Jean-Pascal Tricoire on the Future of Work

forty thousand employees worldwide. Schneider Electric operates in the energy industry, which traditionally has been dominated by men. So how does a company like Schneider Electric achieve its goal of advancing gender equality? I sat down with Jean Pascal at the

Seneca Women Forum at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Listen to our discussion and learn his practical approach to achieving gender equality in the workplace, why advancing women is a smart business strategy, and how the future of work will affect women, and stick around after the conversation to hear

our top takeaways. Hi, everyone, I am delighted to be here with Jean Pascal, chairman and CEO of this incredible company, very cool company, and we'll talk a lot about what you're doing in this industry that is not necessarily always been very friendly to women. UM. But as we discussed earlier, twenty is a very big year, including the twenty anniversary of the Beijing conference. And I was kind of excited when I heard that you were there. So did you

tell us about that? Yeah? So I don't know how many people in this room we're in Beijing in but I happened to be there at the women conference and I was here to serve you. So it's very he means literally, very simply. We're we're kickstarting Schneider in China, which has become now also go on larger's business. That was very different China, very different Beijing on sudden new comes this idea of a big women conference. On my

partner committed to that. Um. She dragged me along and we spent ten days bringing water every day, food every day, making transportation on having as those two of you, I don't know who they are. I don't remember exactly on the towise it towards the beginning of it. So Milan was there. I think she would, you know, she would maybe recognize you in the crowd. But it's been twenty five years, as we just said, and we've made a lot of progress, especially some progress for women at work,

although we're not there yet. So we want to talk to you a little bit about the future of work, but also about the state of the union at Schneider Electric. You're kind of from to and your journey. Yeah, well we are coming from very far. When you work in the field of energy automation, well are becoming digital solution for sustainability, which is a little bit more opinion, but fundamentally we come from a very male industry. I've been working for thirty years in the company thirty two years,

have been the CEO for fifteen years. Remember fifteen years ago when I opened my first leadership meeting, there were three percent women in the room. Awful, right, And of course there is all the well known reasons why you want a diverse company in many of our customers are women. And if you don't have women in the room, you don't understand, certainly you should not to understand, you won't

want diversity for innovation. On the most important thing, as I spent fifteen years in a company that was mostly male I don't know what it is to work only with women, but working with men is extremely boring. This I can certify. So we embarked on a on a journey. Collectively we to was ready to diversify the company. So where are we today. We're almost fifty percent of my board are women forty six percent um And don't applaud me.

It's absolutely normal. Just the evolving at the executive level has been has been taking more time because one women who are promoted at the top of the company to be there because they are the best. So I've got four women in my executive team. They managed fifty percent of the company, fifty percent of of the p MR. On today, one third of the executives in the company are women. That's where we are. When I look at three at the top one saturn of the company. We

are to the twenty five percent or so. We had committed to be at thirty percent next year. As things going to be difficult, that we keep fighting on going. And I'm sure we're going to speak about that, Yes for sure. Well, I mean you've said and it's kind of relates what you were just saying. You've been quoted as saying, uh, not having diniversity is a crime to innovation. And you're in the business of innovation. So what do

you mean by that. I mean that innovation is about diversity of thinking, sinking different, and there are very little chances that you can think different is if everybody is looking alike in in in the company. So we have I think in our industry, but I would say in all industries. One of the most global companies in the world. Think about it. We do roughly same business in North America,

Western Europe, a GPEC, rest of the world. All very balanced, and we've been attached from the beginning that it wouldn't be a centralized structure, but people would be living in the country's crossed with our market, so pretty much as many people again in North America and Asia, in Europe and so, which means that every time we address an issue at CHNIDO, you've got people coming from all our regins confronting the same issue and not risingly, which is

them completely differently on that the way to innovate. So there are plenty of diversities. We have very diverse in terms of nationalities. My accent. I think it's a good testimony to that. But uh, well, the most natural diversity, which is a gender diversity, is surprisingly one of the most difficult to mitigate and to change all the time. And this is where we are so focused on changing that. Well, I want to talk about this because this is where

I get really excited about what you're doing. And what I want to get into is, you know, you talk also about how anybody can have good intentions, and not everybody has good intentions, but you have to move beyond good intentions if you want to affect change. And for me, coming from the private sector, it's interesting to hear your thoughts on change management and how do we use change

management principles in a concrete way. But companies in this room and all of the live stream everyone who's watching, what can companies do to effectuate change management so we complete the journey to equality? Yeah, well, many people or all of us have very good intentions, but we all

have biases, and we all tend to replicate ourselves. Uh. Normally, human beings tend to congregate with people who look like So when you want to go from three percent to fifty of gender diversity, you'd better go with a very strong project management. I'm saying that we are also industrialist on technology. So it's pretty simple. It's like we have a problem diagnosis action plan on that. The way it works. It seems a bit dry, but it works. So I

would say we've done several things. The first thing is very strong program management and show our program manager for diversities in the room. She's she's somewhere here in the room account so much, but she's managing the all action plan. She's coordinating all the plans for diversity inside the company. But where we started, we went through a systematic plan mentoring. We trained men inside the company and all men to diversities seem strange, but realizing that we are not the same,

that there are some particularities in being a woman. On being a woman in a men's company today in this room, I am a minority. In most of the meetings women are the minority. Or do you manage that or do you include those minorities better in what you do? So being very systematic putting into place processes where systematically we propose women for the positions. We make sure that we analyze our biases in against changes. So that's number one. The second point is about policies and we put into

place policies to allow women with specific constraints. Very often women are in charge of families. That's absolutely terrible what I just said, but realities that in many places that are considered as more in charge of the families than men. So we did a global family leave policy and in within the capacity to take the leaves when, of course you have babies, but also when you have to take

care of your parents. More annoy it's the case you need to take care of your parents when you go to Asia, parents are living together, and you need to be able to do that. UNTI harassment. Of course, pay equity, and I think we're gonna be um not done. It's going to be a never ending John here. But nine percent of the company will be covered at the end of next year. We're already in good shape, but we're going to be there. That's a big one. Can I just stop on that for a second? Is a big number.

And I think personally, I am obviously involved a lot of what companies are doing, and I think that's pretty leading in the industry and leading frankly across industry. So I think we should recognize what they're doing on and we should learn from you what you've done to achieve that, because that's not small. I'm gonna thank here on there Again, it's pretty natural. I would say it should be the

case everywhere. And I'm going to speak on on a very critical thing to to to achieve to achieve that, So those policies on the interesting thing is that we started with gender diversity, with the objective of gender diversity. But those policies are very good for men to write, flexible work, good for everybody in the company. That makes a company much better, especially in the twenties twenties here

of the twenty first century. Then it's about leadership. I mean you have to be committed on the where that this is one of the reasons we embarked on eforec she at the beginning, and we are men signed on take initiatives locally and not top down but bottom up people engaging locally to to make it happen. And then one thing I would like to insist on it is about data. We've got fantastic asset today which is a capacity to have a lot of data. On pointstant you

are speaking about pay equity. You can't do pay equity if you've not graded the jobs and if you don't know where people are on the teams in the company of one forty thousand people, which should have everything. But we have also a tradition of decentralization on empowerment. So making sure that things are consistent across the board took

us some time. But today you can really get a lot from the data on people engagement, people voice, how people feel about gender diversity in this part of the company. H they feed here and then you can correct situations who you can go from emotions or opinions to something

which is much more fact based on database. You know, we talk a lot about design flaws and how things are designed when they're designed from one perspective, and as an engineering company, when things are designed from one perspective, you have systemic design flaws built in. So why would the for example, work day be from nine to five in the school day from nine to three. That's a

design flaw that doesn't benefit anybody. So the idea of bringing science, um and measurement and data to complete this journey of equality, I think is a really important lesson

that you can bring. And obviously you do it in all the work that you do around energy, but to apply it and to have that kind of lens on gender for us, it's really meaningful and and I we see more possibilities opening around data, like opening the job market, on using analytics, on artificial intelligence to match people together with jobs, and to get to double grading not on

your employees but sorts of managers. That's really exciting. Well, I actually would love to tell without that much time, but I would love to talk to you just for a minute about the future of work, because you really speak incredibly on the future of work, and I think what you just talked about kind of plays into that. I mean, the a revolution that's happening that is going to change literally everything we do. I mean, can we apply that and how do you think women will fare

in that? Okay, I think we're going into a full transformation of the space of work. When I see sometimes some of the discussion we have about social relationships and operating in one of the countries in European routs, we have kind of a new story on the tradition there to have that very strong social data. I'm speaking to the unions in front of us and saying how and were talking about the past, I'm not preparing the future today.

You see the use youngsters going into independent work uberized work. Uh. It used to be a time where your main competitor on the job market. Where your competitors today it's most startups. You have to offer a job environment which is more exciting than the startup. If you want to attract the best talents, you have to fight against local companies in all spaces of the world. So I we want our our space to be to have the most meaningful mission

and in all case it's pretty simple. It's of a digital solution for sustainability, which I see as a big challenge of our generation. It's to be the most inclusive generation, the most inclusive environment and being really present in one of the countries. We can offer much more than many other other companies. You want to discover the world compaction either but not the world from one place, the world from all the places. And then we want people to

be truly empowered. I think if you want to be able to to to compete with a garage, with a startup with a small structure, which is a very attractive value proposition for for for a young employee or an employee today, you have to make sure that people can make decisions locally and they can make an impact on The big difference that we can propose that NIA is that they can have an impact from wherever in the world, but they can make it on the scale of thirty

billion dollars on counting on one forties and other people in the rest of the world. And this is what you have to compete for us a lot of technology, allowing the people to be nomadic, allowing the people to work from home when they want, allowing flexible hours of work, but also allowing a lot of initiative locally on where

they operate. But I have to say that I learned a lot in the last couple years about tonio electric, and I do consider myself someone who knows a lot about what's going on in the space, and I think maybe the scientific community. But there's a lot of humility and what you are talking about and what you've actually accomplished. And so we're very happy that you're here today. And also we would encourage you to be on more platforms like this because I think others can really learn from you.

And you are part of the Heat for Sheet platform at the u N And maybe just in a few moments you could just tell us a little bit about that. Well, we consider also that when you do those transformation it's really important to be working with others because you can bench, you can exchange, you can learn from each other. So we are one of the first companies to embark on

efore She, which is a fantastic initiative. I think it is a bit uh mail is in the room here and I want to sell you to an excellent job accident work. I'm also at the board of the Global Compact. We are one of the first companies to embark on the Global Compact. Have been the President of the Global Compact in France for two and dates. Because this if you want to change your society, you can't do it alone.

I mean take a company account. We work with thousands of suppliers, thousands of integrators, so it's really important if we want to progress, we can do that with an ecosystem of companies and we can do that collectively if we share the same referential on the same objectives. So really important to be part of your group and really looking forward to the next opportunities on more platforms where

we can help each other to change your society. Well, thank you, Jan Pascal Stay tuned for our takeaways after this break. What a great conversation with Jean Pascal. Check out the incredible work he and Snider Electric are doing with the UN Women's Here for Sheep program. You can learn more Heat for Sheet dot org. My top takeaways. First, to quote Jean Pascal, not having diversity is a crime to innovation in today's environment, Innovation is key and demands

diversity of thinking. Companies that lack diversity will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Second, the full participation of women requires more than good intentions. It requires action. Companies need to employ the same project management techniques that they would for any other business imperative. That means putting into place strong processes and policies and leveraging data to drive real change. Finally,

alliances are critical. It's important to be part of an ecosystem of companies and other organizations that are working towards the same goal. Schneider Electric, for example, participates in the UN Women's Heat for she campaign. At Seneca Women, we found that collaboration allows companies to quickly share best practices,

new ideas, and ultimately move fast and forward. You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on power and purpose brought to you by the Seneca Women podcast Network and I Heart Radio with support from founding partner p G. Listen to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please support this podcast by telling your friends, subscribing,

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