Gecina: A Human-Centric and Innovative Digital Workplace Designed to Foster Collaboration

Specialists in centrality and practicality, Gecina creates innovative and sustainable living spaces. The real estate investment company owns, manages and develops Europe’s leading office portfolio, nearly 97% of which is located in the Paris region; a portfolio of residential assets and student residences, comprising over 9,000 units. At the end of June 2020, it was estimated to be worth €20 billion.

Employees:

- 3 000

Services:

Internal Communications

Industries:

Real Estate

With nearly 500 employees, Gecina places innovation and people at the heart of its strategy to create value and fulfil its mission: “To share human experiences at the heart of our sustainable living spaces.” For its 100,000 customers, this ambition is carried by its brand and service YouFirst.

A single experience platform to centralize internal communication

Since 2018, Gecina has been transforming and renewing itself: a new headquarters that has been completely redesigned in terms of usage and quality of service, a new visual identity, the development of a relational brand “YouFirst”, etc. The old intranet, dating back to 2015, was no longer able to meet the current needs of transmission and access to information. Gecina, therefore, wanted to bring a fresh approach, but above all to make this platform a dynamic space, a single point of entry for all internal communications.

Key Objectives

Centralizing communication. Offer a single source of information and avoid the need for numerous emails and newsletters from different departments within the group.
Content strategy. To propose a real editorial approach with a coherent tone and style. Implement an ambitious editorial calendar to keep the platform active every day.
Engage users. Offer employees the possibility to engage with content, but also offer them access to communities to encourage sharing and collaboration.

We have launched our digital workplace Agora in March 2020, at the time of the worldwide lockdown, in order to provide a “home” where we can gather and stay informed. It’s a platform for sharing information, experiences and learning for all employees working at Gecina. Agora is an essential tool for day-to-day work, fully integrated with Office 365, accessible from any desktop and mobile device. Today, Agora has become our in-house reference workspace.

Julien Landfried

Executive Director of Communications and Public Affairs, Gecina

Gecina, Wedocom and LumApps

By early 2019, Gecina sought to replace their out-of-date intranet. To support their ongoing transformation, the project team wanted to offer a tool that was accessible to all employees ( both at headquarters and in the field), and from anywhere ( desktop and mobile), but above all, a social and collaborative Hub, that is fully integrated with Office 365. To achieve this they choose to work with LumApps.

Gecina was accompanied by the content agency Wedocom, to work on the editorial strategy, and to help them develop the use cases and integrations most appropriate for their platform.

Since then, the platform has been a real success and new developments have been planned, like integration of the media library, synchronization with the Workday HRIS tool, launch of an Employee Advocacy program to develop their employer brand and boost the adoption of communities. There are a lot of great projects ahead!

Key Use Cases

Editorial Strategy

The platform is designed as a real digital magazine. Each article respects the editorial style and the “Gecina tone of voice”, ensuring consistency across all content.

Shortcut to Mobile

All Gecina employees – at headquarters and in the field – are provided with a mobile device with pre-installed and direct access to the responsive version of the platform.

Employees Portraits

Each new employee is introduced by an article, featured on the home page. It includes a photo, career path information… but also information about their hobbies.

Monthly Editorial Committee

Each month, the editor-in-chief and her team meet with representatives of each department to identify topics to be covered and incorporated into the editorial calendar.