10 Best Practices to Drive Engagement on Your Collaborative Platform

For about ten years, the collaborative platforms have become a must-have in business. Used both for remote collaboration and for sharing information across the entire company, these platforms offer numerous advantages for organizations. Time savings, reduction of internal emails, increased productivity, faster exchanges… Their benefits are now well known.

But for many, one challenge remains: driving engagement. How do you keep your collaborative platform alive? And what actions can you take to encourage employees to participate more?

Here are 10 best practices to build engagement on your collaborative platform.

1. Prepare the launch

Before inviting employees to your collaborative platform, make sure you properly prepare its launch. To do this, you will need to:

• clarify who should be invited to the platform, and when
• specify for which use case(s) it should be used, and its place among existing tools
• identify the types of groups you want to create, and how you plan to use them
• create your groups, and add content to them
• decide whether you want to establish usage rules (and if so, which ones?)

While this is an optional step, we recommend defining rules and/or a usage charter to clarify how the platform works, and to ensure employees use it correctly. When setting up Talkspirit, Christine Cheret, internal communication manager at the Gîtes de France® Federation, reports for example having "created a set of rules focused on the friendliness of exchanges".

For his part, Vincent Viaud, co-founder of the restaurant chain PUR etc., asks employees to "log in at least once or twice a day" to ensure they have received the information. The company also created a "spam police" role, which allows them to warn employees when they post a message in the wrong place, and thus regulate exchanges on the platform.

2. Identify ambassadors

Identifying ambassadors is essential to driving engagement on your collaborative platform. Often early adopters, ambassadors are already convinced of the tool's added value and use it regularly themselves. They are therefore the best people to spread the word among employees and convince them to use your collaborative platform.

When the notarial office Vacossin & associés implemented Talkspirit, "it was the accountant who played the role of ambassador, because he immediately saw the potential of the tool. He created specific discussion threads to facilitate exchanges on various topics. Thanks to him, everyone got to grips with the tool very quickly", reports Maître Hugo Delescluse.

3. Give your platform a name

Another best practice is to give your collaborative platform a name. This is what Eckes-Granini France, Gîtes de France® and the Association Régionale des Missions Locales d'Ile de France (ARML-IdF) did.

At Eckes-Granini, the name IBU (information between us), symbolized by an owl, was chosen by the sales department. For its part, ARML-IdF chose to reuse the name of its former intranet: Odyssée. The Gîtes de France® Federation, meanwhile, named its platform Rezo. "Employees were able to vote for the name they wanted to give the platform, which allowed us to include them in the project from the start, and to strengthen the sense of belonging to the network", explains Christine Cheret, internal communication manager.

4. Communicate

It cannot be said enough: communicating well is essential to driving engagement on your collaborative platform. From the platform's launch, you will need to clarify:

• how the tool works,
• its main features,
• its added value,
• and how everyone can use it.

If possible, try to launch your platform at a dedicated event. For example, PUR etc. chose to launch Talkspirit at an in-person event bringing together all employees. "We created a contest with a prize to win to encourage employees to connect to the platform during the event. Result: 80% of them created their Talkspirit account that day!", reports Vincent Viaud, co-founder of the chain.

5. Lead by example and encourage open dialogue

Great! Your platform is live, and employees are already starting to connect. The goal now is to engage them and encourage them to participate in exchanges. In order to foster interactions, start by leading by example, and ask managers to do the same.

For example, use the platform to collaborate on projects with your team, give feedback, congratulate employees, highlight achievements, ask for mutual support, share content, or even exchange on informal topics. Why not create your own groups to encourage these exchanges?

During the second lockdown linked to the Covid pandemic, PUR etc. created the group "Confi'craquage" to encourage employees to express themselves freely on all topics related to lockdown and the challenges they were facing. "Today, the group has been renamed 'PUR craquage': we share anecdotes, fun articles and amusing things there", adds Vincent Viaud.

6. Appoint a community manager

Managing a collaborative platform requires time and commitment. To make things easier, we recommend appointing one or more community managers who can animate the platform, share content in the various groups, and moderate exchanges.

Read also: Group Manager's Getting Started Guide

At French Tech Grande Provence, Laure Baudouin, administration and communication manager, even set up a publication calendar. "On Mondays, I publish an interview with a member entrepreneur. Every Wednesday, I share events or good news. On Thursdays, our startup manager publishes tips and tricks for startups. And on Fridays, I make a publication dedicated to a call for projects", she explains.

7. Leverage gamification

Gamification can also be a great way to drive engagement on your collaborative platform. Popularized in the 2000s, this concept involves applying game mechanics to other areas (for example, to business!). Polls, quizzes, contests, storytelling, point systems… There are many ways to make your collaborative platform more engaging.

During the holiday season, Gîtes de France® launched a contest on its Rezo platform. "Every week, employees had to answer a question about our DNA, our values, or even our colleagues. A winner was drawn at random from those who answered correctly and received a prize. This initiative helped highlight our company culture, but also encouraged employees to log in and participate", recounts Christine Cheret.

8. Integrate the platform into your onboarding processes

Did you know? Your collaborative platform can help you facilitate the onboarding of new hires. At PUR etc., new employees are invited to Talkspirit even before their contract starts, which allows them to get to know their colleagues and receive all the information they need to work.

"We create a dedicated post on Talkspirit to announce each new employee's arrival and allow colleagues to welcome them. The platform is directly integrated into our onboarding processes, which allows newcomers to be welcomed by everyone and included in exchanges from day one", reports Vincent Viaud. Result: new employees adopted the tool very quickly and do not hesitate to participate in discussions.

9. Support change management

While some users quickly become ambassadors, others, more reluctant, need support to evolve their usage. Several best practices can help you support change management:

• Clearly explain why it is important to make this transformation, and how the collaborative platform can help them
• Involve employees, for example during the testing or preparation phase of the platform
• Help employees get to grips with the platform through training, webinars, tutorials and/or usage guides
• Raise users' awareness of platform usage best practices

To support the rollout of its Odyssée platform, ARML-IdF chose to organize a 'digital usage Thursday' dedicated to this tool. "On this occasion, we took the opportunity to highlight our various use cases, share some best practices and answer employees' questions", reports Philippe Crest, digital usage delegate.

10. Track KPIs

Finally, don't forget to measure the effectiveness of your platform through pre-defined KPIs. At the CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), "several key indicators are regularly measured, including the number of posts, contributors, likes and comments generated per group", explains Cyril Moitrier, digital transformation manager for the Energy Division.

Read also: Working differently: a challenge taken up in just a few months by the CEA, with Talkspirit

Of course, these KPIs must align with your objectives. For example, if your objective is to reduce email usage, you can measure the volume of internal emails received and sent before vs. after deploying your platform. This is what Agence Bergamote did, successfully reducing its internal emails by 95% thanks to Talkspirit.

For others, the chosen indicators may be linked to the company's own activity. For example, the Biterrois medical imaging center measures the percentage of absences and errors instead. Thus, "since implementing Talkspirit, absenteeism has dropped by 30 to 35% and scheduling errors have decreased by 40 to 50%", reveals Jean-Baptiste Esclafit, administrative director.

In conclusion

You now know all the best practices to boost engagement on your collaborative platform. To deepen your knowledge on this topic, we invite you to watch the replay of our webinar "6 key steps to boost the adoption of your collaborative software":

Watch the replay