Involving and supporting our employees

In daily contact with our customers, Rexel’s employees are key players in the Group’s sustainable development and performance, embodying the Group’s values and vision.

Rexel’s HR policy seeks to develop and enhance its human resources by offering each employee a work environment that fosters professional and personal growth. This aim relies on skills development, safety and well-being at work, social dialogue, equal opportunities, inclusion, and recognition of diversity.

A DECENTRALIZED POLICY RELAYED BY CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TOOLS

In line with the nature and the location of its activities, Rexel’s organization relies on a decentralized management model at the subsidiary level, to which the central functions add their expertise.

A need-based, field-based management approach

In terms of human resources, this strong proximity-based approach fosters and strengthens the teams’ flexibility, autonomy, and agility in decision-making. It helps achieve a crucial balance between the roadmap set by the Group’s HR Department and its deployment at the local scale by each country’s HR teams. 

A wide array of support tools

To perform their functions in an optimal manner, the HR teams rely on several cross-functional tools:
• an online academy (Rexel Academy),
• an HR-dedicated information system (SuccessFactors),
• a digital internal job board listing and updating mobility opportunities,
• performance management and recognition tools,
• regular surveys focused on measuring employee engagement.

ATTRACTING AND RETAINING TALENT

Energy transition, digital revolution: The world of energy and its players have entered a new era. This robust market and Rexel’s strong will to remain at its forefront strengthen the need for a human resources policy that can rise to the challenge.
The Group uses multiple levers to attract talents in line with its strategic priorities by developing a strong employer brand that embodies Rexel’s culture and commitment, deploying an assertive communications and recruitment strategy highlighting the Group and the evolution of its activities, and implementing a structured integration process for new employees. To retain its employees, Rexel focuses on developing innovative and dynamic career, work, and compensation management policies.

Mobility and managerial career development, attractive career opportunities

Functional and/or geographical, vertical but also horizontal mobility plays an important part in Rexel’s HR strategy. It is particularly relevant in the current period of economic transformation, in which the company needs to demonstrate new adaptative capacities. Coupled with skills management, Rexel’s mobility policy offers employees opportunities for career development in terms of management responsibilities as well as business expertise. These opportunities are published on a digital job board shared across the Group.

An attractive and consistent compensation and employee benefits policy

The Rexel Group offers a clear and legible compensation policy, aligned with the values at the core of its identity and its corporate culture.

Employee listening, a driver of engagement

Rexel considers its employees’ satisfaction to be a key indicator of the performance of its HR policy. Placing employee listening and the free expression of all at the heart of its HR policy, the Group regularly asks for the opinion of its employees via cross-disciplinary surveys. They provide an opportunity to assess employees’ perception and experience of major HR topics. They also help to measure their engagement. The subsidiaries can also access the Satisfaxion Pulse tool, which enables them to conduct surveys at the local level. As an example, this tool has enabled the Dutch, Swiss, and Swedish subsidiaries to measure their employees’ opinions on specific topics, such as the handling of the health crisis.

DEVELOPING EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT AND EMPLOYABILITY

Rexel makes every effort to offer each employee maximal opportunities to develop their talents and skills in a safe and nurturing work environment. It is by having the means to grow and reach their personal goals that employees can fully contribute to the development and performance of the Group.

Each employee’s engagement fosters success for all

To be and to remain a leading player in its market – Rexel’s stated goal involves its employees’ engagement in their functions, but also, and most importantly, in the company and its goals. To be able to roll out the initiatives required to develop and anchor this engagement, the Group regularly assesses employee engagement via its internal barometer, Satisfaxion. As an example, its themed version was administered in 12 languages in 21 countries in 2022.

*A multifactorial indicator designed to assess the relationship between employees and their company, engagement relies on their understanding and perception of major topics of company’s HR policy: Strategy, management, teamwork, career advancement, company image, etc.

“Working for Rexel is the opportunity to be part of a team, of a major Group that above all values competence, honesty, and motivation.”

Response from an employee to the open question included in the 2021 Pulse Survey

Strengthening employee employability

Rexel employees’ have developed very specific skills, especially in order to provide a differentiating customer experience. For the Group, nurturing and developing this expertise entails a culture of knowledge sharing. In a daily exchange, the experience and know-how of expert employees and the knowledge of new talents mutually enrich each other to benefit everyone, contributing to the company’s transformation.
This interaction and emulation enable Rexel to flexibly adapt to new market challenges and technology development – especially digital. As an example, this is how the Group tests in vivo the use of new tools or procedures before introducing them on a larger scale.
Beyond this, the Group favors skills acquisition and update via a personalized training offer. It relies on the Rexel Academy, an online training platform available in 21 countries, which benefits from additional in-person training modules. The yearly performance assessment offers the opportunity to collect the employees’ training and development wishes and needs. They are then taken into account in the creation of cross-functional training plans and policies specific to each subsidiary.

Fostering constructive social dialogue

Aware that high-quality social dialogue helps maintain engagement, Rexel promotes it, guaranteeing the principles of free expression and union representation. These foundations of the Group’s action are inscribed in its Ethics Guide, applicable in all the countries where it operates and shared with all its employees.
Social dialogue concerns Rexel’s strategic evolution and its activities, as well as its policy in terms of employment, training, hygiene, and safety.

*Mainly signed in Spain, France, Belgium, Austria, and Germany and concerning namely the quality of life at work, compensation, incentives, participation, remote work, and social dialogue. They complete the ones signed previously and still applicable, concerning gender equality and the professional integration of people with disabilities.

Promoting health, safety, and well-being in the workplace

Rexel provides a nurturing work environment for its employees. It relies on favorable conditions, not only for everyone’s health and safety, but also for a fulfilling quality of working life for all.

Health and safety as the highest priority

Through its health and safety policy deployed since 2015, Rexel intends to implement a responsible and shared culture and practices. The Group regularly enhances and completes the procedures and rules used to foster a common framework and standards in each of its subsidiaries, collected in a cross-country document sent to all subsidiaries. Its goal? At the very least, to guarantee an equivalent level of protection to all its employees, by targeting the key risks related to Rexel’s activities.
The latest update of the “Health/Safety” framework in 2021 provided the opportunity to:
• Strengthen requirements regarding IPE (Individual Protection Equipment)
• Incorporate principles related to psychosocial risks and pandemic risks
Introduce the notion of “near-miss” in order to raise team awareness of the reflexes to adopt in order to avoid an accident, and to remind everyone of the safety rules to apply at work every day.
With this in mind, Rexel launched an awareness campaign in 2022 based on the notion of “near miss”. The campaign was followed by a collective intelligence process to identify situations in which an accident could be avoided thanks to employees’ good reflexes and/or timely reporting.

Growing awareness of well-being

In order to promote the balance between personal fulfillment and professional performance, multiple initiatives are implemented at the Group and local levels. The right to disconnect, promoting physical activity or stress management, etc., are all measures that help strengthen well-being at work, an integral part of health and safety. Building on the lessons from the unprecedented context of the health crisis and its consequences, Rexel updated its standards and included psychosocial risks linked to the extensive spread of remote work.

SUPPORTING DIVERSITY, INCLUSION, AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES

A major social issue, diversity also represents a performance lever. Rexel adopts a proactive approach supporting diversity and inclusion at all company levels.

A solidly anchored culture of diversity

The Group fosters an inclusive work environment for its employees where all their skills can flourish. A true code of conduct based on Rexel’s fundamental values, the Ethics Guide reiterates the importance given to diversity and inclusion, from a perspective encompassing human dignity and diversity, and respect for people. It also prohibits any form of discrimination toward employees.
Rexel shared its goals in this respect and assessed their acceptance via the Pulse Survey specifically focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion topics. Of the employees who answered the 2021 Pulse Survey, 89% consider that their direct manager works efficiently with people who don’t resemble them and that 90% of the company offers a framework that respects each employee’s personal identity.

Committed to gender parity and equality

As a player in an industry with a low proportion of women, Rexel has been committed for many years to ensuring equal treatment of men and women in comparable situations and in every area: Recruitment, salary, career, training, etc. One of the Group’s major goals in this respect is reaching a 35% recruitment rate for women in permanent positions by the end of 2024 (vs. 22.3% in 2022).

A strong policy supporting gender diversity and equality

Aware that diversity is a lever for improving sustainable performance, Rexel bases its transformation culture on inclusive management. In line with the AFEP-MEDEF Code and the AMF recommendations regarding diversity and social mixing, the Executive Management and Human Resources have implemented action plans with follow-up indicators.

The Wire (“Women in Rexel”) networks

Connect – Inspire – Empower, the Wire networks aim to foster collaboration, encourage development, and inspire empowerment by creating an environment that values individual diversities and facilitates the inclusion of women in the company. A major initiative launched by the Group’s American subsidiary, Wire is in line with Rexel’s commitments to inclusion. In addition to the five national networks now in existence (USA, Canada, Australia, UK, France), the global Wire Leaders network brings together near 100 members, while the Wire Transformation network is made up of the Group’s IT, Data & Digital, and Supplier teams. As an example, on February 11, 2022, Wire and Hi!Paris* organized a round table around the theme “AI: A lever for promoting gender diversity in science?” on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Constance Grisoni, Group Strategy Director at Rexel, shared her views and experience on the issue alongside physicist and philosopher of Science Etienne Klein, Nathalie Brunelle (TotalEnergies), and Laure Prétet (PhD from Télécom Paris, IP Paris).

*Hi! Paris is an interdisciplinary research center bringing together the Institut Polytechnique de Paris and HEC Paris. Rexel is a founding member.
https://www.hi-paris.fr/

*Within the framework of the French “Professional Future and Gender Pay Equality” law.

…and for generational diversity

With over a third of its staff in the senior age bracket, the generational mix is a strategic priority for Rexel. The Group addresses this by actively managing employees’ careers and skills, as well as by assertively recruiting young graduates – who currently represent 5.1% of newcomers.
It also supports the inclusion of young people via a proactive policy of recruiting work-study students and interns, as illustrated by the integration of 303 work-study students in the French, Swiss, German and Austrian subsidiaries in 2022. The latest received an award recognizing the exemplary management of its employees’ apprenticeship training (Julius Award) in 2022.