Translations

The "Group Welcome Seminar": An interactive approach to discovering the ROQUETTE Group

1. Organizational Governance

Strategy and organization

Sector Food-processing

Year 2015

Country France

Transmitter

Context

Roquette is a French industrial group, whose presence on 3 continents spans 21 production sites. Its business consists of processing plant-based raw materials, with a worldwide workforce of nearly 8,000 from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Since 2008, Roquette has been involved in promoting sustainable development (through a CSR strategy) along with its rollout across all sites and at all levels of the corporate hierarchy.
The Group has gradually shaped its CSR approach according to 4 major types of capital: natural, industrial, human, and societal. Human capital is composed of the men and women helping to energize the Group and raise its performance. As such, rallying the personnel around a corporate project and its core values, as discovered during their induction program, proves essential to understanding and sharing its most pressing goals.

Objectives

•   Discovering the Roquette Group and its corporate strategy.
•   Sharing the Group's values and action principles.
•   Developing the client-centered culture.
•   Providing keys to progressing in a multicultural and cross-disciplinary environment.
•   Instilling a feeling of company spirit and loyalty to the network.

APPROACH

Committed to an international development strategy, the Group added in 2012 three new Indian sites into its fold. To cope with the cultural differences at hand, the Group's Human Resources Division devised the first "Group Welcome Seminar" in 2013. This event was held in the company's head offices at the Lestrem plant.
Innovation is the underlying theme behind the creation of this Group Induction program, which entails presentations, workshops and team-building discussions, as well as a complete tour of the site. Discussions focus on various topics, including Group values and Sustainable Development, in offering the Divisions invited a fresh perspective of their practices.

This program also serves to make contact with representatives of Roquette's head office functions. The Welcome Seminar is intended for managers newly hired into posts one notch below that of the Leadership team, a body assembling the Group's 150 Division Managers and experts.

The success of these gatherings is undeniable. Participants' testimonials are most edifying and underscore the level of interest generated by discovering the company and interacting with the other participants and speakers.

Below are a few citations from seminar participants:
- "This seminar was truly interesting and extremely beneficial."
- "I especially enjoyed the interactive aspect of the workshops."
- "During this seminar, I could really observe the tremendous diversity of profiles making up our Group."
- "This seminar has indeed given us a good vision of the future."

Best Practice singled out in 2015 by the World Forum for a Responsible Economy

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

•   Over 100 managers have participated in this seminar since its inception.
•   3 days of in-depth and thorough exchanges.
•   40+ employees attend this seminar every year.

Benefits

• This intercultural and cross-disciplinary seminar provides the perfect occasion to share and discover, with great interest, a wide range of cultures, issues and expert views.
• More than 10 nationalities represented from among the participants.