The consulting firm takes first place in the Best Workplaces 2023 list, in the category of companies with 2,500 employees. Wavestone
EXCLUSIVE – In partnership with Great Place to Work, Le Figaro unveils the ranking of the quality of life at work which distinguishes one hundred companies this year.
Offering their employees a good quality of professional life has become the priority of many employers. It is both an issue of economic performance and human resources in order to attract the best candidates for recruitment. The hundred companies that appear in the Best Workplaces 2023 list excel in this attention paid to employees.
Each year, since 2002 in France, the Great Place to Work company audits several hundred companies at their request. It proceeds in two stages. On the one hand, it administers the Trust Index: this 60-question questionnaire focuses on the perception of trust and is addressed to all employees of the audited company.
On the other hand, The Culture Audit is a file completed by the company on its managerial practices. The Great Place to Work certification is a first level of recognition awarded to companies with a positive response rate to the Trust Index of at least 65%. The Best Workplaces ranking is established by the combination of the two ratings.
For this 2023 vintage, nearly 500 large groups and SMEs have engaged in this exercise and 100 have won the Best Workplaces 2023 label. Le FigaroJullien Brezun, Managing Director of Great Place to Work, deciphers the lessons of this award.
THE FIGARO.- What is the lesson of the Best Workplaces 2023 list?
Julien BREZUN. – The highlight of this 2023 edition is the high level of selectivity with 100 certified companies out of the 489 audited, i.e. around 20%, compared to 93 out of 338 last year. We find in this list of great technology companies – Mirakl, Voodoo, Contentsquare… Confronted for several years with a war of talents, they were the first to experience the need for a quality of life at work label. But we see more and more companies from all sectors. For example, this year, an E. Leclerc hypermarket, the Jaberson law firm or RTE, the electricity transmission network, are entering the list. This shows that the understanding of the importance of the employee experience is spreading throughout the economy.
What are the common features of all these companies?
Beyond the winners, these companies have three main common features. On the one hand, these are organizations that consider the employee as an individual and not as a labor force. On the other hand, they present a very ethical culture, with local management practicing bottom-up and top-down communication. It is also a collaborative culture that values the spirit of initiative while securing risk-taking.
Aren’t the expectations of employees – of the youngest, in particular – contradictory?
We can only note today a tension between individualization and the need for a collective. The employee’s relationship with the employer has become highly individualized in terms of: working from where I want, how I want, with the tool I want. This hyperflexibilization is a very strong wave on which employers must surf; they do not have the choice. At the same time, employees are looking for meaning: what is the justification for my action in the company? What is the positive contribution made by my work beyond the company? This quest is based on the collective and inclusion. The resolution of this paradox between the individualization of the relationship and the need for a collective requires local and horizontal management, attentive to the development of each person’s talent.
The quest for meaning goes through the major issues of ecology…
The exercise of their social and environmental responsibility (CSR) is the great challenge for all organizations and it is, in particular, an issue for human resources departments: they must mobilize employees so that they become imbued with the CSR approach and that they become its driving forces and ambassadors. We can draw a parallel with the digital transformation. It was built and steered by the CIOs then the employees appropriated the digitalization. The same phenomenon of diffusion then infusion is at work for CSR.