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- the Groupe continued to support the Alliance for Youth (All4Youth) – under the aegis of Nestlé – to prepare for upcoming events in 2022 with a view to combating youth unemployment and supporting their employability and integration with various partners (objective: to create 300,000 opportunities for young people across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa by 2025);
- renewal of the action with the C’Possible association; a vocational high school class was accompanied by Publicis Media employees to introduce them to the communication profession. The objective was to open up horizons, to abolish the borders between young people from modest backgrounds and the ambition to join large companies, to stop the phenomenon of self-censorship in the access to certain professions;
- Inclusion of people with disabilities through the overhaul of the Disability team: the professional training delivered to the entire reference team enabled it to offer better support to employees with disabilities. The partnership with Tous Hanscène enabled creative teams to participate in this French competition to better understand the various disabilities. As part of the European Week for the Employment of People with Disabilities (SEEPH) in November 2021, Publicis France took part for the first time in the Talent Handicap recruitment forum, held in March and June, respectively dedicated to work-study contracts and permanent contracts in the tech and digital sector. The percentage of people with disabilities is 1.65% in France.
- LGBTQ+ equality: the Groupe is committed alongside the association Têtu Connect to raise awareness and promote positive actions in favor of LGBTQ+ equality in our agencies.
- Gender equality with 12 responding subsidiaries. The overall objective is still to reach 95/100. On the occasion of the annual Action Day on Violence Against Women (November 25), as is the case every year now, the Talent team rolled out a campaign to raise awareness among all employees about these dramatic situations, and implemented a dedicated advice and guidance system for those in our teams who are affected by this scourge. The Groupe’s headquarters on the Champs Elysées were lit up in orange, the color symbol of this fight. Publicis France has an active role within the OneInThree Woman community, which brings together many large companies around this major societal issue. In terms of gender equality, a collective bargaining agreement was signed at Groupe level in France in October 2020 for a period of three years, and revised by an amendment on October 4, 2021. It provides inter alia for the granting of financial assistance from the birth of the child until his or her third birthday, as well as the maintenance of full compensation during the entire maternity, paternity and childcare leave. This revised agreement also provides for the extension of the scope of this leave to the spouse, civil union (PACS) partner or the biological father’s partner.
- Training: to enable everyone to get to know and understand themselves better with the mandatory unconscious bias training cycle, for all levels of responsibility in the Company. Lastly, in France, the Groupe is continuing its long-standing partnerships (Nos quartiers ont des talent, Baissez les barrières, Jeunesse et entreprises, Prométhée Éducation, etc.) by providing them with long-term support. With regard to the allocation of the apprenticeship tax, diversity is still a key priority for the Groupe (training, job profiles, etc.), which continues to back several pilot high schools for young people from disadvantaged districts.
4) United Kingdom
Since 2020, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion topics have taken a strategic place. The work echoed the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States with the Embrace Change action plan, which enabled Publicis Groupe UK to take decisive steps to expand, strengthen and integrate Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) into all aspects of our work.
The Diversity team has defined the roadmap until 2023 in order to assess the progress of the actions and objectives. The pillars of this strategy are gender equality, ethnic equality and the desire to be an anti-racist company, inclusion of people with disabilities and inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals, by adopting a cross-sectional approach for all these issues. The team works alongside of the attraction and recruitment policies in place, thereby ensuring the best conditions for employee life balance, leadership, learning and development, and so as to work with clients and external partners.
The Publicis Groupe UK DE&I charter describes the inclusive approach and behaviors that are promoted. In 2021, extensive work was done to develop inclusive and progressive policies around the expression of concerns at work (Raising Concern), family-friendly policies on maternity, paternity, shared parental leave, adoption, miscarriages, fertility and menopause. At the same time, a more precise approach enabled the improvement of policies relating to disability, the integration of transgender people, the fight against violence against women and domestic abuse, and support for caregivers.
Internal culture is at the heart of discussions so that employees feel psychologically safe and can flourish. It was decided to establish a feedback culture through listening exercises, focus groups and engagement surveys, which showed a 15% increase compared to 2020 in employees’ sense of integration and belonging at the end of the year. Thanks to the Human Librairies series, teams had access to tailor-made programs for managers on creating inclusive teams.
The success of these actions also relies on the active role of BRGs (Business/Employees Resource Groups) and DE&I Champions – internal networks that support these positive changes throughout the Groupe through advocacy, the creation of alliances and awareness-raising. Equality, Embrace, enABLE and VivaWomen! championed inclusion in 2021 with a series of innovative and cross-sectional programs and events. On Marcel, a knowledge center was created to provide all employees with access to content, information and training.
