A CSE context under pressure: purchasing power, social ties and compliance

The CSE has two separate budgets: an operating budget (0.20% of gross payroll between 50 and 1,999 employees, 0.22% from 2,000 employees) and a budget for social and cultural activities, the amount of which is set by agreement or custom.

At the same time, the rules governing access to ASCs have become stricter: in 2024, the French Supreme Court reiterated that CSE benefits must be accessible to all employees and trainees without discriminatory conditions, notably in terms of seniority, on pain of losing the associated social exemptions.

As a result, elected representatives have to do more, for more people, on a budget that is often limited. That’s why it’s so important to have a platform that structures your actions, avoids loss of information and promotes each social or cultural initiative to employees and alumni.

What alumni.space can do for you on the CSE side

Alumni.space is a turnkey solution for community management and mentoring, aimed explicitly at works councils and ESCs.

It enables you to transform your CSE into a genuine community hub, combining benefits, conviviality and mutual support. In concrete terms, the platform helps you to :

• animate a network of employees and alumni around shared events, news and projects;
• give visibility to your benefits, your ticketing and your cultural or solidarity actions;
• provide elected representatives with the tools they need to monitor the commitment of beneficiaries and promote the impact of your actions to management.

Better target and promote your social and cultural activities

The purpose of the ASC budget is to improve the living conditions and purchasing power of employees through social and cultural activities: ticketing, leisure, culture, sport, gift vouchers, etc.

With alumni.space, you have a unique space in which to clearly present these benefits, explain your allocation criteria and track actual usage. Event, ticketing and communication functionalities make it a natural support for justifying the use of your CSL budget and preparing your annual reports to employees.

Make your CSE events a success and strengthen social cohesion

Events are at the heart of the CSE’s activities: theater or cinema outings, trips, company parties, family workshops, QWL meetings, etc.

Alumni.space integrates event management with integrated ticketing, the ability to offer preferential rates and to replace certain lost CE benefits, notably on cultural outings.

For elected representatives, it’s a way of centralizing registrations, participant lists and communication, while giving employees a clear view of the entire CSE offering, including when alumni are invited to certain convivial gatherings.

Boosting the CSE’s communication with employees and former employees

An effective CSE is a clear CSE. Yet many bodies struggle to make their actions visible beyond a few e-mails or posters.

With alumni.space, you benefit from tools designed to maintain this link over time:

• a Group and CSE news area, to relay your decisions, projects and major actions;
• a document library, to centralize your reports, practical guides, explanations of CSAs or occupational health;
• information feeds (e.g. via RSS) to highlight company information of interest to employees;
• an internal social network, where members can comment, share and feed back their needs and ideas.

In this way, your employees have a better understanding of what the CSE does, how they can benefit from it and how they can contribute to it, even when they become former employees.

Supporting purchasing power and co-optation in the same space

The CSE is a key player in purchasing power via the ASC, but also a facilitator of career paths. The alumni.space website provides a job board and co-optation tools to circulate job offers between members of the community.

For a CSE, this opens up two perspectives: supporting the employability of employees and former employees, and encouraging recruitment by recommendation within a network of trust. In addition to your traditional financial advantages, you offer a very concrete lever for securing career paths.

Supporting solidarity and intergenerational initiatives

The CSE also has a social role to play: support in times of need, solidarity actions, attention paid to families. Alumni.space includes several building blocks that reinforce this human aspect:

• A diary of births and deaths, to mark important moments in the lives of employees and their families;
• a volunteering area, where employees and alumni can get involved in common causes;
• events bringing together different generations (working people, retirees, young recruits, old-timers), to bring the corporate culture to life beyond the employment contract.

In this way, you can make your solidarity actions visible and document them, facilitating your CSR communication and your exchanges with management.

Features designed to meet the needs of CSE representatives

In addition to its user-friendliness, alumni.space acts as a real management tool for elected representatives and committees. In particular, the platform offers :

• Enhanced profiles and internal social networking
  Each member has a profile with interests, sector and skills. This enables you to identify relays for your actions (culture, sport, solidarity, safety, etc.) and include alumni in certain projects.
• Event alerts and subscriptions by zone
  Employees can subscribe to events by location or theme, helping you to target your invitations and offers more precisely.
• Thematic areas for your ASC
  Internal classifieds, ticketing, job board, membership fees: each component can be organized into a clear section, in line with the separation of your budgets (operating / ASC).
• Usage statistics with Matomo
  The platform uses Matomo, an audience measurement tool recommended by the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL), to track site usage and objectify the engagement around your actions.
• Controlled Google indexing
  You retain control over the level of external visibility of your site (e.g. indexing only the home page), enabling you to reconcile transparency, confidentiality and your internal communication policy.

A simple solution to finance and deploy for an ESC

The CSE’s operating budget can be used to finance the tools it needs to carry out its missions, in particular communications and digital media. A number of guides and rulings point out that a CSE website can fall within this framework, as long as it serves your economic and social responsibilities.

Alumni.space offers a transparent business model: a setup fee, followed by a monthly subscription with no advertising, with a roll-out announced in 15 days and a navigation designed for all generations, including retirees.

For a CSE, it’s the chance to back up your communication and part of your CSA with a professional tool, without launching a complex IT project.

What you gain on the CSE side

By structuring your community of employees and alumni via alumni.space, you can transform your actions into a real, clear and sustainable social policy. In concrete terms, you can :

• better promote the use of your operating and CSG budgets to employees and management;
• boost purchasing power and access to culture through a better managed range of events and ticketing;
• develop a lasting sense of belonging, even after leaving the company;
• support employability via a job board, co-optation and networking;
• give overall coherence to your social, cultural, solidarity and intergenerational initiatives.

Next step: adapt the platform to your CSE mandate

Each CSE has its own history, practices and priorities: company size, geographical spread, budget level, social culture, employee expectations. The aim is not to add another tool, but to structure what you’re already doing and make it visible.

Building on this foundation, we can go further together in three areas:

1. Clarify your CSE digital strategy: which audiences, which sections, which priorities (purchasing power, culture, solidarity, mentoring, alumni, etc.)?
2. Formalize a simple sales pitch to present the platform to management and justify its funding from the right budgets.
3. Build a 12-month animation plan (events, publications, volunteering, co-optation) to ensure that your community makes the tool its own, and that every CSE action leaves a useful trace.