Business and the search for meaning, the inevitable convergence

© Getty Images

Reading time: 4 minutes

Between professional hopes and large layoffs of employees … What kind of support must the company establish to satisfy the employees?

The Great Resignation. These three words reflect a social phenomenon that has been a wave in the United States since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic: By November 2021, more than 4.5 million employees had left their jobs.

If such a movement of massive layoffs did not take place in France, many employees moved and left Paris in favor of provincial cities on a more human scale. The expectations, even the demands of individuals, have evolved. The marker has moved in a way, with a strong desire on the part of employees, on two levels in particular: First, to develop their careers sometimes differently, by giving more meaning to their professional lives; then put the work back in a more balanced life pattern.

Faced with these growing expectations, which are increasingly being heard at all levels of the organization, where does the company stand today? And above all, how should it adapt to react to it? This raises the question of employee engagement, their desire to develop, to see their careers evolve, but also to work differently. Over the past two years, they have had to put together and adapt, take new ways of working and living, which has changed their relationship to work and created new desires in terms of schedules and flexibility, in relation to the hierarchy … Have the companies taken the lead in this new situation, and are they able to respond to it in a global way by having a strategic vision of the situation? Or are they limited to instant answers that have only a limited scope? One thing is for sure, it is now work that needs to be adapted to everyone’s personal lives, and not the other way around. As many questions as our experts will answer at a conference available online on Thursday, March 24, to provide keys to understanding and an analysis grid of the strategies and developments that need to be put in place to meet this new demand.

With, to speak of, three guests. First Adilson Borges, Director of Learning & Development at Carrefour. Holder of a doctorate in management science, he has more than 25 years of international experience in training, transformation and innovation in organizations. At Carrefour, which has more than 350,000 employees worldwide (and around 100,000 in France), the pandemic has exacerbated certain demands already present from employees and prompted management to strengthen certain initiatives. With two main purposes: First, to show employees that Carrefour, through its actions and commitments to CSR, responded to this growing search for meaning; then to enable them to become more involved in their careers and its development – a demand that is also ever stronger, at all levels of the company. “We have created a much more individual support in terms of training,” notes Adilson Borges.

By his side, Emmanuelle Joseph-Dailly, director of Julhiet Sterwen’s Research and Prospective Lab. She was a trained anthropologist, taught in the United States and worked in the Middle East before coming to the consulting world. His field of research and expertise relates to the transformation of organizations, but also the development of skills, employee engagement (and its development in the current period), bio-inspiration related to new models of work organization and neuroscience applied in professional environments. In particular, she has published “Develop Your Employee Engagement” and “The Octopus Strategy, 60 Stories from Life to Inspire Our Organizations ». Finally, our third guest is Amel Hammouda, Director of Mentoring and Commitment at Article 1, an association that fights inequality in opportunities. A few months ago, she left Air France, where she was part of the executive committee as vice president of transformation & network. She will explain to us what motivated her departure and this change of course.

This meeting allows you to:

> Understand the new forms of employee engagement in the company and know how to respond to them;

> Respond to employees’ search for meaning;

> Promoting a better work-life balance;

> Help employees become more involved in their careers by giving them clear and concrete opportunities;

> Introduce systems to strengthen the employability of employees.

You can reserve your place today on our payment platform. A repeat will be available at the end of the meeting if you are not available for live.