Translations Best practice in Spanish version Best practice in French version Best practice in English version

LESAGE & FILS implements telework for its employees

3. Labor relations / working conditions

Working conditions

Context

SME established in the 1950s, Lesage & Fils is a quality meat wholesale family company. In 2011, the management wondered about the sustainability of its economic model and committed itself to a CSR approach through its “Charte de Progrès pour le Développement Durable” (literally, Charter of Progress for Sustainable Development). Lesage & Fils attaches great importance to the well-being of its employees. It notably encourages social dialogue, upskilling and telework for proximity management.

Objectives

  • Improve the employees’ working conditions 

APPROACH

 Background – the company works on a just-in-time basis: orders are placed at any time with a peak between 10 a.m. and 12 noon, and then again between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., but some are also placed until late at night from restaurant customers. Order operators used to come at 4 a.m. to enter the orders that were placed during the night, for a next day delivery. Then, they went back home before returning to work at 9 a.m.

  • They had to go to work twice which was dangerous, increased the risk of accident    –especially in winter– and led to sleep disorders.

Therefore, Lesage & Fils has decided to implement telework, since 2012. Telework has required the purchase of software so that teleoperators can enter the orders from home. The investments amount to about €12,000, which include a TSE-type server enabling the employees to remotely log on to the company’s server via the Internet, an effective firewall to secure the company’s data, a computer with Internet access for the teleworkers, and a system so that they can check their e-mails.

Personal problems involved in working at home (spouse, working hours, equipment…) have been considered and a “telework” specific contract of employment has been established.

Thus, entering the orders is now done late at night or just before going to work at 9 a.m., from the operators’ home. This represents 6.5 hours of telework over 4 days + a negotiated day off in lieu per week.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

  • Today, telework concerns 10% of the workforce.
  • Complaints relative to remotely entering the orders is divided by 2
  • The absenteeism rate is zero since the implementation of the system.

Benefits

  • Fewer travel expenses from home to work
  • Improvement of the well-being
  • Better balance between private and professional life for the employees
Workforce
77 (2014)
Turnover
18M€ (2013)
Country
France

LESAGE ET FILS SARL

57 rue de la Mairie
59147 CHEMY

www.lesage-prestige.com

Mise à jour le 29/06/2016

Creative Commons Attribution This work by Réseau Alliances – World Forum Lille is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.