How Bouygues Telecom improved the management of its annual interviews
Could you introduce yourself? What is your professional background?
Stéphanie Paolozzi, I am Compensation and HRIS Manager at Bouygues Telecom. I therefore wear two hats in my job: the fairly classic Comp&Ben part, and all the HRIS tools that we make available to our internal users.
This dual role is due to my background, even if I am starting to see my counterparts who also have these two areas.
I started in the Bouygues group at the Holding company in the early 2000s, as an end-of-study intern to set up social reporting, my basic training being Social Management Controller (HR reporting, social management control, social balance sheets and other dashboards). Then I joined Bouygues Telecom, which was only 5-6 years old at the time, and was developing these HR reporting aspects.
The Compensation department was then created, and I thus branched out into compensation, with its activities of salary reviews, NAO (mandatory annual negotiation), external positioning surveys… Little by little we developed in-house IS tools to allow us to digitalize our processes (the first one being for me the compensation review application), then gradually we switched to market applications. In 2015, I took over responsibility for this dual area of Compensation and HRIS.
What were the context and challenges of your HRIS transformation project ?
We have called this 2 in 1 project « Performance Management ». In 2018, our Annual Performance Reviews were already dematerialised. We were not late in digitising this process, but we had negative feedback on our tool, which was old and did not have many features. We also had few KPIs on the old systems: between those who lost their data, and those who did not complete the work-flow because it was too long, our completion rate was not satisfactory.
With the changes in the market, we had to change our processes and the tool used.
We also wanted to incorporate new things into the tool: managing and updating objectives throughout the year, collecting and centralising feedback, adding a Business and Soft Skills Assessment section.
Our schedule was quite tight and dense as we started working on the subject in January 2018, with the aim of having the new campaign open by December.
What were the project targets and their ults and KPIs concerning your project
Our scope for our Performance Reviews is approximately 8,300 employees.
This is Bouygues Telecom SA, the parent company, which includes the support, commercial and technical functions and our Customer Relations centres. And the Bouygues Telecom Club Network, about 500 shops in city centres and shopping centres.
Finally, since 2018, we are increasingly addressing our subsidiaries to bring them into our Information System.
What project methodology was adopted?
The first step was to take stock of all the complaints we had received from our users about the management of the interviews.
Secondly, to bring on board upstream users who are not in the sector, so that they become involved. So we did focus groups and interviews with managers from different levels and departments, in order to present the project to them and take all their inputs and opinions throughout the project.
The ISD teams were also brought on board at an early stage to validate the security aspects.
Finally, we included our elected representatives very early on through detailed presentations in the CSE and all the necessary bodies.
A lot of communication and support work on the new Performance Review tool and form was carried out from September until the opening of the reviews in early December 2018. We didn’t want employees to miss out on the subject: information sessions through all possible channels, training on the intranet, full sessions in the auditorium because we could meet at that time, training and support in the tool, etc.
Once the first Interview Campaign was over, we took stock, and listed ideas for improvement in order to revise the form.
Today, at each launch of a new campaign, we re-communicate mainly digitally via our intranet, and update instructional videos.
How was this received in-house?
The tool is not everything, obviously you have to think about the processes, but our employees were so fed up with the old one that the new tool, its ergonomics and all the extra features were very well received.
We have received many messages saying that it has changed their lives.
As far as our elected representatives are concerned, as they took part in the development and also used it as employees, they could also vouch for these developments.
What difficulties have been encountered?
A big difficulty was the timing. This had an impact on many players and was quite challenging, but if we couldn’t launch this campaign, we would lose a year.
Also, to provide more functionality without making the process more complex in order to reduce the load on the hotline. We had to keep it simple and easy to implement.
Finally, to have a single form corresponding to each department, without too many particularities, so that it could be used and maintained easily.
What were the results and KPIs on the adoption of the Shortways DAP?
We are in the third interview campaign and 90% of the interviews have been completed (the remaining 10% are employees on long-term absence, inactive, or apprentices, who are monitored but not prioritised by managers).
This project has also let us move forward and accelerate our digital transition. To address all employees, to put the HRD back at the heart of certain subjects, and to show that it was making use of the tools it made available to its employees.
What are the next steps in your project?
We are going to involve our other subsidiaries more and more in our IS ecosystem, i.e. nearly 1,200 employees, with very diverse profiles and problems that we had little or none of in our Head Office/Support structures: these are employees who are not at a PC all day long, or even who do not have one. They will therefore need more support in using SuccessFactors on the mobile side.
Thank you Stéphanie for sharing this interesting experience.
