2017 was a year of moving forward with conviction into a new growth phase, company culture and way of working. The HR team was the driving force behind a number of initiatives to implement the Orange Employer Promise of being a digital and caring employer.
Creating a new history
Throughout 2017, Orange Belgium built on the foundations that were laid during the rebranding year of 2016. One of the key building blocks in the evolution towards the new company culture was the introduction of the ‘6 Principles of Action’ framework, which was co-created with the team members to keep everyone practice-minded and action-oriented as they entered this new ‘orange’ chapter.
The Principles of Action help the team members live the Orange promise. For example: Quimple reminds them that quality must be approached with simplicity in mind; Whyse ensures that reasons why always make common sense. Created in 2016, these unique principles were embedded in the company’s educational and HR processes in 2017. Performance reviews, succession planning, and so on are being redesigned to include the 6 Principles of Action mindset.
New momentum and dynamism
With the successful launch of its convergent Love offer, Orange Belgium is now a full convergent player on the Belgian market. And the new momentum and dynamism that this generated have compelled the company to embrace a new way of working.
HR approached this challenge from a grassroots, rather than a top-down, perspective − asking the workforce ‘What is our new identity, and how can we work smarter in the future?’.
‘How we work together’
2017 was a year of raising awareness of a new way of working at Orange Belgium and integrating forward-looking processes into the company culture. A key caring message is communicated by not only evaluating what is delivered but also how it is delivered. Therefore, ‘How we work together’ has far-reaching consequences for the enlightened combination of being a digital and caring employer. A sign that Orange Belgium is on the right track: external auditors have renewed Orange Belgium’s Top Employer certification for 2018.
Listening & responding to team members’ needs
To ensure that Orange Belgium remains a caring employer as it transforms rapidly into a digital employer, legacy HR processes were reviewed and new digital solutions began to be implemented that will facilitate the employment journey from end-to-end.
The goal is to adopt the best, future-proof technology in order to offer efficient, user-friendly HR processes via everyone’s mobile phone. A prime example is the new ‘Workday’ mobile app.
Workday – All major HR tools combined in just one single tool
2017 saw the launch of HR’s ‘Workday’ tool, which gathers the majority of HR-related topics onto a single easy-to-use platform. For instance, via the tool team members can access their colleagues’ contact details, implement their objectives, manage their requests for holidays, and much more… Workday is always available to team members − and, thanks to an app, it’s accessible on their mobile!
A new L&D approach
In 2017, the HR team changed the internal Learning & Development training offer substantially. A first step was to conduct a survey to identify gaps in the current offer and to define new programmes that would be applicable not only today but in the future as well. A notable change in approach was moving from predominantly classroom-based learning to a blended offer that helps Orange team members grow their skills flexibly. In our journey towards social or community learning, we enriched our offer with digital content focused on mobile access.
Learning at Orange has become more easily accessible and engaging with the introduction of Cornerstone Mobile™, an online learning platform. Cornerstone enables everyone to complete one of the 850 e-learnings via their mobile or tablet. As nearly half of the e-learnings are as brief as a coffee break, sharpening competences has never been easier!
‘How we lead’ – empowering a LeaderShift programme
Because they communicate between the executive and staff levels of the organisation, line managers are a crucial conduit for cultural change. In this context, HR has called upon them to serve as role models. As the company evolves towards a sense of purpose culture, 2017 saw the birth of the innovative LeaderShift programme to create the necessary shifts in mindset.
The goal of the LeaderShift is to help managers contribute to the company’s cultural change by integrating a new style of leadership while at the same time accompanying teams − and more broadly, the entire organisation − to integrate the Principles of Action so that an unmatched experience can be delivered to Orange customers. The programme is composed of 4 modules articulated around the 6 Principles of Action: Kick-off (Whyse), Empowerment (Comact), Collaboration (Empulse and Talentify) and Agility (Quimple and Pionate).
85% satisfaction
One measure of the success of these HR initiatives: the latest e-NPS People factor shows a steady rise in manager satisfaction: 85% of all respondents are very satisfied with their manager when it comes to coaching, caring and communicating.
The empowerment continues…
To ensure that the company can quickly adapt to changes in the market, everyone needs to work in a more flexible way. So, to become more agile, Orange reworked its project management structure whereby multifunctional teams work on 1 project in a dedicated workspace (as opposed to the classical silo structure). That dedicated workspace is also organised to promote intensive collaboration − another requirement for agility.
