CSR & Recruitment at Capgemini: Interview

How does Corporate Social Responsibility play a major role at Capgemini? Find out in this interview with Carolyn Nimmy, Vice President, HR, Capgemini.

As Corporate Social Responsibility continues to be discussed in boardrooms, many top MBA schools around the world are realizing they must equip graduates with CSR knowledge. 

Can you tell us about your own background at Capgemini and your current role?

I work in the Capgemini Global HR team and my current responsibilities include:

- Leading Diversity, CSR and Sustainability initiatives
- Learning and Development - local/global curricula around key roles and competencies, leveraging our global Learning Management System, increasing blended learning and driving an improved learner experience
- Management of Global Employee Survey

I have worked and lived in a number of countries during my career including the USA, Spain, Germany and the UK. I have experience in the above, as well as recruitment, on-boarding, internal communications, e-learning, leadership and career development, performance management and diversity.

I am currently the Chair of the Supervisory Group of AIESEC International - AIESEC is the world's largest student-run organization, focused on creating future leaders and social entrepreneurs.

Please remind us of Capgemini's scope and main business activities.

Capgemini is a world leader in the provision of Consulting, Technology, Outsourcing and Local Professional Services, enabling our clients to transform their businesses through technology. It has expanded by over 50,000 employees in the last ten years.

Capgemini is a global company with headquarters in France (where there are over 20,000 employees) and operates in more than 30 countries. India has become the second largest market in terms of staff with a headcount of around 17,000, followed by the USA, UK, Netherlands and Spain.

Why does it make good business sense for Capgemini to have an active CSR policy?

Capgemini is an intellectual services company. It needs a strong brand and a reputation for being honest and straightforward in the way it does business. Its values are essential to maintaining ongoing business relationships with its clients, as well as hiring and retaining talent.

Capgemini seeks to have an impact on broader communities with people being attracted to it because of its pro-active stance on CSR. We celebrated The Company's 40th birthday in 2007 and are proud that Sustainable Development has always been a central theme. It is constantly encouraging staff to make a difference in both their community and their work.

Capgemini seeks to be recognized as a "thought leader" by helping its clients to be more sustainable in their supply chain, IT sourcing and architecture of their IT systems. Our clients recognize the need for sustainability and appreciate our genuine commitment to this business objective through our recommendations.

As a publicly quoted company, many funds and rating agencies favour "socially responsible" companies. As such we can become more attractive to additional investors by being serious about CSR.

Can you give some examples of how Capgemini has acted on its CSR policy?

Everything we do at Capgemini can have a focus on CSR and sustainability. We aim to protect the environment. We work to make our offices environmentally friendly and look to Reduce, Re-use and Recycle wherever we can.

Our data centres are energy-efficient; consolidating infrastructure platforms can reduce overall power and cooling requirements by driving up utilization. Selecting power-efficient infrastructures reduces the power requirement per unit of capacity and we can re-use waste heat from data centres to heat office space. By working in conjunction with Ethical Disposal Service Providers, we can improve asset disposal to both meet the EC Directive on Waste, Electrical and Electronic Equipment and maximize recycling.

Our travel is being scaled back by the use of video conferencing and collaboration tools, with travel between Mumbai and Utrecht reduced by 30% last year alone, after the introduction of high-quality video connections.

Capgemini builds strong internal awareness of CSR issues through its internal news and video channel. It has features on sustainability and regular executive interviews discussing CSR initiatives. Last year, hundreds of employees responded with individual stories from the field or participated in monthly quizzes and downloaded promotional posters and brochures for further distribution.

Which regions and services are the primary sources of growth for Capgemini and what are the implications for your CSR initiatives?

Capgemini is growing globally,with the biggest growth occurring in markets like India, Poland, China and now South America. Many of our technology centres of excellence are hosted in these countries, and in many the awareness of CSR challenges are lower. Capgemini can play a major role in stimulating awareness of CSR and sustainability in these markets. In India, our employees are among the educated elite and being the most enthusiastic and engaged, they work to spread the word about our CSR initiatives.

In China we participate in an increasing number of conferences on CSR, which is now at the forefront of the Chinese agenda and our Chinese graduate hires are also actively engaged in CSR policies.

How is this growth impacting on your hiring needs at graduate and MBA levels and what types of people do you look for?

We hire graduates and a smaller number of MBAs in most major countries around the world, but due to our system of distributed delivery, our hiring profile differs by country.

In India we are hiring 200 graduates and experienced employees per week, primarily with computer science backgrounds. This is to work in systems development and application-management roles. We seek a similar profile in Brazil, Argentina and Morocco to serve Portuguese, Spanish and French-speaking clients.

In France, the UK and the USA, the focus is on business consultancy, front-end design and implementation roles, requiring greater client interface and high interpersonal skills - often hiring MBAs into consulting roles.

In Poland we seek graduates with finance and administrative backgrounds to work with our Business Process Outsourcing teams. Elsewhere our hiring profiles are quite mixed.

How is Capgemini coordinating recruitment across so many markets and for such diverse people? What training and development does Capgemini offer to new hires?

Most Capgemini recruitment is conducted at a local level, but there are several aspects which are coordinated globally. For example, compensation guidelines are managed globally, with recruitment branding coordinated centrally then implemented locally. CSR is a major aspect of our recruitment message that Capgemini will "free your energies" by fostering collaboration, team-playing and encouraging CSR. Capgemini also has an On-boarding kit for all new hires which ensures a common induction and reinforces shared values.

Our training commitment is extensive, especially through our in-house corporate university, which is more than ten years old. It was recently voted "Most Innovative" as well as "Most Mature" Corporate University by the International Quality and Productivity Centre at Corporate University Week, in Florida. Almost 9,000 employees attend the University, with its main facility in France, every year. We also have over 3,500 online courses and 13,000 online books available for staff. This is supported by knowledge centres, which enables us to disseminate knowledge quickly and keep our people at the forefront of thinking, technology and social responsibility.

Finally, is gender and diversity a major challenge for Capgemini?

Diversity is a huge challenge for Capgemini, as it is for all its competitors. It is particularly difficult to have enough women at senior levels in the organization. Our Norway business has roughly equal numbers of men and women at all levels; they have a great business and obtain the highest scores in our employee satisfaction surveys. We are working to increase both our diversity in other markets and the numbers of women in our senior management teams. We have joined the European Professional Women's Network and we attend QS Women in Leadership Forums, but we are always looking to do even more in this area.