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Boosting Productivity in Local Government: How the Essonne Departmental Council Uses Talkspirit
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How do you boost productivity in the Communications Department of a local authority, while streamlining information sharing and collaboration between staff? That was the challenge taken on by the Essonne Departmental Council, which bet on moving from a communication model 100 % reliant on email to a modern collaborative tool modern: Talkspirit !
The Essonne Departmental Council is the deliberative assembly governing the Essonne department, located south of Paris in the Île-de-France region. The Department covers a broad range of responsibilities, including culture, social services, road infrastructure, secondary school facilities, and environmental protection.
Key figures :
- 1,300,000 residents
- 4 000 staff
- 125 users on Talkspirit
Why did the Communications Department deploy Talkspirit? And how is it using the platform to gain productivity and simplify exchanges within the Department? Julien Bordas, Digital Communications Manager at the Essonne Departmental Council, answers all our questions in this article.
You can also watch his video testimonial recorded at our event #FOW22 (Future of Work) 👇
A need to streamline communication and collaboration between staff
“Before, the Communications Department was very siloed. We struggled to obtain information from the various departments, but also to communicate and share information within the Department itself,” recalls Julien Bordas.
The reason was simple: email was the only tool available to staff for communicating and collaborating with colleagues.
“Following an audit of our social media communications, we realized we needed a dedicated tool to communicate among ourselves and to manage day-to-day projects as well as to engage our future network of communications liaisons with the Internal Communications team.”
The Essonne Departmental Council therefore set out to find a solution that would improve staff productivity in the communications team and simplify cross-functional and internal exchanges.
The choice of a 100 % French solution
As a public authority, the data security and data hosting were naturally key criteria for the Essonne Departmental Council. This was in fact one of the main reasons the Communications Department chose the Talkspirit platform.
“The deciding factor was that it is a French company whose data is stored and hosted in France, and therefore GDPR-compliant,” explains the Digital Communications Manager.
“Talkspirit was also recommended by our digital consultant, who told us the tool was very intuitive, user-friendly, and easy to use. That was also important to us, given that our target users were not accustomed to working with collaborative platforms.
We needed a tool that our staff and communications liaisons could get up to speed with quickly. Talkspirit seemed ideal for that.”
Read also: How the Mairie de Venelles Revitalized Its Internal Communications with Talkspirit
Training to accelerate adoption
Deployed in January 2022, Talkspirit quickly proved its value for the communication and collaboration needs of the Communications Department.
Beyond the favorable timing of the rollout, it was above all the time invested in training that played a key role in platform adoption. “We organized video-conference training sessions with the communications liaisons. This gave us the opportunity to walk them through how the platform works and show them the value it could bring to their daily work”, says Julien Bordas.
A platform that makes project-based work easier
Now used by communications staff, communications liaisons, and their managers, Talkspirit has approximately 125 users.
One of the platform’s key strengths is first and foremost its ability to “facilitate collaborative work within the Communications team”. How? Thanks to the Projects module, which allows the team to manage all its communications projects and plan upcoming content through kanban-style boards.
For example, the team has set up on Talkspirit:
- a board bringing together all communication campaigns,
- a board to track article publication on its website,
- a social media calendar.
Read also: Streamlining Collaboration in Local Government: The Mairie de Josselin’s Story
“Some teams use Projects to track the actions their team needs to take”, adds the Digital Communications Manager. To do so, they simply create a three-column board with actions labeled “to start,” “in progress,” and “done.” Simple and effective!
Request a demo of the Projects module
Beyond the Projects module, the team uses the drive to share and co-edit documents that need to be updated regularly — for example, “the newsletter calendar, the leave schedule, the list of topics for editorial committee meetings, or the social media communications strategy.”
Groups to share information and keep conversations alive
The Department has also created several groups on its platform, allowing everyone to share and easily access any information through a social-media-style news feed.
Each group serves a specific purpose. For instance, they can be used to:
- encourage staff to suggest content ideas,
- showcase photos and videos produced by the Department,
- invite users to internal events (for example, the “meetCom” gatherings that bring the full network of communications liaisons together in person three times a year),
- share news and best practices (such as tips on communicating effectively, or “becoming a Talkspirit pro”),
- discuss ongoing projects,
- and simply chat about everyday topics (via the “Coffee Machine” group).
There is also a dedicated group for managing the communications network of the Essonne Departmental Council, jointly overseen by the Communications Department and the Internal Communications team. Its purpose? “Allow communications liaisons to submit information continuously, for example about upcoming internal or external events.
This content is then stored in a dedicated file, discussed in the editorial committee to decide on the format through which it will be shared (for example, on social media, in a magazine, etc.). Following the editorial committee, we leave a comment under each person’s post to let them know their news item has been shared.”
To go further, the Department shares on the news feed the engagement stats of posts submitted by network users and published on its social media channels and intranet.
A system that simultaneously helps boost engagement, give visibility to the Department’s initiatives, and provide feedback to staff.
Greater day-to-day team efficiency
For the communications team at the Essonne Departmental Council, the verdict is clear: moving from email to Talkspirit has completely transformed how the team communicates and collaborates. The result: information is better shared and team productivity is higher.
Benefits that Julien Bordas has seen clearly: “Talkspirit allows us to work more effectively as a team, and to have a more cross-functional view of the initiatives underway across the Communications Department.
Everyone sees information at the same time, which allows us to accelerate information sharing — both between the External Communications Department and the Internal Communications team, and with the communications liaisons.”
This impact is felt both on the ground and in usage statistics — notably the number of connections and level of engagement — which have continued to rise since the deployment. Today, the platform counts 70 % monthly active users, a figure set to keep climbing in the months ahead.
Talkspirit’s Take on the Essonne Departmental Council
With Talkspirit, the Communications Department of the Essonne Departmental Council has been able to address a dual challenge: engaging a network of communications liaisons, and developing cross-functional communication and collaboration.
Gone are the lengthy email threads that took hours to process and enabled only asynchronous communication. Today, teams can exchange and work smoothly, whether they are in the office, on-site, or working remotely — giving productivity a real boost.
Looking ahead, the Essonne Departmental Council also plans to roll out two new modules:
- the library: to centralize all team knowledge, and in particular help community managers answer users’ frequently asked questions on social media
- the internal newsletter: to bring together the important posts published on the network.
Discover the Talkspirit Library
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Would you like to learn more about the value Talkspirit brings to local government? Contact one of our experts or schedule a personalized demo with our team.
To discover more real-world examples, we also invite you to watch the replay of our webinar “Better communication and collaboration in local government”:
Access the Webinar
In our webinar “Better Communication and Collaboration in Local Government”, you will discover: best practices for simplifying collaborative work and internal communications within a local authority, along with real-world feedback from the Mairies de Josselin and Mauges-sur-Loire.
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Author: Emmanuelle Abensur
