Specialized in technology and digital transformation, Sopra Steria hires around fifty disabled employees each year in France. Consuelo Bénicourt, in charge of equal opportunities within the international group, explains her approach.
How is your inclusion policy organised?
This ranges from recruitment to job retention and the means put in place to facilitate the daily lives of people with disabilities. Support also involves integrating all employees into the system, via awareness raising and training.
How do these priorities translate?
In France, we recruit about 50 people with disabilities per year and the 629 officially declared employees benefit from support set up with occupational medicine. We offer technical means of compensation to facilitate their daily lives, such as software for reading or correcting dyslexia, or meeting subtitling tools. The organization of the schedules is also specific and transport facilities are offered to pick them up at their home. Tailor-made training also exists in the event that a person has been absent for a long time in order, if they wish, to set up a possible retraining.
Do you have links with adapted companies?
Yes, they are among our subcontractors. With some of them, we have set up springboard fixed-term contracts. For six months, the person will be part of the time with us and the other in the company in question, as part of his training. In the end, we can decide to integrate it into our teams.
Moreover, given your field of activity, recruitment is rather at a high level?
We mainly recruit bac + 5, but this is also why we have a policy to promote access to higher education for young disabled people. Every year, we support around forty senior high school students and students as part of the HandiBourse program, where coaching complements financial aid. In addition, 50 high school students from specialized establishments are followed each year by engineering students, themselves trained by employees, as part of the Handi’tutorat program.
You insist on the involvement of the teams to support your system…
It’s even the key! When you join Sopra Steria, you are required to take training that allows you to play a role vis-à-vis employees with disabilities. If you offer a site that is accessible to them for coding, or adapted software, you must be able to share their use with them. This is also reflected in recruitment, carried out directly via our entities without going through the Disability Mission.