In March 2019, the Executive committee expressed their wish to form a working group dedicated to GPTW. A team of 3 employees has been created (the core team), with HR as support. The collaborative approach is very strong at Innate Pharma, so quite naturally, we have decided to involve employees as widely as possible.
The core team has decided to work on 5 main areas of improvement, 2 major topics highlighted in the 2018 survey (internal communication and professional development), and 3 other themes:
- Social and solidarity actions & Integration of new employees, with a strong demand for visibility on the actions carried out;
- Quality of Life at Work, Employee Commitment & Loyalty;
- Stress management, change management and respect for employees, quite understandable given the importance of the changes underway within the company.
We organized two internal presentations to introduce employees to the 5 chosen themes and to launch a call for proposals which lasted one month. And we have received a lot of contributions and proposals.
To meet this strong demand, we have set up 5 working groups (one per theme), each with a facilitator. Each working group has 5 to 6 employees. We have ensured that these groups are representative, whether in terms of type of function, hierarchical position, location (different premises) or seniority in the company. Representatives of the Works Council and the Health and safety Committee are part of this group, as well as people from HR, for example a member of the Disability team.
In total, this represents about thirty people, who worked, dedicating both working and personal time to analyze, prioritize and quantify all the contributions we had received. This is what we call the Great Place to Work Task Force.
This summary was presented to the Management in July 2019 and was very well received. At the moment, we are formalizing all this in the form of a 5-year plan that allows both management to plan budgets accordingly and employees to have a perspective on what will be put in place and when.
In parallel, we also launched a new internal survey to assess progress and refine our understanding of expectations according to the different employee profiles. The results are currently being analyzed. They will then serve as a reference to measure improvements as the action plan is implemented.
We validated the action plan with Management in September. The results of the study and the action plan will be communicated to all employees by the end of 2019. The next challenge is to ensure that everyone can see the concrete results.
Cécile, Senior R&D Director, Head of the Translational and Technology Department, at Innate Pharma since 2005, co-leader of the Great Place To Work Task Force