Improving Internal Communication in Real Estate: The SIP Story

Internal communication is a major challenge in the real estate sector, especially when agencies are spread across multiple sites — as is the case for SIP, a social housing organisation with a mission to house people on low incomes.

SIP by the numbers: 

• 170 employees
• 7 sites (head office, 4 agencies and 2 local management units)
• more than 12,000 housing units across more than 80 municipalities

In June 2023, SIP deployed Talkspirit to streamline its internal communication and reduce reliance on internal email. Camille Oddo, Internal and External Communications Officer at SIP, explains why the tool was chosen and how it is used today.

A Need for Real-Time Communication

“Originally, we used Microsoft Teams to share most of our internal communications”, says Camille Oddo. “Some things were also sent by email”. However, neither of these tools was well suited to the way SIP wanted to use them. 

Teams is primarily a collaboration tool, and email is better suited to asynchronous exchanges. That’s why SIP wanted to deploy a tool dedicated to internal communication.

Read also: Should you use email for internal communication?

“We needed to communicate more in real time with employees — for example to share news and events. We considered the enterprise social network, as it’s a relatively dynamic internal communication tool that you can use to chat, post, comment and react to information”. 

Choosing a French Tool Accessible Anywhere

Talkspirit is the ideal platform for improving internal communication in the real estate sector. SIP saw that clearly.

“We chose Talkspirit because it’s a French enterprise social network that perfectly matched our needs and was fairly intuitive. All the features we wanted were there, including the news feed, instant messaging and the ability to create groups”.

The accessibility of the tool was also important. 30% of our employees work in the field or are frequently on the move. We therefore needed a tool with a mobile app that works well — which Talkspirit delivered. That way, all our employees can access information wherever they are”, says the communications officer.

A Controlled Contributor Base

“Before launch, we held several meetings with the Talkspirit team to understand how the platform works and map out the implementation steps. We then rolled out the tool across the whole company in June 2023. Communication was handled through various channels, including email and posters in our offices. 

From the start, we chose to limit the number of contributors (i.e. the people who can publish posts), to maintain the quality of shared content.

At launch, only managers could publish content. Then, in a second phase, we opened contributor access to line managers and certain individuals likely to share information.

We continue to hold regular check-ins with the Talkspirit team to make sure everything is running smoothly and to seek their help on technical topics. The team is always very responsive, which our IT department particularly appreciates.”

A Central Hub for Internal Communication

Talkspirit can add real value for internal communication in the real estate sector. At SIP, “we use it to relay news from the different departments, as well as company-wide updates. To segment this information, we created 7 groups covering different themes (customer relations, IT, HR, finance, works council, etc.).

Today, the tool is well embedded in employees’ daily habits. It opens automatically on their computer at the start of each working day, which means information is received in real time.

On my side, I mainly use it to share posts on the news feed. Recently, we’ve highlighted: 

• our CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives,
• portraits of inspiring women, for International Women’s Day (8 March),
• the new programme from our property maintenance department,
• the latest HR regulations in force,
• new arrivals joining the company,
• an event we’re organising for Easter.

We also occasionally share surveys to involve employees in our communication initiatives”, says Camille Oddo.

A Smoother Flow of Information

“With Talkspirit, you really feel that there is much greater fluidity in information sharing. Before, we weren’t always aware of what was happening in other departments. Today, there’s better cross-departmental communication, and a bit more cohesion too.

On Talkspirit, employees can easily access information and react to it in real time. The platform is also used for informal exchanges, unlike Teams which we use more for project collaboration.

Talkspirit has also helped us reduce the volume of internal emails we send to employees”, says Camille Oddo. “Now, all internal communications go through the platform, which means information is centralised in one place.

Read also: How Agence Bergamote cut its emails by 95% and boosted productivity with Talkspirit

“We’ve seen the number of views, likes and comments on posts increase significantly since the rollout. This shows that employees are increasingly engaged on the platform. We therefore plan to keep pushing on adoption and engagement among users.”

Conclusion

Improving internal communication in the real estate sector is entirely achievable with Talkspirit. Thanks to our platform, SIP can now share information instantly with all its employees spread across multiple sites, including those working in the field. 

If this is also your challenge, we invite you to contact our team, or to book a Talkspirit demo. 

If you’d like to discover more customer stories, we invite you to download this practical guide featuring 10 initiatives from our clients to improve internal communication 👇

Access the Practical Guide

In our practical guide “10 Client Initiatives to Improve Internal Communication”, you’ll find: examples of companies using Talkspirit to optimise their internal communication, along with tips and best practices for better information sharing and stronger team cohesion.

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