For decades, the Le Petit Forestier group’s refrigerated trucks have been crossing Paris and its suburbs to deliver food to supermarkets, catering establishments, caterers and collective catering. “Even Covid didn’t stop us,” smiles the group’s HR director, Guillaume Rabel Suquet. But six months before the opening ceremony of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, its clients like Sodexo, Ponoma and Elior face a new challenge: continuing to supply the capital, despite the traffic restrictions put in place during this period. On the Paris town hall website, maps of the protection perimeters and the different areas hosting the competitions or the opening ceremony are already available, roughly indicating the neighborhoods in which motorized access will be prohibited – except for exemptions -, or regulated. “All those involved in logistics are questioning themselves: we are waiting for the exact traffic plan, street by street, to organize ourselves,” explains the HR director.
For professionals in the sector, many details are still unclear. “A digital registration platform should be set up at the beginning of 2024 for exemption requests, but will it be necessary to make a request per zone, one request per employee? Is it up to the HR manager or the employee to do it?” , questions Guillaume Rabel Suquet, aware that most of his clients are dependent on details from the police headquarters to organize themselves. Since November, his company has also set up a specific working group on the issue of the Olympics, in order to identify all the operational problems that the competition could pose. “The goal is to answer all of our customers’ questions and give our employees visibility on their summer paid leave or teleworking,” summarizes the HR manager. Concerning employees of the headquarters, located in the Paris region, the decision has already been made: teleworking “will be favored throughout the period”, particularly for transport issues.
While the competition is getting closer and the Minister for Transport Clément Beaune called on Ile-de-France residents, on December 7, to favor teleworking and paid leave during this period, Guillaume Rabel Suquet is far from being the only business leader to worry about the proper functioning of their organization. “We are in great demand from our members, who are asking for more information on future constraints in terms of mobility, logistics, security, teleworking, leave,” says Daniel Weizmann, president of Medef Ile-de-France. . “We already know that certain sectors of activity, such as construction, delivery services or certain businesses will be strongly affected. Discussions on the establishment of a partial unemployment system or direct aid are underway,” he assures.
May bridges postponed and holidays imposed
Françoise Latil, co-manager of the materials distribution company Prévot Matériaux, decided not to be surprised by the scale of the Olympics. The business manager therefore carried out a survey of her clients in order to plan precisely on the construction sites which will be stopped during the summer period, those which will be able to continue inside the buildings or outside the Paris region. An online schedule has also been created to provide the precise dates of competitions, details on road closures, and concrete customer requests. “We will have to be reactive, and provide this information in real time in order to know whether or not it is possible to move forward with the work,” already warns the entrepreneur, also president of the Federation of Construction Materials Distributors of the Greater Paris.
Concerning the leave of her 25 employees, Françoise Latil was clear: all the bridges for the month of May and requests for leave between April and the beginning of July were refused to them, “in case it was necessary to work to anticipate the potential lack of activity during the Games. While awaiting more precise information from the Paris police headquarters, in particular on the possibilities of traveling in certain areas, the company is also unable to validate requests for paid leave for the rest of the summer period. “We are considering imposing four weeks at this time, if it proves impossible for us to work. This subject is always a bit thorny, there were a few rebels, but the rest of the reactions were rather positive,” she assures.
“Leave is a real question: in my group, we decided not to impose it,” reacts Laurence Breton-Kueny, vice-president of the National Association of HR Directors (ANDRH) and director of human resources for Afnor group, whose head office in Saint-Denis is located in the red zone – where motorized access is prohibited – for the Olympics. “This would pose too many difficulties for people whose spouses would work in the sphere of the Games and would be obliged to work: I am thinking of the police or catering employees, for example,” he explains. She. But HR reminds us: each company is free to impose four weeks of compulsory leave on its employees, and to refuse certain requests based on professional activity.
“We all went back to full teleworking”
The question of teleworking is also widely discussed in Ile-de-France companies. “Teleworking agreements allow adaptations in the event of exceptional events, such as the Olympic Games, and most organizations are able to offer it to their employees,” recalls Benoît Serre, deputy vice-president of ANDRH. The majority of its members are currently studying the possibility of increasing the number of “teleworking” days, going from two days to “three or four during the Olympic period”. “This is an important subject, when we know that many companies had rather gotten into the habit of re-studying their charters to reduce the number of days teleworked,” he specifies.
Some business leaders have opted for radical solutions. Sarah Ouattara, director of the events agency Samara Services, preferred to abandon the offices rented last September in Saint-Denis to accommodate her four employees, due to noise and transport difficulties linked to the Olympic construction sites. “We all went back to full teleworking, only meeting up occasionally for events,” she says. But the adaptations do not stop there: the entrepreneur has had to cancel, relocate or postpone numerous events planned for the end of spring and the beginning of summer. For companies that do not wish to postpone their dates, Sarah Ouattara will have to ensure the availability of all her craftsmen, artists or caterers… “Many of my service providers have put their teams on leave or teleworking for this period, and “We don’t yet know if they will be able to travel peacefully in all areas. There is real uncertainty about whether everything can go as planned,” she regrets.
Same questions for Peggy Gasté, co-founder of the Coolangatta restaurant group, which employs 200 employees. The director has already planned teleworking for her administrative teams, earlier opening of her establishments to meet foreign demand, and a ban on paid leave during the Olympic period… But she remains worried about her workforce and logistics: “We are in total limbo. We do not know exactly from what date the expected 15 to 20 million tourists will arrive, nor if we will be able to be delivered by Rungis on time, nor what that will give for our teams in terms of transport”, she lists. The restorer should be informed on these questions within a few days. In his interview of December 7, Clément Beaune assured “the launch of a precise information campaign from January 2024”. “For the rest, our Minister of Labor has just changed. We will quickly resume discussions, and expect rapid answers on these subjects,” concludes Benoît Serre.
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