723 employees benefited from international mobility in 2021, as international mobility opportunities were limited during the year.
In 2021, Marcel offered 26,156 Gigs and Jobs (5,515 in 2020). Gigs are requests made by a team in need of temporary upskilling on a specific subject. They enable people to take advantage of internal skills, thereby helping to move a project forward. The procedure for responding is simple and well-structured. For Jobs, Marcel publishes advertisements in advance of any external recruitment process in order to promote the internal development of employees.
With more than two-thirds of employees working from home in 2021, particularly in North America, flexibility is at the heart of the organization of work and the Work Your World program (previous paragraph) illustrates the desire of Groupe executives to offer various options to employees. The Groupe supports working from home but considers that the Company must remain a unique dynamic place, where employees enjoy getting together and collaborating. A communication agency is above all a community of different individuals, with unique experiences and expertise, where each employee contributes to shared objectives. In addition to the general principle, each entity determines the specific conditions for implementing flexibility (based on the workload, the role in the team, the duration, the mission to be accomplished for the client, performance, etc.). The aim is for employees to be able to benefit from flexibility at different stages of their professional and personal life. Agencies have been implementing sabbatical leave for many years (eligibility conditions defined locally), thus enabling employees to take a break while remaining with the Groupe.
2,789 employees benefited from parental leave for the birth or adoption of their child in 2021 (65% women, 35% men). All employees are eligible for this type of leave, depending on the legal context and, above all, on internal arrangements implemented by the Company that are often far more advantageous. Agencies have strengthened their policies to support pregnancy periods and maternity leave (weeks of leave in countries with less favorable regulations) as well as from a managerial point of view, in order to enable mothers or first-time parents to better manage their return to work (with ad hoc meetings before, during and on return to work, flexible schedules). Different initiatives are taken to facilitate family life: several large agencies (on all continents) have made breastfeeding rooms available and, on some main campuses, daycare is available too (e.g. Bangalore). Social benefit programs (via Employee Assistance Programs or EAPs) include provisions for childcare and family support schemes for parents and co-parents to make their personal organization more simple.
100% of employees (permanent and temporary contracts) have access to various local health support services in the field of healthcare, whether internal or external services or third-party experts.
The pandemic situation led the Human Resources (HR) and Talent Departments to significantly strengthen the service catalog offered to employees with local partners which continued to improve their offers to adapt to the new needs expressed. Mental health and individualized support have become a central issue. In 2021, a group-wide partnership was signed with Thrive, supplementing the offer provided to employees by Headspace, in order to provide everyone with additional support sessions in the areas of mental health and the prevention of the risks of overwork, along with programs better adapted to specific issues. In 2021, the employee experience was not the same for all depending on the local health situation. A large majority of employees have experienced long periods of work from home, such as in the United States and Canada, where employees have barely returned to the office at all for nearly two years. The usual internal awareness-raising or prevention campaigns, linked to seasonal infections, pathologies or health risks, have been designed to be effective and useful regardless of the workplace. All these systems now incorporate the specificities of recent years (difficulties related to isolation, uncomfortable working from home accommodation, personal or family constraints related to the pandemic, psychological distress, etc.).
