CLIENT Total Energies
DATE November 2020-July 2021
WHAT
Employee engagement
Internal communication
Employee well-being
When TotalEnergies, one of the world’s largest energy producers, wanted to become a collaboration-centered workplace, they asked Olive People Development to help.
THE CHALLENGE
In 2019, TotalEnergies launched the Better Together project, a key component of the group’s renewed ambition to become people-focused workplace. The goal to align employee's individual development with the company’s overall strategic goals.
Subsidiaries across the globe were to choose one or two pillars of the project:
• Attracting Talents
• Promoting the Manager-Coach
• Building a good place to work together.
But TotalEnergies is a very diverse organization. As of Dec 2021, it consisted of 101,309 employees and 316 companies in 95 countries.
With such a diversity in cultures and languages, how do you go about materializing the concept of Think Global, Act Local?
What is a “collaborative workspace” at the level of individual subsidiaries? After all, togetherness and collaboration are notions having a lot to do with local cultures, which in turn shape people’s behaviors and social dynamics.
THE CONTEXT
The TotalEnergies subsidiary in Pointe Noire Rep of Congo tasked Olive People with designing and installing several workspaces.
Nestled on the country’s Atlantic coast, Pointe Noire is the country’s second largest city and economic pulse. As such, it hosts a dynamic business community and an advanced startup ecosystem.
THE WORK
Through extensive research and focus group discussions, we deepened our understanding of the employee perceptions and expectations in relation to a workspace embodying the notions of collaboration and togetherness.
Specifically, we understood that many TotalEnergies employees in Pointe Noire are Western-educated, tech-savvy professionals. Thus, they had precise descriptions of collaboration and togetherness.
We also found that many wanted a modern design for the workspaces, yet still influenced by both the local culture and a forward looking narrative.
MIXING TWO OTHER PROFESSIONS
With our HR specialist, we created a process integrating TotalEnergies’s employee value proposition.
Then, we did frequent iterations and maintained focus on high value requirements. We intensively collaborated with TotalEnergies’s Project Managers through regular checkpoints, site inspections, and high-productivity meetings.
THE RESULT
We delivered four high-quality, safe, inspiring workspaces. They included a Work Café, a Wellness Lounge & Library, a Play Room, and an Innovation Room perfectly catering to the needs of the company’s intrapreneurs.
