Top 10 Features to Look for in a Workplace Alternative

Now that the news about Meta sunsetting Workplace has settled, it’s time to evaluate your options.

We know that choosing a new  employee experience platform might be daunting. That’s why we’ve prepared a list of 10 must-have features you should look for in a Workplace alternative. Get comfy, prepare to take some notes, and let’s dive in!

Note: If you already know what you need from your next platform, check our complete guide on the highest-rated Meta Workplace alternatives to choose from.

What is Workplace from Meta?

Workplace from Meta, also referred to as Meta Workplace, formerly Facebook Workplace, is a platform designed for business communication. It functions similarly to a social media network but is tailored for professional use, offering features like chat, live streaming, and internal news feeds. 

However, Workplace from Meta will be closed down and deleted on the 1st of June 2026, and companies have to migrate to another platform or download any existing data before the 31st of May 2026. Time to look for the best Meta Workplace alternative! 

Why is Meta shutting down Workplace? 

Meta is shutting down Workplace, its enterprise communications platform, citing a focus on building AI and metaverse technologies as the main reason. However, with chat as one of its main features, Workplace has also failed to gain significant traction compared to competitors like Slack and MS Teams.

10 Features to look for in a Workplace alternative

With Workplace by Meta shutting down, several alternatives to Workplace not only provide similar functionalities but also address additional needs, such as more personalized news feeds or digital signage. Let’s dive right in, we list the key Facebook Workplace features to look out for below.

1. Communities

As an enterprise social media network (ESN), Workplace is especially known for its social-media-like features, which allow large organizations to bring together employees from different locations and work modes in one digital home. One such feature is the ability to create communities.

The importance of community building in the workplace can hardly be overestimated. According to Gallup, employees who have close relationships with their colleagues are 7 times more engaged at work, which translates into higher productivity and lower retention rates. For companies with mixed-collar workers, a distributed workforce, and hybrid work opportunities, communities are crucial as they help maintain a sense of togetherness within the company.

For example, Rotkäppchen Mumm was able to increase interdepartmental and interregional collaboration through communities. According to one of their recent surveys, 80% of their employees log in to the Haiilo employee app a couple of times a day.

📚 Read how Rotkäppchen Mumm managed to increase collaboration and a sense of belonging

2. Personalized timeline

Another key feature you should look for in a Workplace alternative is the ability to provide all users with a personalized timeline.

A study by RescueTime highlights that an average employee checks their email or other apps every 6 minutes. This is mostly due to struggling with scattered information while simultaneously digesting a lot of corporate content. When information overload and fragmented workflows are the new norm, personalized content is the only way to ensure employees are productive and focused.

Large companies such as Johanniter have to regularly deal with these problems. Johanniter’s employees struggled with scattered information that led to both information overload and knowledge silos simultaneously. Having an old-fashioned static intranet didn’t help. Only a small portion of the workforce was using it, and local communication teams had to send out their own newsletters to fill in the gaps. But since 2018, when Johanniter introduced Haiilo, they managed to solve these problems by providing their entire workforce with a personalized timeline, to which different departments and individuals can contribute. 

💡 Read more about Johanniter’s success with a social intranet

When broken down into its core blocks, a personalized timeline is essentially a set of filters the platform applies to all the input content. Some of these filters might be up to an end user’s choice, such as the ability to subscribe to communities of your interest. Others, like the working language or the department, are set up during onboarding. When a combination of various filters is applied to all corporate content, the average employee ends up with only the most relevant information to their role.

Therefore, when looking for a Workplace alternative, you must consider the possibility of personalized timelines for all employees, regardless of their location, department, or preferred language.

📝 More on the topic: watch our webinar on-demand to get exclusive insights on the implications of Meta’s closure and the road ahead for Workplace customers.

3. Customization and white labeling

That’s probably the bright side of the Workplace’s sunset. Workplace didn’t fully support customization, so you can now switch to a provider that does. 

Your brand is one of your major assets; and you want to let it shine on the new platform. Look for a provider that allows you to adjust the look and feel of your platform based on your brand guidelines. With the white labeling options, you can adjust the entire visual appearance of your new platform, starting with a color palette and the interface name and ending with the number of widgets displayed on the homepage.

📝 More on the topic: How to Launch an Intranet: Step-by-Step Guide

4. Content creation and distribution

This one sounds too obvious, but hear me out: You want to democratize content creation to increase engagement rates. For that, you need a solution that supports different media formats (and, ideally, has AI capabilities for a smoother content creation experience) and has multichannel capabilities to push created content to employees’ preferred communication channels.

You might question the need for multichannel capabilities. After all, why would you push content to other channels if your goal is to get people to use this new alternative to Workplace?

You can view it as a marketing omnichannel strategy. Your marketing department is probably running different campaigns on different channels, but their goal is to get people on the company’s website. 

Your multichannel efforts should produce the same result. By reaching your audience across various channels, you can get them to use the new ESN.

5. Employee profiles and directories

This feature is particularly beneficial for distributed and remote workplaces where employees rarely see each other, and as such, it serves a double function. 

On one hand, they help employees find coworkers with the right expertise faster, which boosts productivity. A study by the Harvard Business Review found that employees who used social tools at work were 31% more likely to find the right coworkers and 88% more likely to know who could put them in contact with the right person. 

Additionally, it improves a sense of belonging in the workplace. Employee directories help employees find colleagues from different locations and/or departments more easily, which fosters employee relationships and promotes a more connected work environment. Using directories, employees have better opportunities for building meaningful relationships with their peers.  

For instance, the mechanical and plant engineering group WINTERSTEIGER managed to bring together their 1200 employees across different modes of work and 30 locations to one digital home thanks to Haiilo’s solution.

6. Chat

Having a built-in chat saves employees a lot of time on switching between different apps and ensures the high adoption rates of your new social intranet. When employees can chat privately with each other or in a group on the employee experience platform, it fosters collaboration and productivity.

Some providers also offer voice messages as part of their chat feature. While voice messages are more of a nice-to-have, they can help increase the mobile workforce’s engagement with the solution.

7. Quantitative and qualitative analytics

To truly assess the value of your new provider, you need analytics that allow you to see the whole picture behind your initiatives. Of course, you want to have some traditional metrics, such as the number of logins per day, content engagement, etc. However, more than these metrics is needed to provide actionable insights or win you a seat at the table with the leadership team.

You want to go deeper and evaluate the performance of each communication campaign you run. Having impact analytics can help get an understanding of how different types of content perform and what actions they drive from employees.

Solutions like Haiilo allow you to add an employee listening campaign at the end of each content post so you can assess the impact of internal content on employee sentiment. You can simply add a scale question and ask your employees how they feel about the recent update. You can also add a comments section for anonymous feedback. This way, you’ll able to improve on your initiatives while making employees feel heard. It’s a win-win!

Disclaimer: the image shows a prototype version of the product.

8. Live-streaming

If you want to go all in on consolidation, you might want to add live-streaming to the list. Having a live-streaming feature within your new employee experience solution will allow you to foster interactive communication and decrease digital fatigue from switching between different apps.

9. Integrations with the existing tech stack

According to Oslash, modern organizations use around 300 cloud applications. To put it in perspective, this is more than there are working days in a year. So even if your employees switch software every day, they won’t be able to go through all of them within one year.

With this number in mind, it’s no wonder that consolidation is one of the largest trends in workplace software and is predicted to dominate the market for the next couple of years.

Of course, even if your procurement team starts terminating contracts today, you’ll still be left with many different applications and information scattered across them. That’s where integrations come in handy. Even if you can’t influence the number of communication and collaboration tools the team uses, you can ensure that the new Workplace alternative will pull all the data into one place.

When looking into the direction of integrations, don’t overcomplicate it. Having native integrations with Microsoft 365 and/or Google Workspace and having other integrations through third-party tools is usually more than enough.

Vorkwerk has had a successful experience implementing a social intranet that already has native integration with Microsoft 365. Prior to starting their journey with Haiilo, they rolled out Microsoft across the entire organization. When Haiilo was added to the mix, its smooth integration with Microsoft and the clear processes set up by Vorkwerk’s communication team helped increase the outcomes. Vorkwerk is now ripping the benefits of effective internal communication and positive employee experience.

10. Accessibility

The best way to guarantee high adoption rates for the new Workplace alternative is to ensure your workforce loves the app and uses it regularly. That means it has to be accessible to ALL employees. In other words, when looking for a new ESN provider, you should prioritize solutions that have a mobile app on par with the browser version and are easy to use, especially for the end-user.

Is there a better alternative to Facebook Workplace?

If you’ve been using Workplace for a while, you must’ve noticed the influence communication and community building have on productivity and employee retention. Having the right Workplace migration alternative is the best way to ensure the positive trend continues.

As this article shows, Haiilo is a well-rounded ESN for larger organizations, and it can meet your requirements just fine.

Its personalized timeline and communities ensure employees can easily access relevant information while simultaneously connecting them to the corporate purpose. Its quantitative and qualitative analytics provide valuable insights into both content performance and employee sentiment. And its integrations with your current tech stack make the entire process more streamlined. 

If you’re looking to empower your employees with content and communities, book a demo today!