Empowerment and trust is the way forward

empowermenT and TrusT is The way forward: Schneider electric'S chariSe le

In a workplace dramatically changed by the pandemic, trust becomes key to empowering employees: giving them autonomy over business decisions, career choices, and how they manage their own work. Charise Le, CHRO of Schneider Electric, tells People Matters how her company is advancing a strategy of trust and employee empowerment By Mint Kang

Emphasise the employees: that's a distinct characteristic of the post-pandemic future, one underscored by the noticeably better performance of companies that focused on workforce well-being over the last two years. One critical bridge between the employee-first strategy and high performance is empowerment: the idea that employees are trusted to make decisions for the benefit of the business and stakeholders alike.

People Matters asked Charise Le, Chief Human Resources Officer of global energy and automation firm Schneider Electric, about SE's employee empowerment strategy and how she sees the employer-employee relationship evolving in 2022 and beyond. Charise has been with Schneider Electric since 2007, leading HR teams across various segments of the business. In 2020 she was appointed CHRO, taking on the responsibility of building a progressive and engaging people strategy that could sustain through the pandemic and beyond. Here's what she shared.

Schneider Electric has been working on employee empowerment for quite a few years now. Could you share a bit of the background behind this philosophy?

Our leadership and culture transformation was launched in 2017 with a focus on high performance and empowerment and we’ve made visible progress in this while delivering results.

Trust is instilled both culturally and behaviourally and starts at the top. In all our communications with employees, our top leaders reinforce trust and empathy. We drive certain behaviours from both our employees and our managers which is supported by our guide-

lines and culture. We also have a clear employee value proposition that focuses on empowerment of our people, an inclusive and equitable company, and meaningful, purposeful work.

A key element of empowerment is our multi-hub model which splits our headquarters across four hubs: France for Europe, Hong Kong for Asia, Boston for North America and most recently India. We empower our employees and leaders to make decisions that benefit the local community and customers. It not only helps attract and retain the best talents from around the world but creates the most diverse leadership teams with a true multi-market knowledge and culture.

By empowering our employees we’re also enabling much quicker decision making. At the same time, this encourages much more creativity to unleash the potential of talent to lead to better accountability, engagement and performance overall. This is all backed up by digital acceleration and the need for more innovation – by using technology more, we’re able to empower and enable leaders and employees to take ownership.

Going forward into 2022, what are the plans for SE's employee empowerment strategy? What outcomes We empower our employees and leaders to make decisions that benefit the local community and customers. It not only helps attract and retain the best talents from around the world but creates the most diverse leadership teams with a true multi-market knowledge and culture

are you working towards for the coming year?

As we move towards a post-pandemic era, the nature of work, the workplace and the relationships between companies, customers and employees have dramatically changed.

First, we need to strengthen trust through a meaningful purpose, ethics, fairness, health and safety (both physical and psychological), well-being, and employee experience.

Second, we must accelerate the transformation of our culture, leadership and new ways of working.

We believe these new ways of working – with a focus on digital, our multi-hub approach, hybrid work and well-being – are here to stay.

One of the ways we are empowering our employees to own their careers and make choices based on their skills and development needs is through Open Talent Market (OTM). OTM is an AI-driven platform that matches internal talent

to opportunities (projects, jobs and mentors) across the organisation at speed. To date, over 68% of our global workforce have registered, with over 20,000 full time positions created.

We know our employees have bold ideas and we empower them to pitch our investment teams and executives on their ideas through the Dare to Disrupt Challenge. In our recently completed challenge we had 2,500 employees participate these expectations continuing to shift and evolve in 2022?

Yes, hybrid working, with a more balanced approach between working from the office and home, will continue, with flexibility now an expectation for employees. Our employees all lead their own unique lives, so the role of our leaders becomes even more critical. Where the state of normal is always in flux, they must lead with both change, both internally and in the market. One way to encourage this is the upskilling and reskilling of employees, specifically in digital, and we aim to have more than 90% of our employees upskilled by 2025.

Of the changes businesses are making in response to employee expectations, which do you consider the most effective?

There are two that stand out. Firstly, the requirements of our leaders. They are not necessarily new, but must be accelerated and intensified, specially to support hybrid and digital ways of working with customers and teams. The connection between leadership and our culture and new ways of working is paramount and we need to clarify and amplify this and to reinforce a collective accountability for leaders.

Secondly, and linked to the above, it’s the way we embrace agile, flexible and smart ways of working for our people—to support higher performance, greater inclusion, well-being and stronger resiliency. Our new way of working reinforces our Employer Value Proposition and reputation as a great company for great people and our multi-hub/ multi-local model acts as an enabler with decentralised locations and decision making.

We need to strengthen trust through a meaningful purpose, ethics, fairness, health and safety, well-being, and employee experience...we must accelerate the transformation of our culture, leadership and new ways of working

and form 242 teams from 44 countries. Three teams will receive funding to start their own businesses outside Schneider Electric with the support of our Incubation team and two teams will be moving forward to develop their ideas internally.

2021 saw a lot of changes to employee expectations around how businesses treat them, to the point where the Great Resignation is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. Do you see

‘high touch’ and ‘high tech’ and build human connections in a digital world.

Leaders need to drive more disruption and acceleration while ensuring a human connection through strong coaching, caring and collaboration across their teams. It will require them to abandon some behaviours and reset and renew others.

Expectations will continue to shift as we continue to adapt and implement more digital technology as people become more resilient to

From a Rewards and Benefits standpoint, we need to provide more holistic and flexible choices to our employees. There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to employees. It’s more crucial than ever that we deliver the best employee experience

We trust and empower people to work smartly, manage a hybrid work model and their unique life and work. Employees should be held accountable for the work they do, not the hours they work. Teams will also need to adopt new and smarter ways of working to maintain and improve productivity, innovation and collaboration so we support our people to work seamlessly and effectively no matter where they are.

How are you ensuring that this approach will stick, going forward?

As with many things in both personal and professional lives, it’s sometimes easy to slip back into doing what you have always done. The pandemic has reinforced the importance of our multi-hub approach and the impact of local empowerment. We now have much more regional talent in regional leadership positions, and this helps ensure we don’t revert back to a ‘one size fits all approach’ where key decision-making does not allow for the needs of local markets.

What might empowerment look like further down the road, as employers and employees come to a middle ground?

For us at Schneider Electric, we use the Agile methodology for a more effective trade-off between speed and efficiency. As an example, in our largest business – Energy Management – we have embarked on a journey to deploy Agile in the R&D area.

We aim to unleash entrepreneurship through empowered and autonomous squads which in turn will further strengthen our ability to embark customers at the heart of innovation. Innovation has always been at the heart of our DNA and we want to continue evolving. We believe that by using Agile we can empower adaptability and visibility – to keep that evolution going.

Finally, over the last two years people have re-evaluated their needs relating to their work and personal lives, and employees’ perception when it comes to “total rewards” has also changed. In addition to compensation, employees are talking about flexibility, worklife balance, the option for remote work, and room to focus on personal and family responsibilities. Organisations must ensure that we can support all of these from a technological standpoint. As an enabler for these needs, technology has an important role to play in the new scheme of things. Flexibility, for example, can only be brought about with the use of technology, and programmes and solutions given by employers must be flexibly designed. Rewards and recognition need to be re-designed to cater to the elements of choice and scalability to a much larger level.

From a Rewards and Benefits standpoint, we need to provide more holistic and flexible choices to our employees. There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to employees. It’s more crucial than ever that we deliver the best employee experience. Providing the element of choice in our mental well-being programmes, financial wellbeing programmes, career choices and benefits will help empower employees to make the right decisions and choose what makes sense to them and fits their unique life.