Translations Best practice in French version Best practice in English version

Danone adjusts to its older employees

2. Human Rights

Diversity, equal opportunity, and fighting discrimination

Context

Like many long-standing industrial businesses, Danone has to face the issue of ageing employees. However, the group believes that it is perfectly possible to        reconcile industrial performance and the opportunity, for older employees, of “growing old gracefully”. Such employees are faced to difficulties to adjust, due, in particular, to musculoskeletal troubles. The group endeavours to find solutions to facilitate the adjustment of these aged employees. This population now accounts for 43% of the group’s employees in Western Europe. This is the reason why the group launched an operation to audit work stations occupied by this population in 2004.

Objectives

This diagnosis programme initiated by the group aims at identifying challenges raised by age management, and defining good practices applied on this issue in such countries as France or Spain, in particular. So, the main objective is to find solutions to enable elder people to adjust to work stations within the group. This action should be included into a more global policy for career development.

APPROACH

In order to attain its objectives, the group developed and put in place an approach in 4 stages to find adjustment solutions for each work station. Such stages are the following:

  • Pre-diagnosis
  • Identification of solutions
  • Defining solutions in more detail
  • Implementing solutions

The group also conceived practical sheets covering improved anatomically-friendly work stations, transfer of skills between generations, and the development of work mobility or autonomy

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

  • The organisation capitalises on older employees’ experience.

Benefits

  • The adjustment of work stations to aged employees’ special requirements improved the well-being of such population
Turnover
15,220 milliards d’euros (2008)
Country
France

Mise à jour le 24/05/2016

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.