The place of the HR department is now central to monitoring organizational, digital and managerial changes in the company. Her role as a “business maker”, guiding the transformation, was highlighted in a recent webinar hosted by Top Employers: “The role of HRDs reinvented”. Illustration with the Monoprix brand.
© Shutterstock – TierneyMJ
HR, who has often tried crisis management, has had the opportunity to move from the role of “business partner” to a role of ” business maker says Vincent Binetruy, director of the Top Employers Institute France. The position has shown unparalleled agility and commitment, often at the cost of a very high workload and stress level. » Priority number one for companies: Aligning HR strategy and business strategy. “At 100% of the top employers, management carried out active support actions for HR. This shows the empowerment of HR within the executive committees”, continues Vincent Binetruy. HR positions, key figures in business transformation, often confuse HRD with transformation-related responsibilities. “Nearly 9 out of 10 HR have set up support programs to help employees understand the impact of the crisis on their role and responsibility,” says Vincent Binetruy.
The Monoprix brand has trained its employees in life skills, thanks to workshops such as the “Oui Attitude”
Guide the transformation
The retail chain Monoprix – 700 stores, 21,000 employees, 5 billion euros in sales in 2019 – which suffered a loss of 15 to 20% of its in-store sales, has committed to rethinking the consumer shopping experience. “Our customers want to shop for fun, so we need to improve their in-store shopping experience. Our challenge is to create as many human values as possible in our stores to have complementarity between our physical stores and our digital space,” explains Sandra Hazelart, Human Resources Director at Monoprix. To do this, HR has pledged to chase away all non-value-added tasks for customers.
“We have cleaned up job descriptions and deployed all possible technologies to automate as many tasks as possible, such as monitoring the best-before date of fresh products or product inventory. The company has redesigned the work organization in such a way that every hour worked is linked to the customer. “The goal is to make our stores human again and to offer more and more new services and products,” explains Sandra Hazelart.
The brand has also trained its employees in life skills, through workshops such as the “Yes attitude”, to define the right attitudes towards customers. To take care of them and to move from a massive customer relationship to a more personalized one where the Monoprix employee knows how to listen, ask, decipher and advise customers, the brand tries to develop suitable products or services. To achieve this, in 2020 it launched the “Tell us about yourself” workshops with the aim of getting employees to reveal what they enjoy doing outside of work, to learn more about themselves and their abilities.
It was during one of these interviews that one of the employees gave evidence of cycling and the brand came up with the idea to set up a bicycle repair shop to meet the needs of its customers. “Another acquaintance that he loved to paint and was able to set up an exhibition in her shop with local painters,” explains Sandra Hazelart.
And skill development
In terms of training, the brand no longer speaks of professions but of “activatable skills”, depending on the customer’s needs, ie technical skills as a butcher or cheese maker, and extra-professional skills to provide less disability and well-being to customers. “We have a dozen structuring projects underway that require skills that don’t exist yet. »
79% of human rights defenders contribute to building training and skills sectors through partnerships with others
organizations
Generally, HR (86%) systematically collects employees’ career aspirations in their decision-making. An increase of 35 points compared to 2020. “This overweight drives the success of companies,” notes Vincent Binetruy. Monoprix supports the transformation of the company by being transparent so that employees can project themselves and make these job changes less scary. “Preserving jobs does not mean preserving occupations. There are professions in growth and others in decline, such as cashiers,” notes Sandra Hazelart. 90% of its employees do not have an email address, the brand prefers communication, in-store displays, offers on the application, communication via managers and brochures with payslips to show examples of employees. “When peers talk to their peers, it has more impact,” says Sandra Hazelart.
According to top employers 79% of human rights defenders contribute to building training and skills sectors through collaborations with other organizations. A trend that will accelerate with the new public scheme to combat the “collective transitions” of unemployment. Monoprix is no exception to the rule: the brand has partnered with the Korian group, which primarily manages nursing homes, and offers secure pathways with 18 months of work-learning training to empower employees who hold jobs in declining graduate as a nursing assistant. “We offer it as a priority to those who appreciate being in contact with the elderly. They remain employees of Monoprix during their training and enjoy a permanent contract with Korian, with a higher salary. »
More than thirty employees have already expressed an interest in the system in three weeks. The brand aims to develop other partnerships to work in shortage occupations, in particular with the early childhood sector. In this career development perspective, it also provides its voluntary employees with a multi-employer system to enable them to work in different companies in different sectors of activity. For example, 1,975 employees moved to another position in 2020, the brand is pleased to note, or 31% more than in 2019.