Talkspirit: The Best Alternative to Workplace by Facebook?

Temps de lecture : 4 minutes

Before deciding if Talkspirit is the right alternative to Workplace, let’s remember the context. You obviously know Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg‘s social network is used by more than 1.7 billion users every day around the world. Born in 2004 amid dozens of other social networks (Friendster, Myspace…), it was the first to take off so strongly, to the point of conquering the world and surpassing the mythical threshold of one billion users in 2013. Today, with more than 2 billion users connected every month, Facebook is THE consumer social network par excellence.

So much so that in 2017, when Facebook launches Workplace (its internal social network for companies), the reception is both enthusiastic (because almost all employees are already using Facebook so it will be easy to get started) and cautious (how will an entertainment medium turn into a professional tool?). Since then, a lot has been said about Workplace and “new generation” enterprise social networks (ESNs). 

Except one: from Talkspirit or Workplace, which enterprise social network would best suit your company, and why?

Definition: What is the purpose of an enterprise social network?

Thematic groups (by department, by project, by team or by interest), a news feed, chat rooms, the ability to make video calls or share information with colleagues: such are the main features of enterprise social networks like Talkspirit and Workplace. Above all, the enterprise social network offers a number of advantages that makes it a must-have tool for any organization in 2020:

• promote exchanges between employees from the same team or from totally different departments
• decompartmentalize services and avoid the creation of silos within the company
• encourage employee involvement and commitment
• highlight skills and achievements of employees
• simplify sharing of knowledge between employees and encourage hybridization of skills

For all these reasons, the use of an enterprise social network will be a real boost for your internal communication.

Let’s take a look at Workplace by Facebook and Talkspirit, and their respective advantages and disadvantages.

Talkspirit and Workplace—two enterprise social networks with a lot in common

Let’s start with an important observation: Workplace by Facebook shares many common points with Talkspirit.

All the benefits of an ESN

Video calls, audio calls, instant messaging (chat), scheduling internal events in a shared calendar, live video streaming: the key features of a enterprise social network will be available whatever your choice, whether you opt for the French Talkspirit solution or for Workplace. 

Connect your collaborators

Similarly, if your main goal is to connect your entire organization (colleagues working in the office, in the field or remotely), both solutions will allow you to do so with little difficulty.

What’s more, whether on Talkspirit or on Workplace, even employees who don’t use a professional email address will be able to join communities and groups that relate to them! Blue-collar and white-collar workers finally have equal footing.

Energize your internal communication

Fluidifying companies’ internal communication is at the heart of Talkspirit’s DNA. It’s our daily obsession. Both Talkspirit and Workplace are perfectly adapted to set up multi-dimensional communication: facilitating the flow of information, of course, but also encouraging the flow of information from the field and encouraging horizontal sharing between departments/teams (in order to decompartmentalize the organization).

Also read: Top 13 Best Collaborative Platforms for Businesses

What makes Talkspirit unique

As you can see, Talkspirit and Workplace concentrate the essential elements that make the ESN an indispensable tool for any company today. That said, Talkspirit is a real alternative to Workplace by Facebook on a number of elements, which we feel are particularly important to mention here. 

A genuine commitment to the protection of personal data

A made-in-France platform created in 2008, Talkspirit is committed to the security and confidentiality of all your employees’ data. This data is collected and managed in accordance with the RGPD (General Regulation on the Protection of Personal Data), hosted in France by OVHcloud, and as such, it is not covered by the American Cloud Act* (see below). That’s a real alternative to Workplace…

Multiple collaborative functionalities

Although its solution fluidifies internal communication, Talkspirit cannot be considered as a “coffee machine 2.0.” In fact, Talkspirit is much more than that and goes much further than Workplace: it is a fully-fledged work tool for your employees.

Indeed, the platform offers many features that make collaborative work more fluid on a daily basis, particularly through: 

• document storage and management (via a large storage space)
• management of common events (via a shared calendar)
• creation and co-editing of documents (via OfficeNow, the integrated collaborative office suite)
• project management (through the assignment of tasks within a work group) 
• automatic feedback of business information in the news flow (via the integration of more than 1,000 third-party apps used daily in the technical, finance, marketing, sales, and customer support areas…).

A strong involvement alongside its customers

Supporting companies in their digital and collaborative transformation in order to make them more agile is our ultimate goal, and this is why Talkspirit has become a viable alternative to Workplace, particularly for SMEs and middle-market companies—not at all Workplace’s target. (First and foremost, Facebook’s tool targets large international groups with several tens / hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide).

Also read: “Why and How I Switched from Workplace to Talkspirit.”

Our teams advise and guide you at every step of your Internal Social Network project to ensure its success and your employees’ integration. Why? Because we consider ourselves above all as partners of ALL our customers, committed to their side.

Last but not least, our team decides on the platform’s evolutionary direction (including features to be added and adjustments to be made) based on your feedback and suggestions. Each of our customers is important to us, and we’re therefore listening to you and committed to you at every moment!

A tool capable of connecting your entire ecosystem

Need to connect much more than just your company? Unlike Workplace, with Talkspirit, that’s possible! You’ll bring together your entire ecosystem—not only your employees but also your partners, suppliers and customers. You’ll be able to invite people on your platform who don’t have the same email domain (e.g. @domainemail.com) as that of your company. All you have to do is invite them from the back office of your platform.

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By choosing Talkspirit as an alternative to Workplace, you’ll have access to all these features with optimized ergonomics and perfect interoperability (because all features are natively integrated together, on a single platform, unlike what Slack or Teams can offer). 

Discover : Talkspirit vs Slack & Talkspirit vs Microsoft Teams

If you haven’t consulted it yet, check out the Talkspirit vs. Workplace Comparison Guide.

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Do you want to set up an internal social network within your company, boost your internal communication and make collaboration within your teams more fluid? Contact us or request a demo of our solution today.

* Cloud Act: A U.S. federal law on the monitoring of personal data, passed in 2018, which requires U.S. service providers to provide federal authorities, upon request, all stored data; regardless of the location of the servers—even in the EU. (Source: Wikipedia)

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Author: Benoît Renoul, Paul Maubareyt