Meta announces integration of Workplace platform with WhatsApp | ZDNet

Meta announced that it will be integrating its Workplace tool with WhatsApp in 2022, forging even closer ties between the two platforms. 

Meta explained on Thursday that the integration would “enable companies to share posts from Workplace with employees” over WhatsApp. 

Ujjwal Singh, Workplace’s head of product, said the integration with WhatsApp is designed to help bridge the gap between frontline employees and upper management. By bringing Workplace to WhatsApp, organizations will have an easier way to reach workforces, according to Meta. The company tied the news about the integration to a report about frontline workers. 

“At Workplace, we strongly believe that the most successful organizations empower their frontline employees to make a difference and listen to their ideas. So it’s disappointing to see [there was] still a clear disconnect between frontline and HQ in 2021,” Singh said. 

“Our integration with WhatsApp is designed to help fix that: Helping bring frontline employees closer to their organizations and ensuring the information they need to do their jobs is at their fingertips.”

In November, Workplace and Microsoft Teams began offering new integrations allowing employees to access content from Workplace within Teams. Later this year, companies will be able to stream meetings and broadcasts from Teams into Workplace.

The first integration will allow Teams admins to set up a feed of Workplace content that can be pinned to the Teams sidebar. The content continues to be ranked algorithmically, much like it would be directly in the Workplace app. The second integration will help users in Workplace view Teams content, as well as interact and engage with it.

Facebook and new parent company Meta have previously faced backlash from regulators over how the social media giant’s properties were tied together. 

WhatsApp was slapped with a 225 million euro fine in September after a GDPR investigation conducted by Ireland’s Data Privacy Commissioner (DPC) found that the platform was not transparent about how it shared data with its parent company Facebook. 

Regulators have long taken issue with Facebook’s control over WhatsApp since the social media giant purchased the secure messaging platform in 2014 for $19 billion. 

WhatsApp says on its website that it provides phone numbers, transaction data, business interactions, mobile device information, IP addresses, and other information to Facebook but does not send personal conversations, location data, or call logs to its parent company. 

WhatsApp has repeatedly been forced to update its privacy policies to reflect the data it shares with Facebook. Last year they also had to make changes to the platform to ensure that data protection and consumer rights are observed in Brazil.