How do you simultaneously involve colleagues in the conversation about important themes? How do you safely connect different perspectives? And how do you learn more about the sentiments and what is really going on within the organization? To find answers to these and other questions, the municipality of Amsterdam is experimenting with the dialogue application of Civinc for a year. This application makes it possible to involve employees in an innovative way in issues such as work culture, controversial topics and desired strategies.
Civinc was developed to enable large-scale digital dialogues between employees, helping to create a picture of what drives them and what is going on. During a dialogue session on the platform, employees exchange ideas with colleagues with a different perspective in anonymous chat conversations. In this way, colleagues with diverse backgrounds, interests and ideas are challenged to view important issues from each other’s perspective.
An AI (artificial intelligence) analysis of the dialogues then maps out how the group views the theme. These insights can be used to, for example, better align decision-making and policy-making with what employees are experiencing. In this way, this collaboration offers good ingredients for impact and insight within the municipality! At the end of the pilot, an overall evaluation will follow to gain insight into the added value of the technology for (anonymous) dialogues. In this way, we are building a future-proof organization that is sufficiently equipped for the future of work.
Ruben Treurniet (co-founder Civinc): “The Municipality of Amsterdam is in essence a mini society with numerous employee perspectives on work-related and social themes. It is great to see that the municipality is committed to bringing these perspectives together. With Civinc, we want to contribute to a safe exchange of perspectives, in which all voices are heard and valuable insights actually lead to positive change.”
Ger Baron (CTO, Municipality of Amsterdam, as quoted in The Tech Radar 2024): “We need to understand what’s happening and what’s coming our way because a future-proof city listens to the signals of emerging technologies, reflects on pressing developments, experiments, and conducts research”
