Mastering The Talent Race: Q&A With Schneider Electric MEA’s Yasmine Yehia
The talent race is on! The age of digital transformation is here with people at the heart of any digital transformation strategy and while it advances, finding the right talents for this digital-native era is becoming a challenge for brands of today.
We’ve exclusively interviewed Yasmine Yehia, MEA Employer Branding Lead of Schneider Electric, for her insights on how can brands master the ongoing talent war.
BB: Why a powerful, engaging and attractive employer brand matters ?
YY: This is why we launched our new People Vision in late 2018, composed of Employee Value Proposition, Core Values and Leadership Expectations. Faced with the mega-trends of industry re-configuration, digitization, new workforce, etc, we are changing our thinking to build a company of the future. We need to transform our culture, our leadership and the way we think and act every day. And create a great place to work for our current and future employees. We believe that ‘great people make Schneider Electric a great company’. With our meaningful purpose, inclusive and empowering culture, we can differentiate ourselves as an employer.
BB: Schneider Electric on a global level has been widely recognized several times as an employer of choice. On a talent management front, what differentiates SE ?
YY: I worked for many big organizations however I find Schneider Electric unique when it comes to talent management, we have strong systems and processes in place that ensures recognizing and developing talents, we invest a lot in managing capabilities and competencies rather than the normal practice of career progression. We are also very different in encouraging mobility and easing the way for high talents to get global exposure and move to any SE office around the world – In addition to our inclusive culture that gives an equal opportunity to everyone, everywhere.
BB: The age of digital transformation has ignited the need for ultra-skilled people with AI, cloud computing, machine learning and big data, the thing that will transform people, teams and organizations to better align technology to business objectives. From SE’s toolkit, how can you upgrade your brand’s talent acquisition strategy for a digital world ?
YY: At Schneider Electric, innovation has no limit – we have recently introduced our own portal for matching talent or The Open Talent Market OTM.
OTM is an AI-based portal that acts as a talent matcher! It helps our employees find all the opportunities they’re looking for in one place, whether it is a fulltime job, part time role/exposure or even a mentoring opportunity and it also helps Schneider Electric leaders to find the needed talents faster, leverage the internal capabilities and reduce turnover.
We also use VR cameras during the interviewing process with candidates, to give them a pleasant customer journey before they even join! Seeing the office and getting a sense of the working culture.
BB: With digital transformation advancing, acquiring the right people remains a challenge and making your current people harder to retain. Can you mention some ins and outs for talent management professionals when dealing with current and potential talents ?
YY: The advice I always say is have the entrepreneur’s mindset! Things are evolving and the normal practice that we used to follow is no longer efficient. Having a standard career path that is vertical is not attractive anymore, you need to be more creative, you need to hire and retain based on competencies and career interests. Career coaching is one of the things that are booming now in the world of talent management, having a career coach in place who can advice the next step of your talent’s career is crucial. Let them choose for themselves, let them feel like owners. One of the core values in SE is Act Like Owners.
BB: Can you shed some lights on the main highlights of your digital talent acquisition strategy and how it’s impacting the overall business objectives ?
YY: One of the things that we added in 2019 is digitizing the new hire on-boarding process. This really impacted the business objectives positively because it gave the chance to new hires to become knowledgeable, integrated and ready before they even join. They know what is expected from them and to a great extent they are plug and play.
And again, our biggest innovation is the Open Talent Market.
BB: The breed of new employee generations like millennials and GenZers has redefined the dynamics of employer branding and employee engagement strategies. Please comment.
YY: Definitely! The criteria now is different and the new generations are much smarter. New employer branding strategies must be real, using real life experiences, touching people’s lives – new generations react more positively to topics like CSR, Mobility, Women empowerment, Diversity and Inclusion and we are definitely leading the way!
Schneider Electric offers the biggest of all, which is a meaningful purpose! It makes a huge difference with Millennials and Genzers. Schneider Electric invests a lot and makes a huge effort to make a difference in the world – from supporting the UN development goals (giving Tuesday) to many many CSR campaigns and projects.
Schneider Electric was named a Glassdoor best place to work 2020 in the US and France!