Facebook launched its Facebook At Work service at the beginning of this year, hoping to attract businesses with a blend of Facebooks social networking features and work-based tools. While adoption hasnt been meteoric, the service has just had a major boost with the news that the RBS has partnered with Facebook to bring the app to its staff.

All 100,000 employees at RBS will be given access to Facebook At Work on desktop and mobile with the aim of encouraging collaboration and allowing them to communicate faster and more efficiently.

The company began a pilot trial of Facebook At Work in July this year with a small number of employees, and found it enabled staff to work much more efficiently together. The rollout to the whole company will happen gradually, with 30,000 employees gaining access to the app by April 2016, and a company wide rollout happening by the end of 2016.

“Ive already been using Facebook At Work while we test it and its been so useful – allowing me to exchange information and ideas quickly and securely with all my team on a wide range of projects,” said Simon McNamara, chief administrative officer at RBS.

“Im excited about how bringing people together from all across the bank through Facebook At Work can help our employees do their job better – whether its being able to find answers to customer queries much faster or helping us come up with bring new ideas.”

The app uses completely separate Facebook accounts to staffs personal accounts, so information shared between RBS employees is only accessible to other colleagues within the bank, and remains safe, secure and confidential.

“Facebook is a simply way for people to connect, share ideas and organise events,” said Sean Ryan, vice president of platform partnerships at Facebook. “We hope Facebook At Work will help RBS bring staff closer together and allow them to collaborate on projects much more effectively.”