SPIE France is revamping its HR policies to the benefit of employees

Cergy, 3 December 2020 - SPIE France, a french subsidiary of SPIE, the independent European leader in multi-technical services in the areas of energy and communications, has issued the first results from its 'GDC' Dynamic Skills Management programme. The programme is aimed at promoting career progression within our ambitious, rapidly evolving company. Each employee has the means to build their own career path and promote themselves within the various SPIE France divisions. As everyone now has an overview of what their job entails, they can see exactly what skills are expected and better assess which ones they need to develop and how to go about it.

Launched in February 2019, this programme is helping the company to optimise skills management and allowing it to anticipate professional and hierarchical progression. A sign of the transformation that SPIE France is undergoing, this project will first and foremost be based around 5 sets of job roles: Tenders and Sales – Management – Profit Centres (contract management, sales and projects) – Construction and Maintenance – Project Office – Experts.

These represents 10 work streams and 62 job roles. 80% of operational roles at SPIE France have been assessed and provided the basis for creating an overall skills matrix. Each job role was the subject of a presentation in 5 parts: job description, transverse skills and training requirements, career prospects within each stream, pathways for cross-skilling within each stream (and within SPIE France) and training pathways.

The objectives of the programme are to:

• Align today's human resources and the skills of tomorrow with the needs set out in the SPIE France and group strategic plan
• Make roles and available progression pathways within SPIE France divisions and subsidiaries easier to navigate
• Optimise the Recruitment of operational and managerial teams
• Make employees the masters of their own destiny by enabling them to assess the opportunities for progression open to them
• Map expected skill needs for each job role, track the progress of each one, but also within each stream
• Promote internal mobility between subsidiaries and streams

The jobs and skills matrix, now deployed for 62 operational roles and under construction for a further 45 support roles, is now accessible via SIRH (Human Resources Information System) for all employees and managers. Everyone now has a particularly useful common basis to use for annual performance assessment interviews, job interviews or on-boarding of new colleagues.

To create this tool, SPIE France chose a collaborative arrangement and adopted an approach of continuous improvement right from the start of this process. 13 workshops were set up, each one with a sponsor from a subsidiary, an HR leader and 4-5 operations staff from the various divisions and subsidiaries. In total, 100 employees produced a relevant assessment of job roles and their associated skillsets. The workshop leaders met regularly to share their progress and document their respective contributions. The results were compiled and edited into the "GDC Book" which was presented to SPIE France management at a special company seminar. The book is used internally by employees, managers and HR representatives as a skills management tool. It is used externally by future job candidates and Education Ambassadors so they can better understand what jobs are available within the group and be able to promote the skills needed when they visit the 34 education centres which have partnered with SPIE France.

"Getting operations staff involved in this project was a great move. Interest in it outstripped our expectations and allowed everyone to make very useful contributions. This helped assess the skills needed and allowed us to really explore the scope of each job role", says Patricia Léné, HR Development and Diversity Manager at SPIE France and also GDC Project Manager. "This approach as a whole promotes the internal mobility of employees on a national level or within the same employment area. The current economic context, which is very complex and requires great agility, has revealed the effectiveness of the approach, which has enabled us to support employees and respond quickly to the challenges of adapting skills to market needs", concludes Olga Martin-Jarousse, Human Resource Director at SPIE France.