There is no excellence without embracing diversity in all its many forms. That’s our firm belief. That’s why we offer all our talent the same opportunities, regardless of age, origin, gender, sexual identity, sexual orientation or disability.
Day after day, we work to put these principles into action by creating an inclusive working environment, empowering each and every one of our staff to flourish as individuals and contribute to growing our businesses.
For us this means
- Encouraging, hiring and retaining talented people with disabilities
- Promoting gender equality at every level of our organization, in every one of our businesses
- Guaranteeing a respectful working environment for all our LGBTQIA+ staff
- Fostering a multi-generational workforce and drawing on their combined strengths
- Cultivating cultural diversity and offering international career paths
- Monitoring perceptions of inclusion by our teams throughout the world.
And because we believe leadership is vital to keeping on this positive path, all our leaders throughout the world receive inclusive leadership training.
INCLUSION OF STAFF WITH DISABILITIES
Groupe BPCE’s global businesses (Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking and Natixis Investment Managers) have a longstanding commitment to inclusion of people with disabilities and to retaining staff grappling with health issues or life-changing events.
In practical terms, our commitment to staff with disabilities involves providing the right tools and the right working conditions, setting external hiring targets, and organizing awareness campaigns and in-house training programs. The Group also runs innovative programs aimed at people with significant life challenges. One example is the Tremplin Program, which supports inclusion of people with disabilities and who are experiencing unemployment to retrain in digital professions, alongside our teams.
In fact, the company has more than quadrupled the direct employment rate of staff with disabilities since 2010.
We also signed the Charter supporting inclusion of people with disabilities in digital roles (“Agir pour l’emploi des personnes handicapées par les métiers du numérique”), an initiative launched in 2022 by the “THalent Digital” consortium and Agefiph, an organization promoting employment of disabled people in France.
Gender equality
Gender equality is more than just words for us. Our policy includes detailed quantitative commitments as part of our 2024 strategy, which are monitored at the highest levels of the company by our senior management committee.
We have four main gender equality priorities:
- Improve gender balance and increase the number of women leaders, aiming for 35% of women in our leadership circles
- Support parents and make sure parenting is not an obstacle to their careers
- Ensure wage equality, right from the hiring stage
- Raise awareness and enforce zero tolerance for sexism or sexual harassment.
We have also joined the Women’s Empowerment Principles, a joint initiative of UN Women and the UN Global Compact.
We support WINN, the international in-house gender diversity network of staff promoting equal opportunities for men and women.
HELPING YOUNG PEOPLE SECURE JOBS
As a responsible employer, we are taking practical steps to bring young people into employment, especially in France. Our aim is for under-30s to make up 50% of new hires. Every year, we open our doors to 500 students on work-study placements, 1,000 interns and 80 international volunteer program participants (short assignments abroad).
Because we’re diverse, we welcome difference. We cast our nets wide to attract talent from different backgrounds and with a broad range of experience. Our many initiatives seek to break down the barriers that often face young people starting their careers: the Scholarship Program in New York and in Asia, for instance, or our partnerships with social impact organizations such as Nos Quartiers ont des Talents (supporting young graduates from modest backgrounds), Unis-Cité (offering team volunteering opportunities to young people) or Sport dans la Ville.
LGBTQIA+ INCLUSION
Signature of l’Autre Cercle’s Commitment Charter reflects management’s commitment to ensuring equal rights for all our LGBTQIA+ employees and to eradicating all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. (L’Autre Cercle is an organization set up to promote an inclusive workplace for LGBT+ professionals.)
In practical terms, this means opening parental leave and supports to all parents and all family forms, as well as internal company actions to counter discrimination against LGBT+ people in the workplace.
We also lend our support to All Equals, the LGBT+ network, and the Allié.e.s in the company, which have members in all our international locations.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
We are a global business with a footprint in 35 countries. Almost half of our workforce is based outside France and we are proud to have some 100 nationalities represented in our teams.
We know that this fantastic, diverse mix of people is our strength. We give priority to constantly nurturing an open and global mindset and offering ways of working that take cultural difference into account.
WORK-LIFE QUALITY
Here at Groupe BPCE, we are convinced that sustainable performance goes hand-in-hand with a focus on our staff. We have long had a bold and ambitious policy to look after employees’ health, wellbeing and work-life quality. It spans a range of initiatives, including signature of “15 commitments for work-life balance”.
We have been a Top Employer every year for almost 10 years. Top Employer is an internationally-recognized certification that applauds our commitment to supporting work-life balance for staff, with:
- Growth of working from home (for up to 120 days a year), as well as new environments and ways of working, such as laptops, collaborative tools and co-working spaces
- Concierge services, reserving daycare places and supporting parents
- Programs to enable each and every one of our staff to express their views and be heard
More than 90% of our interns and work-study students would recommend us. We are also very proud to boast the happy trainees label, “HappyIndex®Trainees”.