Like any market, the labor market is no exception to the rule. When demand changes, supply must adapt, at the risk of a lasting imbalance that French companies, engaged in European or global competition, cannot afford. Four of them – BNP Paribas, Maif, Alan and Sodexo – give L’Express their thoughts on the major challenges of the moment in terms of human resources, and the responses they provide. With notable success. Proof that it is quite possible to put the work engine back on track.
Young people: “The new generation no longer projects itself into linear paths”
Pierre-Henri Havrin, director of recruitment and mobility in France at BNP Paribas
Young people, employees less committed to work than their elders? Pierre-Henri Havrin sweeps away the cliché with the back of his hand. “They are no less involved than the others, but they are more sensitive to the quality of the missions offered, to the managerial support and to the working environment”, retorts the director of recruitment and mobility in France for BNP. Paribas. Expectations that lead the bank to rethink the concept of career, to hope to capture and retain candidates fresh out of school.
“The new generation no longer projects itself into linear paths. Aspirations to lead a team are less central to them”, notes Pierre-Henri Havrin. In a study on the post-Covid work relationship, Ifop and the Jean-Jaurès Foundation note that only a “short majority (53%) of private sector executives under the age of 40 without managerial responsibilities wish to exercise the future”. The two institutes put forward “the hypothesis that the dissolution of the spatial representation of the hierarchy, via telework and flex office, may have contributed to slowing down the ambition to climb the hierarchical ladder”.
Faced with this new situation, BNP Paribas is seeking to attract its future employees by emphasizing their prospects for internal development. “The young people who join us can work in completely different jobs, including in other countries. In France, we record more than 10,000 internal transfers per year”, welcomes Pierre-Henri Havrin, who for a time contributed to the structuring the human resources of the alternative bank Nickel, 95% owned by BNP Paribas.
Like many other companies, the French establishment has also set up its own internal school, the B-School by BNP Paribas, which teaches in Ile-de-France and in a few towns – Marseille, Bordeaux and Lille – training ranging from customer relations to IT. The results are there. In 2022, two-thirds of people hired by BNP Paribas were under 30 years old. A score that management hopes to reproduce this year, as it plans to recruit more than 3,000 employees on permanent contracts.
Supervision: “The manager’s impact on the well-being or ill-being of employees is considerable”
Pascal Demurger, Managing Director of Maif
Maif’s managerial shift dates back ten years. Stamped “militant insurer”, the mutual based in Niort had already made commitments on environmental and societal issues. General Manager Pascal Demurger, who arrived in this position in 2009, decided to tackle another issue: day-to-day labor relations. “A consultant made me realize the considerable impact of the manager on the well-being or the ill-being, professional as personal, of his collaborators. However, by ricochet, I have this responsibility on 10,000 people”, recognizes -he. He then decided to invite his 900 managers to a seminar. “To their surprise, I told them that their sole objective should be the development of their team, not its productivity,” recalls the boss of Maif.
A large-scale, personalized support program was then launched to make managers aware of this new culture, based on employee confidence and autonomy. “We realize very quickly that this does not go against the economic responsibility of the manager, it is effective, insists Pascal Demurger. Working on this subject leads to an extraordinary increase in motivation, desire, sense of belonging, employee commitment.”
The figures quickly validated this strategy: the absenteeism rate fell by 25% in the space of eighteen months. On a more qualitative level, management has seen a positive effect on the teams and their pride in the company. With more than half of the employees being in contact with the members, customer satisfaction and loyalty have mechanically increased. “Our ‘Net Promoter Score’, which measures the difference between a brand’s defenders and detractors, is 40 points higher than that of our closest competitor”, says Pascal Demurger.
This 58-year-old enarque would like to be emulated, he who has just taken the head of the movement of committed bosses Impact France, alongside Julia Faure, founder of the clothing brand Loom. He is concerned to see the link weakening between the employee and the company, on a national scale. “A country where work loses its fulfilling and integrating dimension is a country at risk in terms of economic development and international competitiveness. However, there is currently an indifference to the community, to the construction of the collective. Everyone contrary to what we promote at Maif!”
Telework: “We can no longer force someone to come to the office five days a week”
Paul Sauveplane, human resources manager at Alan
Impossible to talk about teleworking without thinking about the Covid crisis. Since the doors of companies are not sealed against the virus, they have resolved to leave their employees at home. A situation experienced by many as an ordeal. But for Alan, it was a Monday like any other. Insurer 3.0 has telework in its blood since its inception seven years ago. Up to 100% telework. Having become a French unicorn – one of 30 specimens valued at more than one billion euros – Alan has 15 to 20% of such contracts in its workforce (525 people).
The explanation is simple. “We knew that we had to prepare the company for rapid growth and fierce competition in the talent war. However, we can no longer force someone to come to the office five days a week”, comments Paul Sauveplane , in charge of human resources. A key word stands out: flexibility. Even if it means never seeing, or almost, some.
Alan’s corporate culture stems from this. The unicorn does not hold meetings. She also has no managers and bets on everyone’s responsibility. “This is what makes telework effective. Engineers, data scientists, are diesels. They can’t work forty-five minutes and then stop to chat in a hallway, resume, and so on. They need long periods of concentration, and therefore, to be able to control their schedule”, continues Paul Sauveplane. In return, the slightest information is recorded on an in-house platform, which allows the workforce to keep up informed and feel concerned by the decisions taken. Exit “radio-carpet”.
The model pleases. According to an internal survey, more than 90% of employees feel empowered, understand their missions and say they are sufficiently informed about Alan’s life. Even though half of the troops are dispatched far from the Parisian headquarters, even in Spain and Belgium, where fintech is deployed. Unimaginable elsewhere? A recent survey by the Ifo institute and EnconPol Europe indicates that the French would opt for 1.4 days, on average, of teleworking per week. They are only entitled today to 0.6 days. The lowest score in Europe, after Greece.
Loyalty: “The increase in our turnover has been stopped”
Annick de Vanssay, Director of Human Resources at Sodexo
How to remain a “desirable employer” in the post-Covid world? The question has agitated Sodexo since 2021. At the time, the collective catering giant – 100 million consumers served every day in 53 countries by some 422,000 employees – barely digested its exposure on the front line. Reinforcement of health rules, reassignment of its employees to hospitals and anti-Covid test centers, partial activity, reduction in staff… The shock of the pandemic was harsh.
“The health crisis has shaken up the way we manage and retain employees,” summarizes the director of human resources, Annick de Vanssay. Affected by a labor shortage and a jump in turnover, Sodexo then undertook to reinvent “its employer promise”. Thanks to a flagship measure: the Vita program, which recently guarantees a common base of social benefits.
Employees in post for twelve months benefit from life insurance representing the equivalent of one year’s salary in the event of death, parental leave of twelve weeks for the first parent and two weeks for the second, paid based on paid leave, as well as a helpline offering psychological support and practical advice. “It is essential to benefit all of our employees, because all countries are not housed in the same boat in terms of social protection”, insists the HRD, in office for two years.
By 2024, the group hopes to deploy this program in 60% of the countries where it operates. Annick de Vanssay is already seeing the effects. “The increase in our turnover has been halted,” she says. As for the “Employee Net Promoter Score”, which measures the commitment of employees to the company, it rose by 5.4 points compared to 2021.