Schneider Electric CHRO talks sustainability, new jobs and the future of learning

Sustainability is a topic at the top end of many business’s priority lists – and rightly so. 

In fact, recent research from PwC – surveying more than 20,000 consumers across 31 different countries – found that 85% of respondents experience the disruptive effects of climate change first-hand in their daily lives.

This is therefore influencing consumers to prioritize consumption that includes sustainability-focused practices.

After being named the world’s most sustainable company twice by Corporate Knights, and then by Time and Statista, Schneider Electric is a business that has clearly prioritized and achieved its green goals.

And as the sustainability sector is only set to get bigger, it can be expected that the industry will demand more jobs, requiring businesses to not only source new employees, but to upskill existing talent, too.

To explore this topic in greater depth, UNLEASH sat down with Charise Le, Schneider Electric’s CHRO, to find out how the company has earned its green reputation, as well as how it’s preparing for the future.

Embracing a circular economy and upskilling employees

As sustainability standards are increasing across the globe, more regulations are being released to ensure businesses are not able to fall short of expectations.

One regulation impacting European businesses is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This is a new legislation, which all people will need to understand the requirements of – thus, generating more new jobs, according to Le.  

She adds: “All companies are expected to deliver sustainability commitments, which will be new for many of them. At Schneider Electric, we are lucky to have started our journey many years ago, so we are quite advanced – but there are still a lot of new activities that require additional skills.”

This is why Schneider Electric is enforcing a skills-first approach to grow talent and to improve the future circular economy – otherwise known as the process that lets the a minimum amount of materials go to waste. 

Schneider has a slightly altered definition, believing that a circular economy should provide a full cycle service to customers, allowing superior intimacy and loyalty, with benefits for both customers and society. In other words, it means that there is no end-of-life concept.  

Le explains that to achieve this, the company understood the importance of upskilling – which Schneider sees as a collective effort between the company, the managers, and the employees. 

“All parties have a role to play, and everyone needs to be accountable for their own learning,” she says. “We recognize the importance of skills development beyond talking the talk.”

“I also want to talk about the evolution of our learning academies,” Le explains, “where we’ve consciously made the shift from an organization-based learning academy to skills-based learning academy. 

“This means that instead of having each organization creating its offer, we consolidate the global academies and make it more transversal, more skills based, and less siloed.  

“The second point is we take a more focused approach to development, and ensure that information is everywhere for people to learn. We want to be focused on the top skills that are defined by key domains that are vital for the growth of the company.  

“When we talk about sustainability digital solutions, the digital mindset for the commercial workforce, sustainability consulting and process digitization – these are all new elements that we want to focus on in terms of building the skills of our workforce and to take a more focused approach.”

What’s more, Schneider has also shifted its approach to skills development to leverage more external, on-the-shelf content instead of developing its own content, to increase both speed and scalability. 

“In the past we were heavily dependent on Schneider customized learning content, which is equally important, but it also takes time to develop and requires effort to keep up with the market,” Le shares.

There is a lot of learning content available on the market in terms of how digital skills or sales skills are developed, for example. In short, we started to shift our focus on how we leverage learning content from the market.”

The third point Le highlighted was Schneider’s approach to hiring. For example, the business hired 200 people from university to be developed on a two-year rotation program, to leverage internal expertise and to contribute to the development of early careers and build for the future.  

Finally, Schneider uses a ‘borrow’ strategy, that is two fold. One is internal, open to all Schneider employees, including people to internally find jobs, but also to have the opportunity to contribute their skills and learn new skills through projects or through mentorship.

“It functions on an AI-enabled platform,” Le says, “which has been quite successful since its launch in 2020 – so it’s already been running for four years and we’ve had really positive feedback.

“Secondly, at Schneider, we want to be intentional about this freelancing transformation, with fast access to work resources. We target a pool of highly-skilled professionals who choose to work independently on project-based assignments.”

In doing so, Le explains that freelancing enables the business to bring the best profiles to address skill gaps, while fostering innovation and acting with agility.

The future of upskilling and HR technology

While Schneider’s commitments to sustainability and upskilling employees is impressive, we still had one burning question: What can other business leaders do to follow suit?

Connecting with technology is very important,” Le notes. “Making technology work is the bridge all companies need to make sure the knowledge management is there, which means we need to be ready for Gen AI. Focus on data and knowledge management.”

She continues to explain that now is a great opportunity to push for upskilling because many people feel frustrated when it comes to learning. To support this, she explains that she’s noticed that some people feel pushed or forced to learn because the company wants them to learn – highlighting that that is not sustainable. 

“Because of the evolution of technology, we are having conversations about how AI is going to impact jobs; sure, some may disappear, but others will improve,” she predicts. “The change won’t happen overnight, so people and companies need to take time to prepare for the transition. So, Gen AI is an opportunity to push for upskilling.”

Her third and final point is that even when technology evolves and becomes more efficient, businesses must ensure that the human touch doesn’t go away. 

“For Schneider, people will remain at the center in all the processes, and we will look at making their experience personal and enjoyable,” Le concludes.

“So, for companies, everything is becoming digital, but they need to make sure the human touch is still there. By this, I mean to continue to focus on upskilling not only the technical skills, but also the soft skills, too.”