How Doctolib uses Happeo to support their exponential growth

“Because our Google Sites were not good enough in terms of structure and user friendliness, we ended up creating too many Sites – and with that, information silos. As an alternative, we developed this tribal-knowledge system. It was just faster and easier to ask a colleague for help! The pandemic removed our ability to interact physically with one another, and instead we sought refuge in Slack. Unfortunately, the fleeting nature of messages in Slack means people were left out. Happeo’s content is ‘sticky’, which makes our culture more visible – crucial to creating alignment and a sense of connection.”

- Salomé Bidaux, People Development Excellence Manager at Doctolib

Changing the world of healthcare, one patient at a time

Doctolib is one of Europe’s fastest-growing tech companies, employing over 1600 people to facilitate one of the most crucial services in the world at this very moment – access to healthcare. Their app helps over 135.000 practitioners connect with a patient community of over 35 million people in France and Germany – and that number goes up by the day. Through the Doctolib app, patients can schedule a consultation with a practitioner. The concept is simple enough, but the problems it solves are tremendous. For end-users it’s an obvious win. For practitioners perhaps even more. Doctolib frees up so much time for these critical-professions, that France alone gained the equivalent of 10% more doctors and physicians through the efficiency that Doctolib creates. It’s no wonder that their first mission is to improve the lives of health professionals and the health of patients. But it’s Doctolib’s second mission that spurred this blog post into existence: To build a company of entrepreneurs with strong human values.

A company full of entrepreneurs means the freedom to create innovation – but everyone still needs to be on the same page. Enter Happeo. We spoke with Salomé Bidaux, Doctolib’s People Success Strategy Manager, to figure out how they will use Happeo to create alignment.

Exponential growth of people and ideas, but no place to align this knowledge

“We need Happeo because we’re growing super fast. It’s not linear growth. It’s exponential growth in terms of people and ideas, so we need a place to contain our ever-increasing knowledge.”

“Before Happeo, we had digital 'bibles' – Google Sites. Each team created these on their own, which formed 'multiple mini start ups' that were just doing their thing. But as you grow, you grow more interdependent among teams. What was supposed to provide clarity, was now creating information silos and misalignment.

Disparate systems don’t just mean a lack of centralized knowledge – you also have no centralized search. In an age where everyone Googles everything, why can’t that just work for a company’s internal knowledge base? Our old system doesn’t have lifecycle management either. We can’t tell if an article was up to date versus another one that says something similar, but not quite the same. Lastly, we don’t know who owns what anymore.”

So then, why Happeo?

“Mainly because it’s Google Workspace first – a key requirement for our people to embrace this new system. Another thing I trust is that Happeo has what we need to seduce Doctolibers. What I mean by that is that we have an amazing product for practitioners and patients. Therefore,the teams who develop our Doctolib app can be very demanding when it comes to the quality of apps that we provide for them. We need something that’s the equivalent in terms of design and ease of use, and that’s why we chose Happeo.”

Creating alignment changes digital tribes into digital harmony

“Improving digital-social interaction within our company is a priority for 2021. Because our Google Sites were not good enough in terms of structure and user friendliness, we ended up creating too many Sites – and with that, information silos. As an alternative, we developed this tribal-knowledge system. It was just faster and easier to ask a colleague for help! The pandemic removed our ability to interact physically with one another, and instead we sought refuge in Slack. Unfortunately, the fleeting nature of messages in Slack means people were left out. Happeo’s content is ‘sticky’, which makes our culture more visible – crucial to creating alignment and a sense of connection.”

Stimulating entrepreneurship in a digital culture

“Our culture, in one word, is entrepreneurial. You’re always the CEO of something. To be a bit more concrete, we have six core values:

SCALES

• Serve 
  
  
• Care
  
  
• Act
  
  
• Learn
  
  
• Enjoy
  
  
• Structure

“Care” and “Learn” are special to me. This is the kind of company where you can go up to anyone and be well-received by them. Everyone embraces each other here. There is a deep kindness in Doctolib, and even as we grow to have more than 1600 people, that still remains.”

“Learn” is the part that strengthens our entrepreneurial mindset. People always want to learn something new. That’s the baseline for the Happeo-launch project. From the start of Doctolib, our CEO said ‘when you join us, you should learn at least three things a day’. And that also means embracing mistakes, so it’s our responsibility to create a safe place for those mistakes. Only then will people invest (in) themselves. We’re not afraid to be wrong – everyone helps each other to get back up.“

The features that changed the game for Doctolib

• Deep integration with Google Workspace, to create a single source of truth
  
  
• Social channels to bring that knowledge to life through engagement
  
  
• Slack integration to bridge rapid, dynamic and static communication together
  
  
• Best-in-class Customer Success support, from pre-launch to years into the relationship
  
  

Doctolib and Happeo in the future

“We’ll be rolling out Happeo in the first half of 2021, as there is a lot of content we want to prepare since creating alignment is one of our key goals. We’re excited about the help we’ve received from the start – and not just on the technical side. Happeo is helping us adapt our vision of a knowledge-management system into a true Internal Communications platform. The strategy that we’re developing together will bring Doctolib’s digital culture to new heights.”