Translations

The crisis of 2009 made Orange massively invest in its employees’ well-being

3. Labor relations / working conditions

Working conditions

Sector Telecommunication, Medias, ITC

Year 2016

Country France

Transmitter

Context

Orange is one of the main telecommunication operators, with 250 million customers over the world. The CSR is deeply embedded in the culture of the company and in its history. Orange was built upon founding values leading their principles of action regarding all its stakeholders. After the social crisis France went through in 2009, France Télécom-Orange initiated an accentuated approach of listening to its employees, to understand the reasons of the unease expressed and mobilize all the teams on a new company project.

Objectives

To reconcile economic performance and social quality
To take knowledge of the employees’ opinion during transformations (physical, real estate…) and note employees’ wishes
To take measures following the social crisis that the operator went through in 2009

APPROACH

The approach based on listening employees led to several social agreements, which provided the basis to the new social contract which resulted particularly in 4 agreements:

Telecommuting agreement
Professional/private life balance agreement
Agreement on Psycho-social Risks Assessment and Prevention
Agreement on trials to improve working conditions

This new social Contract that Stéphane Richard personally addressed to each of the 102,000 employees in France in September 2010, establishes the conditions and principles of living together and includes 158 measures taken to reconcile economic performance with social quality by progressively implementing it until 2015, on six lines:

Employment
Work organization
Management
Working conditions
Compensation
HR department.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

93% of employees are proud to work for Orange and 87% of them recommend Orange as a company where it feels good to work.
To ensure its implementation, 900 million euros were invested from 2010 to 2012.