lead differently, even if …

Todd Nielsen:
It’d be interesting to see the difference in the company if we were actually all in one location because I actually think that Workplace has improved our ability to lead, our ability to collaborate, our ability to inject more fun into the culture, our ability to be more real with everybody and who everybody is. So I think it’s just been pretty awesome from that standpoint. I think it’s maximized what we could potentially reach just if we were all together in one place. We are way more than six feet apart right now, so we’ve got this social distancing thing down.

Dax Bambrough:
We got that down, for sure.

Todd Nielsen:
We’re getting a whole bunch of questions on a Facebook Live, which we haven’t answered. Anybody [inaudible 00:36:35]. People are often opposed to change, how does the company smoothly transition to a new communication platform? That’s a good question.

Kristina Coons:
I would say-

Todd Nielsen:
Jeff?

Kristina Coons:
… for one-

Todd Nielsen:
Or Kristina, go ahead.

Kristina Coons:
… part of that at least is that it is by Facebook and it’s very similar to the normal Facebook that everyone already has and uses so they’re familiar with. So that at least for me, coming into the company and starting with Workplace, there was no learning curve, it was the easiest transition for me.

Todd Nielsen:
That’s true, I didn’t even think about that. I mean, we have a whole training system in place when we roll it out to companies. I mean, when it was rolled out for JMARK, there wasn’t a training system. It was just like, hey everybody, here’s an invite. Everybody just started posting things in and started writing in Workplace. Just like if you know Facebook, you know the system essentially.

Dax Bambrough:
Yeah. Todd, I think with that, a huge part of that, I wasn’t there right at the beginning when you guys were changing, changing over, but I know by the time I joined JMARK, it was easy for me to make sure I use it and become a habit of, like I mentioned, it’s always up on my screen because the leaders in the company use it. So I know that the communication that’s going to come from you and Jeff and from Tom, the CEO, or anybody is oftentimes going to come through Workplace. I know that if it’s important to the leaders of the company, then it’s a useful tool because you guys wouldn’t be using it if it wasn’t it’s useful for all the rest of us as well.

Jeff Bendure:
I think that’s an awesome point, Dax. Tom, our CEO, I think has done a phenomenal job of leading by example. He came in with both feet and just started posting and getting people excited about it. The exec team was on board and everybody on the exec team was excited about it. As Kristina said, the adoption rate was super easy because it’s Facebook, but it’s for your company. I think once people really saw how cool it could be, they started spinning up groups like Fortnite groups and grilling groups and bowling groups and… We’ve talked about it, but it was that easy of transition, I think. I mean, there’s really no barriers to not do it because everybody knows how to use Facebook. I mean, it does pretty much everything you need it to from file management to spinning up new collaboration groups together to chatting. I mean, it’s a no brainer really.

Todd Nielsen:
Yeah. When the invitation was first sent out to a handful of people, the initial reaction was very similar to what Kelly mentioned in the sense of, ah, another tool, because at that time there were a multitude of tools. I mean, we had chat platforms from Cisco and from Microsoft and from … I can’t remember them all. Of course, email on top of that. There were just multitude of systems. So it was initially referred as, oh, it’s another tool. Well, when do I use this tool? When do I use that tool? We did have some growing pains in that perspective because we had to realize that we had to say goodbye to some tools and that hurts some feelings. I mean, not really, but people tend to like certain things they’re used to. They don’t like change like Kelly said. But we eventually had to come to the point of saying, “We are shutting the system down, it’s no longer being used. We’re shutting this system down. Chat through Workplace is the defacto standard for everything.

Todd Nielsen:
I think the transition to someone or a company who’s worried about the change is one, the change isn’t hard assuming they have a Facebook account. I think there’s, I don’t even know, there is 4 billion Facebook accounts or something. Your chances of all employees being on Facebook pretty good, and so they’ll understand it from that perspective. And then leadership has to take the stand and saying, “Change is coming and we have to eliminate and narrow down the tools that we use.” I think that goes into what somebody else asked about on Facebook is the communication code of conduct, which came from this process. Essentially the communication code of conduct says, if there’s certain communication and it this priority, use this method. If there’s certain communication and you need really fast response to use this method and this tool. It allows us to focus on that. We’re still making tweaks on those. Jeff, I don’t know if want to describe that in a little bit better detail than me.

Jeff Bendure:
I think you hit on something really important too, that I hadn’t really considered, I forgot we had done it. We shut down the other platforms. So I think that’s key too if you’re looking at resistance on something that people have moved for years. The adoption is easy, but if people can still go back to what they’ve been used to, then you’re probably not going to get the adoption that you want and the consistency you want. So having the ability to just set a date and say, “On July 15th, system X is no longer available.” That really forces people to use what leadership in the company is saying we’re going to use. And then the leaders are using it, then everyone’s using it, there is just time to becomes SOP of naturally at that point.

Todd Nielsen:
A lot of people fear change from the standpoint that change is hard. Rolling out Workplace is … I mean, there’s some work on the back end. When we roll it out, we do most of that backend stuff for our clients, but integrates with Office 365, for those that are using Office 365 for email and for active directory services, integrates with active directory if you’re using that for authentication. So you can really quickly essentially pull all your users and get them the authentication to make sure it’s secure. It already integrates with other tools like Dropbox and Box for file sharing and SharePoint and things like that. So it’s all built in and you just connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect.

Todd Nielsen:
There’s still some things you got to do. But in getting away from the fear of change, one has to realize that it’s probably one of the easiest changes you could make in an organization because; one, people are going to be familiar with the tool once they see it. Two, the setup is not going to involve a massive numbers of people in IT to figure out how to figure it because the most difficult decision you have to make is, what are the names of the groups that you want to create? Let’s see what other questions we have. Since you can connect with anyone from anywhere, how secure is Workplace? How secure is Workplace? Jeff?

Jeff Bendure:
Well, I can tell you that we would not be using it if it weren’t. All the industries that we’re involved in, their security is the first thing we look at when we’re choosing any vendor. So the certifications that we are bound to and the security that we promise our clients is on top of mind every time we’re looking at a platform. So that’s the first question that we work with Facebook on is, hey, how secure is this? That really was our first question. And then to the second point that you brought up, you can collaborate with anyone anywhere within your company. So it’s not like you can just randomly pop out to someone within Workplace and start having a conversation. It’s not the open public Facebook, it is the company centered format of Facebook, which is why they call it Workplace. That was one of our concerns too.

Jeff Bendure:
To your point is, when I first heard it, I’m like, okay, so anybody in the world can see what I’m posting for JMARK? I don’t think I want that. That’s one of the stumbling blocks that we had to overcome intellectually was know that that’s not the case. That’s my take on that. I hope that makes sense.

Todd Nielsen:

Yeah. I mean, getting back to leading, the primary topic and doing it from a security standpoint. It can be extremely hard with a multitude of systems to make sure you’re collaborating in a secure manner, to make sure you’re communicating in a secure manner. The ability to use Workplace to authenticate to the authentication platforms that we already use, to authenticate and use the multifactor authentication tools that we already use. I never have to worry about sending something to Kristina and thinking that somebody else might get that because there’s multifactor authentication, there’s … we take security pretty seriously.

Todd Nielsen:
I was thinking about this the other day because I keep getting in conversations. I mean, how brilliant was Facebook for making the name Workplace? I mean, I’ve had so many conversations where I’m like, “I’m not talking about your workplace, I’m talking about Workplace by Facebook.” It was a very good name choice with whoever chose that.

Dax Bambrough:
The other good thing is, as we’re all testing, which again, for me, has been the thing since I started with JMARK full time remote, Workplace is my workplace in reality. I mean, other than this room that I’m in, Workplace is my workplace.

Todd Nielsen:
That’s a bit funny.

Kristina Coons:
Yeah. It’s all of ours now, which leads into a question from Jessica that we have on Facebook. How has Workplace helped you through this recent transition to working from home for the entire company?

Todd Nielsen:
I think that it has leveled up a whole bunch of different areas. For example, the executive team,
everybody on the executive team … this isn’t downplaying everybody else’s, but the executive team,
everyone gets pulled in many, many different directions. There’s departments to run, there’s multitude of things they’re working on. I think that our collaboration on the executive team has increased many fold through Workplace since the work from home has happened because it’s forced us to communicate about things that we would normally want to keep only communicate about once a week in our meeting. It has forced us to have those conversations.

Todd Nielsen:
And then we have another level, we have the leadership team, which is the same thing. We’ve been able to, on the leadership team, talk about problems with working from home or the challenges, I should say, that individual managers are having. That’s allowed an open communication platform that has never existed. Even before, we were using the leadership chat as more of a notification, hey, we’re doing this. Hey, we’re doing this now. It has turned into more of, I’m seeing this happen, is anybody else seeing this? So I’m seeing this has allowed us to essentially better communicate and better collaborate and better lead people throughout the organization.

Kristina Coons:
Yeah. I’ll say for me as a team member who went from working in the office to now being completely remote, I don’t feel like anything has changed for me as far as how I work and what I do every day, other than people aren’t coming into my office to talk or ask a question. So, that’s been amazing because I can’t imagine what a lot of other people are going through right now who have just been thrown into this and probably everything’s changed for them.

Jeff Bendure:
Good point.

Dax Bambrough:
Yeah. I like what you said, Todd, about what the executive team is doing with communicating a little bit more about those things, I would imagine. And then you and Jeff can speak to this specifically, but in the past, some of those things, something you’re trying to figure out, you might have this equation in your head. Well, the only time I can talk to the whole executive team about it in a meeting, is it a big enough deal to bring it up in a meeting? Verses in Chat, you can just be, hey, I’m dealing with this right now, anybody have any thoughts? It brings in collaboration and melding of minds that you wouldn’t get otherwise.

Todd Nielsen:
Very true. I think also that it’s allowed us to connect more as an organization leader to leader, executive to leader, manager to employee, employee to employee, it has allowed us to … I think Ryan on our team, he mentioned in a meeting about a couple of weeks ago that since we’ve gone remote … that somebody brought up this fear of, is there any concern about the culture as we go remote? Ryan stated in this meeting, he’s like, “I think the culture has improved since going to remote.” He didn’t say exact like that. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but essentially I think he said something like, “There’s more culture than ever before.” I think they were his exact words from the standpoint of everybody is … that’s the system that we collaborate and that’s a system we connect in.

Todd Nielsen:
Before workplace, it was sent an email and hope to get a response in a timely manner and maybe put a creative subject line or a read receipt in the email. Now it’s, I can send a quick chat and they’ll respond when they can. I think there’s an understanding of respect in the standpoint of, I can send a message to our CEO and he knows that I’m not just wasting his time, that he needs to look at that message. When I get a message from somebody in the organization, they know that I respect the … I mean, I respond right away, but that I will look at that and will respond in a manner and it’s allowed much shortening. I think that’s communication versus where it was before with just email.

Dax Bambrough:
I would add a quick thing to that. A personal experience that happened about a month ago or so, time is weird these days. I think we all know, but at least a month ago, there was an earthquake here in Utah. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was enough that it knocked down the power for better part of a day and stuff. The next day, once I was back online and everything, Tom, the CEO sent me a message on Chat just to ask me how it was going, checking in with me to make sure I was okay and my family was okay. I think that is something that allows communication like that just directly from the CEO to an employee on the Workplace that wouldn’t happen in any other way, especially in a case like this, we’re not in the office face-to-face. That’s a huge thing, I think for all these things we’re talking about, morale and motivation and culture.

Todd Nielsen:
Absolutely. Any last questions coming in that we should answer? Kristina, have you seen any?

Kristina Coons:
We have one right here. You did hit on it a little bit, but it says, as a leader, how do you use Workplace to collaborate and connect with other leaders in your organization? Do you find it useful for not just top down collaboration, but leader to leader or executive, executive communication?

Todd Nielsen:
Yeah, I think we touched on that. It’s just provided a much better avenue to communicate with every face of the organization, whether it’s one to many or a one-to-one, there’s just so many different avenues. I think that we’ve had a really good discussion here today about leading a remote team using Workplace. We have an amazing guide that we developed, if you’re trying to figure out how to use or how to utilize remote work team. Talks a little bit about some of the tactics that we use in Workplace. Not a lot about it, but it’s really more of an overall guide. Is something like 100 and something pages on every aspect of working remotely and mobilizing the workforce. We’ll throw a link to that in our chat on Facebook.

Todd Nielsen:
If anybody listening to this is interested in Workplace and getting a demo of Workplace, you can contact us through our website. There’s a form on pretty much every page, jmark.com. We’d be more than happy to schedule a demo and talk more about how Workplace can help your organization. Workplace is used in every type of organization, if you don’t think it’s possible for you. I mean, it’s used in hotels to employees, manufacturing, to employees that don’t even have email addresses. It’s used in restaurant, it’s used in service industries and just so many different industries that it can be used in. It’s been a massive assistance in working remotely. But then more than that, just being able to lead as a leader leading a group of people remotely, it’s been a huge help for us. Any last thoughts anybody has?

Jeff Bendure:
No, I think you said it pretty good.

Todd Nielsen:
Great. We’ll then come over and visit us at jmark.com and we’ll talk soon. Thank you.

Kristina Coons:
Bye, everyone.

Speaker 1:
Thank you for attending this podcast. We hope it has been informative and help convey that at JMARK, we are people first and technology second. To learn more and discover additional content relevant to your business, please visit us online at jmark.com or at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You may also call us at 844-44-JMARK. Thank you for your time. We look forward to seeing you again.