Facebook at Work adds 100,000 new users from Royal Bank of Scotland Group

By David Curry Published October 26, 2015

Facebook at work — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Facebook is banned in most workplaces, but a new enterprise program, Facebook at Work, offers the social network in a confined work zone. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS Group) plans to support this new platform, letting its workforce use a familiar system to create teams, arrange meetings, assign tasks, chat, and edit their profile.

RBS Group employs 100,000 workers who will move to Facebook at Work by the end of 2016. It should be emphasized that the RBS group is the parent of RBS, and is not the consumer banking firm itself. NatWest, Ulster, and several private and commercial banks are also under the control of the RBS Group.

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The parent company encompasses a highly diversified workforce that is the brains for most of the bank’s global operations. The group holds shares in Citizen Financial Group and Bank of China, meaning there are workers in different continents that need quick communication — something Facebook at Work provides.

From what we know, RBS (the consumer bank) employees will not move to the new system, and neither will NatWest or Ulster. RBS has even more employees than its parent holding company, currently hiring 144,000 workers. The UK Government and HM Treasury currently own 73 percent of RBS, after the 2008 financial bailout.

Facebook at Work has 300 businesses working on the platform, all independent of each other. RBS is the largest client announced, though we should see more join in as Facebook starts to push for new clients.

The firm is competing with IBM, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google in the “all-in-one” enterprise social market. And since it is offering a messaging service inside the social network, Facebook is also competing with Slack. Unlike all the other companies mentioned, however, this is Facebook’s first step into the world of enterprise, and it may take a few more RBS-type partnerships before companies start looking at Facebook at Work for these applications.

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