Save the Children: Knowledge Shared, Lives Saved
Using Workplace to share crucial knowledge and connect 25,000 employees around the world.
Using Workplace to share crucial knowledge and connect 25,000 employees around the world.
Save the Children launched Workplace by Facebook to its entire organization to spread ideas and connect everyone back to a central mission. Connecting all 25,000 employees builds productivity and team culture. Even the most remote colleagues can share knowledge, and share a little of themselves.
Saving lives by sharing ideas
Save the Children changes the lives of over 185 million children in 120 countries every year. The charity focusses on health, education and protection from harm, such as national emergencies, natural disasters or war. Sharing ideas and finding new ways to reach children is critical.
A way to connect 25,000 employees
There was a huge opportunity to share the real work happening to save lives, but with 25,000 employees across different countries and languages, communication was challenging. And their previous tools made it impossible to reach all employees instantly.
Kyle Degraw, Humanitarian Communications Manager at Save the Children was spending one day each week pulling together a list of resources to send out to around 500 people. After the launch of Workplace, he decided to stop sending the Friday email and created a group called “Humanitarian Comms Resources”.
Within one week, this group had twice the amount of people than previously were on the list for the Friday email. He quickly realized that for five years he had restricted this knowledge to 500 people. Those who did not know how to ‘get on the list’ had no way of getting information. This group now have 1,200 members and Kyle has gained back one extra day a week to focus on his work, not having to pull the email together. He can also let members share resources between themselves.
Work made real
For Kyle: “Using a platform like Workplace has enabled me to connect with colleagues around the world in the most efficient way possible.” Ideas and best practices are now shared using video. Remote employees use Work Chat on their phones to discuss issues.
Workplace has helped important initiatives to launch quickly, such as the program to promote hand-washing to combat life-threatening diarrhea. Kyle continues:
“Last year Hurricane Matthew struck Haiti. Save the Children had a response team on the ground as soon as possible. In leading that team I used Workplace to collaborate quickly and transparently. As a result, I spent less time checking email and more time helping children.”
Connecting people to the mission
Save the Children is transforming its culture. Employees become people. Everyone has a real identity, not just a job role. Carolyn Miles, CEO and President of Save the Children commented: “Workplace gives people an opportunity not only to share knowledge, but to share who they are.” By humanizing the workplace, everyone can feel closer to each other and to the mission.
Enabling non-profit organizations to use Workplace for free
At Facebook, we believe that every non-governmental organization (NGO) should be able to focus their resources and time not on infrastructure or software, but on their core mission. That’s why we made Workplace completely free for NGOs.
