Why go with Oneteam instead of WhatsApp for internal comms?

Although WhatsApp is easy to use and has a great UX, the downsides stem from the fact that it simply isn’t fit for business comms. Research shows that employees dislike receiving work-related messages via this private communication tool. In fact, 42% of deskless workers block all incoming messages in business WhatsApp groups.

Oneteam’s mobile-first solution lets deskless employees access messages from anywhere at any time – but, crucially, on their own terms. The app incorporates all the internal comms tools your employees need, plus modules for onboarding, eLearning, forms, checklists, surveys, and schedule integrations. But even more importantly, keeps work and personal lives separate.

Managing larger groups – of, say, more than 100 employees – is an impossible task for HR or IT managers using WhatsApp. Firstly, adding all those private numbers for internal comms is time-consuming. At the other end of the employee journey, removing the numbers of former colleagues is equally long-winded. And how do you keep messages distinct when team members may be part of multiple groups? WhatsApp is simply not designed for corporate user management at scale.

With Oneteam, you don’t have to manually purchase, integrate, and maintain separate platforms for each function, so you can streamline your internal communications and other employee tools in one user-friendly app. It’s a cost-effective solution that can significantly improve the digital employee experience for your organization. It’s easy to keep your teams engaged with relevant information – no matter how large they are.

When personal and professional lives collide, privacy is put at risk. Relying on WhatsApp for internal comms means your deskless workers could get thrown into groups with hundreds of other employees, making their personal phone numbers visible to everyone else. In certain European countries, guaranteeing worker privacy, particularly outside work hours, is being enshrined in law – something WhatsApp could easily fall foul of.

With Oneteam, it’s easy to let your deskless employees keep work at work, ensuring corporate messaging doesn’t encroach on their personal privacy. Your employees can communicate via group chats or private messages, so there’s no risk of information being shared with the wrong personnel. Plus, it’s also possible to add or hide details on the personal profiles of your employees.

With WhatsApp, there’s barely any analytics available for internal communications teams to analyze. There’s no way of knowing how active accounts are, how engaged employees are with your messages, or even the option to view a simple audit trail. There’s hardly any data to view and, as a result, you can’t gather insights about what’s going well (and what isn’t) regarding your internal comms strategy.

One of the main advantages of using Oneteam for your internal comms is the ability to gather and analyze data across all components of the employee experience in a centralized and straightforward manner. This gives HR teams access to deeper insights regarding employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity. They can also identify trends and areas for improvement so they reduce inefficiencies, and ultimately improve employee satisfaction and retention.

For your internal communication, it’s likely you’ll need to convey lots of different kinds of information. In the hospitality industry, for example, it is essential that an all-in-one communication tool can integrate with solutions that manage shift changes and real-time schedules. If you use WhatsApp for internal communications, you cannot connect these data points. It’s just not designed for connecting with other systems, like HR platforms or WFM systems.

Internal comms is about more than just sending messages. With Oneteam, you can integrate information from a broad range of sources – from eLearning to employee surveys – with everything your deskless workers need accessible from a single, unified platform. In a digital-first world, deskless workers already have enough apps to manage, don’t let your internal comms add to this growing list – use an all-in-one platform instead.