Babilou Family: Bringing Together 14,000 Employees Worldwide, from HQ to the Frontlines

Babilou Family is one of the world’s leading players in education and early childhood. Present in ten countries, the group welcomes 100,000 children every day across more than 1,200 childcare centers, supported by nearly 14,000 employees. As a purpose-driven company, Babilou Family supports families, promotes parenthood, and delivers sustainable education. To support the rollout of its new 2025–2028 strategic plan and bring its value proposition to life, the group needed a space capable of bringing people together, showcasing pedagogical practices, and facilitating international collaboration. The shutdown of Workplace by Meta, which it had been using until then, accelerated the need to find a more structured platform better suited to a highly frontline-based, multicultural, and decentralized organization. Discover how the transition from Workplace by Meta to Sociabble, completed in just two and a half months, enabled Babilou Family to meet these challenges and sustainably transform its internal communications.

Internal communication that must take frontline realities and cultural diversity into account

Internal communication at Babilou Family must deal with unique conditions linked to the nature of its business. The majority of employees work in childcare centers, in direct contact with children and parents. They do not have a work phone and are not allowed to use their personal devices during the day. In addition, their days are fully dedicated to educational projects, children, and families, leaving little time to consult internal tools.

Added to this is significant cultural and organizational diversity. Each of the group’s ten countries has its own regulations, levels of digital equipment, pedagogical practices, and communication habits. Some use Microsoft Teams or SharePoint, while others do not. This fragmentation makes it difficult to establish a single, consistent, and accessible communication framework for everyone.

Given these realities, internal communication is not just an organizational issue, but a deeply human, pedagogical, and cultural challenge.

For the first time, we have a space where all 14,000 employees can truly come together.

Camille Biau Director of Communications at Babilou Family

Before Sociabble, Babilou Family used Workplace by Meta. The tool suffered from a lack of governance, with more than 1,000 active or abandoned groups, making communication hard to read and often ineffective.

In this context, Babilou Family had to address several challenges:

• Breaking down silos between headquarters, frontline teams, and countries
• Simplifying and structuring information by removing unnecessary steps and providing more direct and operational access to content
• Clearly communicating the 2028 strategic plan
• Securing exchanges between teams at the center and site level
• Creating a shared space for exchange that reflects the group’s pedagogical and cultural richness

Sociabble met these needs, which is why teams embraced it. They saw a tool designed for their realities, capable of unifying communications while respecting the diversity of roles and contexts.

Sociabble: a solution that showcases pedagogical practices and connects frontline teams

Sociabble stood out for its dual strengths: engaging frontline teams and offering a unified governance model across all countries.

The platform was rolled out under the name MyBFF, short for My Babilou Family Friend—a playful nod to “My Best Friend Forever.” The name perfectly reflects the ambition: to become a trusted partner for every employee, every day.

First, Sociabble enables better-structured communication through precise audience segmentation and content targeting. Workplace by Meta offered a dense, saturated news feed inspired by social media. MyBFF, by contrast, highlights the most important information without it being diluted among other messages.

The platform also effectively addresses accessibility challenges: some countries do not use Microsoft Teams at all. In those cases, MyBFF becomes the single communication hub to access news, connect with teams worldwide, consult documentation, or join communities of interest and experts.

MyBFF also allows employees to easily publish photos, videos, and testimonials, giving strong visibility to pedagogical practices.

We are education professionals, and we need a tool that lives up to that responsibility.Camille Biau, Director of Communications at Babilou Family

An express rollout across 10 countries in two and a half months

Deploying an internal communication tool across ten countries in just two and a half months is a rare achievement. Yet Babilou Family succeeded thanks to rigorous organization and remarkable international mobilization.

The rollout relied on SPOCs (Single Points of Contact): each country had a local referent responsible for relaying information, onboarding the platform, and training local teams. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, even leveraged the launch to align it with their rebranding, which encouraged rapid and enthusiastic adoption.

Weekly meetings between local referents and headquarters helped align strategy, vision, frontline needs, and technical configuration without losing momentum.

Thanks to strong governance, a collective determination to move fast, and active support from the Sociabble team, the deployment of MyBFF went smoothly. The platform was launched on schedule and made available to all employees.

Having so little time turned out to be an opportunity. We had to move fast, decide quickly, and stay focused.

Tiphaine Falise Group HR & Quality Digital Manager at Babilou Family

A lively, collaborative platform aligned with the educational mission

MyBFF is a living space where pedagogy, creativity, and international collaboration come together.

Rich, spontaneous, unmoderated user-generated content (UGC)

73% of content comes directly from frontline teams: pedagogical activities, educational projects, civic initiatives, everyday photos, celebrations, and creative experiences.
A striking example is the “Outdoor Week,” an internal event focused on outdoor learning. Teams from the Saint-Jaumes childcare center in Montpellier shared dozens of photos showing children engaged in enriching discoveries. This illustrates how MyBFF enables frontline teams to showcase their daily work, share best practices, and inspire the entire group.

Our teams are proud of their work. They want to be visible, to share, to inspire. MyBFF gives them that space.Tiphaine Falise, Group HR & Quality Digital Manager at Babilou Family

Instant messaging that secures exchanges

With more than 61,000 messages sent, chat has become a key tool. In some countries, such as Colombia, MyBFF is the only available professional messaging system. In a sensitive sector like early childhood, it enables secure communication while protecting operational and pedagogical information.

Video as a way to embody strategic pillars

Each month, the CEO of Babilou Family addresses employees, often alongside a business leader, a video to align teams and present progress on the strategic plan. Automatic translation helps ensure everyone is on board and supports the group’s transformation.

The Chain Challenge: a creative initiative sympolizing adoption

To boost engagement at the start of the September term, the team launched a challenge inspired by “friendship chains.” In each country, the CEO started the chain by posting a photo and an anecdote, then tagging their BFF on a dedicated channel. The tagged person then did the same, without breaking the chain.
Ten friendship chains—one per country—were created, sparking a friendly and playful inter-country competition.

Immediate results, especially among frontline teams

The first months of use showed particularly high engagement levels:

• 99% of users active at least once since launch (88% in the launch month)
• 61,541 messages sent via instant messaging
• 134,537 impressions per month
• 73% user-generated content
• An average of 30 likes per post
• 29 videos published per month
• A newsletter read rate of 99.8%
• A record adoption rate in Colombia: 97%

Toward a solution fully integrated into group life

Babilou Family aims to go further and is already evolving MyBFF to make it the central exchange hub for all 14,000 employees.

Next steps include:

• Integration with Microsoft Teams
• A single, mandatory instant messaging system for all countries
• The rollout of an employee advocacy program
• The expansion of pedagogical spaces, including twinning between centers in different countries. These spaces will enable frontline teams to share even more projects, best practices, and educational content, while inspiring one another and strengthening international collaboration.

The platform is becoming a central pillar of the group’s internal strategy. It centralizes information, facilitates exchanges between employees and countries, and supports the dissemination of pedagogical and strategic initiatives. As such, it serves as a true point of convergence for all teams, strengthening engagement, cohesion, and company culture on a global scale.

A digital space serving a global educational mission

With MyBFF, Babilou Family demonstrates that it is possible to rapidly transform internal communication within a highly frontline-based, multicultural, international organization. Following the closure of Workplace by Meta, the group successfully deployed a structured, accessible, and engaging platform in just two and a half months for 14,000 employees across ten countries.

MyBFF is more than just a tool: it is an educational, cultural, and collaborative space where every employee—regardless of country, role, or frontline reality—can share, learn, express themselves, and come together around a shared vision and values.

And the name says it all: MyBFF.

Would you like to create stronger connections in a frontline-oriented organization and bring your teams together around a powerful mission? Contact Sociabble to discover how you too can transform your internal communication.