Finally, we cannot talk about QVT without talking about "Management by Quality of Life at Work". It is important that managers are made aware, especially CEOs. It will then be a question of being attentive to the working conditions of employees, listening attentively and truly trusting.
Succeeding in your Quality of Life at Work policy - with Hortense Noiret (QVT consultant)
Hortense Noiret is a lawyer by training. After practicing for 3 years, she joined France Télévisions as a labor law lawyer. She has devoted the last 10 years to her passion, Quality of Life at Work, as QVT Manager. A position that was just being created at the time. She is now opening a new chapter in her life, with the creation of her consulting firm dedicated to QVT. Today, we decided to discuss with Hortense the elements that make a Quality of Life at Work policy successful.
What is your definition of Quality of Life at Work (QVT)?
There is a definition from the ANI (National Interprofessional Agreement on Professional Equality and Quality of Life at Work) that talks about well-being. In terms of QVT, I prefer to use "being well in the company" rather than "well-being". In fact, I see 3 levels of Quality of Life at Work.
First of all, your personal QVT: how to balance your professional and personal life, having clearly defined your needs in your job.
At the 2nd level, there are working relationships with others, between employees, and relationships with management. Making sure that there is a real bond of trust. This is essential to avoid getting exhausted on too many subjects.
Where do you recommend starting when you want to tackle QVT in your company?
First, you need to make sure that the General Management is behind you. If it is an initiative of an isolated HR manager and the DG has not been brought on board, you will struggle. The managers must also be on board and there must be a CODIR (Management Committee) at least 50% with you and where you will have allies.
Then, you have to question the need. This is a mistake I made a little at the beginning. That is to say, you have ideas on things without having really gathered the need. However, people expect you on other subjects. Which creates a gap.
First, you can ask the CODIR what they expect from it. Then, put together a panel of people who will be interviewed. Also, join forces with the social partners, because if they are with you, you will go much faster.
The third thing is to make sure that we have the means to get on board at the management level. There may be managers who say "it's nice, but I can't do it alone". In this case, you will need to have coaches, occupational psychologists who help you... an ergonomist for example, external experts that you call upon. I think that for this, the CEO must give you the means. Afterwards, you can call upon collective intelligence. But at the beginning, you have to make people want to do it and make it visible.
What are the specific features of large groups in terms of QVT, whether in their operation or the challenges they face?
I created a QVT club with Orange, 3 and a half years ago. This club is informal and made up of large groups. The idea is to share our good practices in terms of QVT. The big topic that came back, and even more so at the time of confinement, was teleworking. The confinement, the crisis, the pandemic have exaggerated the focus of this subject which was a little latent.
At France Télévisions, we had about 400 people working remotely. In just one day, we went to 4,000! For all companies, except those that had already implemented remote working, it highlighted what to do and what not to do in terms of management.
Everything that is also connection / disconnection was a very important topic, when the Covid19 crisis arrived. Likewise the topic around "how to better reconcile your professional life and personal life".
Quality of Life at Work is the "counterpart" of RPS (psychosocial risks). There were a lot of them during the lockdown, because people were no longer working, some no longer saw what they were doing or because, on the contrary, they were killing themselves working. It was very complicated. We had to think about how to support employees and managers. Among the latter, many asked themselves real questions, because they were absolutely not used to working remotely. We had to be inventive.
What problems were there on the ground?
Let's say that you no longer see the person and you can no longer control as you normally do. Personally, I advocate a priori trust and a posteriori control. But when you are remote, you no longer see people and you do not know what they are doing. We then heard sentences like: "employees are teleworking, so they are not working. They are watching series." While it has been proven that teleworking is 12 to 20% more productive. It is obvious, you save a lot of time, you concentrate more, you are more diligent.
Managing remotely is very difficult when you are not used to it and it happens overnight. Managers have been clumsy, sometimes. That is to say, they called three times a day or scheduled a team meeting at 9:01 a.m. every morning...
Or conversely, no more sound, no more image: some no longer interacted at all! Then it was catastrophic. Managers said to themselves: "I don't want to disturb, because the employee is at home". No, the employee is not at home, he is working from home. Because at the moment, there is no choice. Obviously the manager can call the employee. But on the other hand by giving each other codes, by asking if a certain time is convenient for the other for a call, by respecting each other's rhythm. It is essential to keep in touch when teleworking.
What is your greatest QVT action success?
That's all we did on the subject of disconnection. It lasted 3 years. It was a project called @ttitude. There was an educational game about disconnection, about how to better reconcile professional and personal life, and respect at work. The game was led with the participation of the manager and it allowed people to speak freely on different points, in the form of exchanges carried by the cards.
It was really one of our successes, especially since it was still quite new in 2012-2015. We really started from a need expressed from the beginning in terms of Quality of Life at Work. We were not asked for yoga classes or other things… hyper-connection was a real source of tension in the company.
We also created training courses called "Forme @ttitude", accompanied by a service provider with specific sheets. After that, there was a digital form, with a self-assessment questionnaire. To determine your digital profile "hyper-connected", "under-connected", etc. That way people could better understand.
What I liked about this project is that it continued, it wasn't just a one-shot . We marketed it, for example with mouse pads and other things, where the name of the project was written. And my greatest pride was when we said: "There, you're not very @ttitude." That meant that the employees had taken ownership of the concept. However, you still have to be hypervigilant because nothing is a given. But we were able to observe that the recommended good practices had become habits among employees.
