Schneider Electric CHRO: ‘We believe diversity stimulates innovation and wellbeing generates high performance’

Schneider Electric – a €35.9 billion energy, automation and software solutions company – has an overarching goal; to be the most local of global companies.

But for a business that has 150,000 employees spanning five generations, and with about 182 nationalities, across more than 100 countries, it’s safe to say, that this goal is no mean feat for senior executives. 

That’s why, the business initiated a multi-hub business model, with four head offices across the globe: India, China, the US and France.  

Each of these hubs evenly share Schneider’s 1,000 top employees, to distribute the company’s best-performing talent evenly across the globe. This ensures the talent is close to Schneider’s customers, partners, and employees – no matter where they are in the world.

For Charise Le, Schneider Electric’s CHRO, this unique model helps to drive a diverse culture which prioritizes inclusion. 

She explains: “Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) is the foundation of our company – which I know is very easy for leaders to say, but at Schneider, it’s part of our business strategy and it sits at the heart of our culture.

“Our multi-hub model shows that we are intentionally building a culture of inclusion, which is important to us, as we believe everyone should bring their authentic selves to work – by this, I mean gender, culture, nationalities, experience and so on.  

At Schneider, we believe that diversity stimulates innovation, and that wellbeing generates high performance. We care for our people so that they can be at their best and flourish within the environment we create.”

To act on these strong beliefs, the business has numerous actions, programs, and policies to build a culture and workforce that offers equal opportunities for everyone everywhere. 

In an exclusive two-part interview with UNLEASH, Le shares some of the initiatives that are driving Schneider towards its DEIB goals.

Building an ecosystem where DEIB can thrive

You don’t have to spend a long time on Google to find studies highlighting the importance of diversity in businesses – particularly gender diversity.

For example, according to McKinsey, GDP could increase by 26% by equally diversifying the workforce, and higher financial returns are 15% more likely to occur in gender-diverse companies. 

For this reason, it’s no wonder that DEIB is high up on Schneider’s agenda, which is why the business introduced the HeForShe IMPACT 10X10X10 Champion initiative back in 2015, with the CEO’s commitments. 

Now, there are more than 100 Country Presidents who have signed the documents to commit to Schneider’s ambition and journey, which has, in turn, helped build an ecosystem to achieve greater gender diversity.  

As part of this scheme, Schneider has provided unconscious bias training for all regions, as well as inclusive mindset training. This, which is called Schneider Essential, is mandatory training for every employee to drive awareness and to ensure everyone knows what they can do to contribute to improving diversity.

To reinforce this, Schneider has built a number of policies, such as equal pay for all genders, global family leave, anti-harassment, and flexibility at work policies.  

Various programs, such as mental health, employee assistance and uncomfortable conversation programs are also available to help people address their concerns and questions, ensuring Schneider is doing what it can to turn its commitments into actions.  

Finally, to increase the number of women in the industry, Schneider introduced the 50-40-30 commitment. This means that the business wants 50% women in new hires, 40% women in management positions, and 30% of women in the top leadership team.

“Although there’s still a long way to go, these efforts alone have gained a lot of internal and external recognition and I’m very proud of our journey,” Le boasts. “DEIB is a marker and a differentiator for Schneider Electric.”

Ensuring the business has the correct policies and programs is of utmost importance for Le, as she expresses that it’s a fundamental belief of the company that people are engaged by culture and values. 

“Last year, we welcomed a new CEO at Schneider, and committed to the launch of a new ambition for the next five years,” she shares.

“We believe ambitions require a new culture shift. So, to do this, in February, we updated our employee value proposition to reflect how Schneider has evolved over the years and also to align with where we want to be.

“So, the new EVP – called Impact Starts with Us – focused on the company’s new values, which are inclusion, mastery, purpose, action, curiosity, and teamwork. Together, these formed new pillars of our culture and shared principles for our vast workforce. 

“This, of course, emphasizes the importance of constant upskilling and development and the meaningful purpose in our actions – both are sustainability focused for the business, individuals and of course creating impact on the wider world.”

Expanding on this, Le highlights the importance of embedding the values in the end-to-end people practice processes, from the talent acquisition to performance management, to learning and to leadership development succession pipeline. 

We need to attract people who believe in our values,” she notes. “So, during the assessment selection process, assessing how people fit into our values is one elements for them – and then they need to walk the talk, too.

“For example, in our Sustainability Index, we have set an ambition. We have ten Sustainability Index recent additions, and we drive actions to deliver our commitment, which is embedded into everyone’s short-term incentive plan, and leaders’ long-term incentive plans, too.

“We then invite our employees to contribute to the sustainability journey, as well as to do things in their work, so that they can feel very proud of what they’ve achieved.”

Using AI to boost DEI

As with many businesses, Schneider started its AI journey many years ago, and has since been open to experimenting with new ways of exploring the technology. However, Le explains that for the business, the tool serves two dimensions in terms of purpose.

Firstly, using AI is really about efficiency, as it can increase speed through automation, and of course, to remove ‘low value’ work from our people,” Le says.

“So just one example is our technology Jo-HR Virtual Assistant, named after Joseph Eugene Schneider (1805-1875), who co-founded our company in 1836. 

“Jo-HR is a virtual assistant chatbot that employees can ask questions, such as ‘how many annual leave days do I have left this year?’. Before, employees had to raise a ticket to a service agent, but now, Jo-HR Virtual Assistant provides a much quicker process.” 

Continuing, she explains that the other business objective is to drive culture transformation, such as the Open Talent Market, an internal tool that enables Schneider to leverage AI to create new ways of working. 

“We are leveraging this technology to encourage employees to explore opportunities within the company,” Le says. “For example, new employees do not need to have been at the company for a certain amount of time before they can apply for a new role. 

“We used to have a policy for this, but it was removed once we realized we’re limiting opportunities, and possibly encouraging employees to look elsewhere for roles at our competitors.”

Therefore, this AI-driven platform creates a very different culture in the way Schneider manages employees – particularly by providing transparency.

Circling back to DEI, Le explains how this is how Schneider helps to create equal opportunities for everyone. 

“AI coaching is another example as to how technology is boosting DEIB,” she adds. “This is something new that we piloted and we are quite excited about its new capability that comes with different languages.”

With this in mind, where does DEIB fall on your businesses priority list? Does it measure up to Schneider? And how much of an impact is AI making?