With 15,000 employees in North America, United Rentals is the world’s largest equipment rental company. Brought in by United Rentals’ Chief Operating Officer, the Talk Social to Me team (Rachel Medanic and colleague) was engaged to launch Workplace by Facebook to the entire company, including over 500 branch offices throughout North America. The project was initiated in parallel with ‘OneUR’, a strategic initiative to unify customer experience and support those efforts with additional best practices sharing, stronger leadership communications and recognition for the company’s geographically dispersed and highly mobile workforce.
SCOPE
Employee champions were identified and trained to evangelize and support what became a 68% field adoption rate in a matter of months. In a dedicated a Champions community they learned platform functionality and best use of platform features to amplify scale and reach. United Rentals directors and C-suite leaders received personalized coaching plans, talking points, and communications recommendations (video, event stage, town halls, on location at branch offices) and digital “actions” they could use to model participation in the new network via mobile app.
RESULTS
The anytime, anywhere mobile communications platform impacted leaders and branch office employees who spent 80% of the time working “on the road,” away from a computer or out in the field helping and servicing customers. Results included:
- Recruitment of 200 Regional Champions who were trained to support local initiatives on Workplace by Facebook; at the time of the project there were 900 UR branch offices in North America.
- A heavily and creatively participated in company Ice Bucket Challenge concept adapted for UR’s employee-to-employee Compassion Fund (communicated solely through Workplace by Facebook).
- 36% of United Rentals branch offices had 100% employee participation in the voluntary Compassion Fund.
- 200% growth in employee annual giving participation to the Compassion Fund over the previous year in 1/3 of the time vs. the previous year.
- Centralization and scale of the company’s safety campaign and “0 incidents” competitive metrics and motivations, delivered via morning branch office huddles and reinforced via digital messages on Workplace platform.
SUSTAINABILITY
Two years after the launch, the internal network’s health was reported as: “going well and continuing to see strong, regular participation by company employees.”
ABOUT UNITED RENTALS
United Rentals, Inc. is an American equipment rental company. It owns the largest rental fleet in the world with approximately 4,800 classes of equipment totaling about $20.59 billion in original equipment cost (OEC) as of 2025. The company has a combined total of 1,625 locations, including an integrated network of 1,504 rental locations in North America, including operations in 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico and in every Canadian province.