Nexans

Group presentation

Nexans is one of the flagships of French industry with more than 26,000 employees in 34 countries. A world leader in advanced cabling and connectivity solutions, the Nexans group specializes in various fields of activity: Construction, Telecommunications, Industry with cutting-edge expertise particularly in smart electricity networks, telecommunications systems on a global scale. through large offshore wind projects or submarine interconnections.

The Nexans Group has been managed since July 2018 by Christopher Guérin, previously Managing Director of the Europe zone and of the Telecoms & Data and energy connection equipment activities.

Thanks to its international presence and its commercial activity on large-scale projects, the Group achieved sales of 6.4 billion euros in 2017.

Adapt to the expectations of a population of younger employees

The Nexans group employs more and more "millennials", whose expectations are very different from those of employees who have been present for a longer time in the company: rejection of the rigidity of the pyramid hierarchy, need for meaning, autonomy, need for carrying out missions rather than simply occupying a function, working in a team, ...

To develop commitment and retain the talents, the CEO of the Nexans group first sought to respond to this quest for meaning. Through iDay, he was able to communicate and explain to all his strategic axes, to allow everyone to better understand the strategy, the overall mission and the challenges of the company.

Exemplary management: the key to a successful transformation plan

Resistance to change and the non-exemplary nature of managers, who hope to see their teams and their results change without themselves modifying their methods, are at the origin of the failure of more than half of the transformation plans.

By questioning the employees, Christopher Guérin “understood through their eyes that management thinks about transformation every day but that the further down we go in the hierarchy, the more the transformation is diluted. This is why [the management committee] decided to act at all levels of the company. (Read the full interview in French here.)

Rather than simply giving the floor to his employees, or soliciting only his managers, he decided to ask all of his European employees for their best ideas to transform the company and face the challenges that the world will bring. With iDay, Christopher Guérin has sent all his teams a strong signal, heralding a new era in which decisions and problem solving must be made locally, where they are encountered. By calling on all of the company's employees to give their ideas on strategic elements, he showed by example to all the managers of the group what managerial practices should evolve towards. A relationship of trust, in which each employee can give an opinion and especially relevant ideas, on crucial subjects.

7 strategic themes including safety, customer satisfaction and brand image.

Almost 60% of the ideas concerns the company way of working, in particular to maintain the enthusiasm of the teams and to work better and more effectively together.

"Motivation", "efficiency" and "internal communication" in the top 4 topics that gathered the most ideas.