Action Logement Services

“Tomorrow’s work will… use digital solutions for more direct and human communication, to improve listening, connections and involvement.”

What is your role at Action Logement Services?

In 2021, I became the Deputy Managing Director in charge of transformation for Action Logement Services (the AL Group’s financing company). I joined Action Logement in 2009 as Chief Administrative Officer. When I was in charge of the finance, legal, HR and development divisions, I was already heavily involved in transformation operations, particularly when I led the legal merger of the 20 CILs (French interprofessional housing committees), which gave rise to the current Group in 2017. 

What issues were you facing when you decided to call on Beekast? 

The merger went well, but organisational and IT transformations are more difficult to implement and are holding back our development. In late 2021, after aborting several projects, we relaunched a major programme to merge and adapt our IT tools (mass migrations, CRM, digitising the offer, etc.). This will enable us to adapt our organisation to the new challenges that ALS faces. We had to switch gears to gain new momentum and we have a lot of work to do on communication with our employees. You have to remember that before the Group’s merger, there were 20 different structures, 20 IT systems, and 20 different ways of doing things. We had to lead a change management process and get the staff who had doubts about our projects’ feasibility on board. 

Why did you choose Beekast to give you a helping hand? 

We no longer believe in traditional newsletters to communicate about change management and get the teams on board. Beekast was the only partner to offer us a dynamic communication and change management tool that was very easy to use. It enabled us to guarantee top-down distribution of messages, employee understanding, and to get managers involved by making them actors and helping them deploy the company’s messages. 

How do you use the Beekast platform in practice? 

Upper management uses slides to present the projects and key messages to be conveyed to level 1 managers, who in turn present them to level 2 managers, and so on. The teams can easily adapt the pre-configured models. If the speech concerning the key information and the quantitative and qualitative KPIs is fixed, managers can add a few slides to give the information context that is relevant to their environment. Beekast allows us to add videos and simplify the message to help managers. To ensure successful top-down communication of information and encourage involvement, we use Beekast’s presentation feature, as well as all the interactive features: surveys, questions, virtual sticky notes, etc. This allows us to collect our employees’ opinions and thoughts and to consolidate results both per team and globally. We ask our staff about their understanding of the changes presented and whether they are motivated about implementing them. This is valuable data that allows us to identify “hot spots”, to reassess and adapt our communication and, if necessary, our choices.  

What has this partnership given you?

In all, more than 1000 sessions have taken place since January 2022. Beekast’s platform has enabled us to reach almost all our employees: the average participation rate is already over 90%. The partnership also enabled us to get our employees involved in the project: engagement increased by 33% between the first and second session. The platform makes us more efficient because managers pass on the messages, and it has reduced travel at the 167 sites. We are still working with Beekast on the information feedback and monitoring process, so that we can anticipate human obstacles and intervene in the right place at the right time. This will allow us to see how effective our communication is and adapt it.