Societe Generale gives all employees the right to work from home for up to two days a week

Societe Generale management has signed a new teleworking agreement with all the representative unions applicable to 40,000 employees in France. This establishes the right for everyone to have an average of two days of telework per week. This agreement will enter into force from 1 ^st June 2021, if the health situation allows, according to the press release.

With this agreement, Societe Generale is sending a strong signal towards the generalization of this way of working in all of its entities around the world. 

The subsidiaries of the Societe Generale group, in France and abroad, are committed to teleworking agreements according to their own terms. Almost 100,000 people are affected, in addition to the 40,000 employees of Societe Generale France.

The highlights of this structuring agreement:

. Teleworking is becoming the new “ordinary” and collective working method.

. Teleworking will be accessible to all Societe Generale employees in France, ie around 40,000 people. For retail banking, an experiment will be carried out to study the specifics of its gradual deployment in the network.

. The average number of teleworked days goes from 1 to 2 days per week with a minimum of 40% presence on site over two weeks.

. One additional teleworking day will be possible per month

. Teleworkers will benefit from an envelope of 150 € for their installation at home as well as the possibility of having meal vouchers for the days teleworked.

Caroline Guillaumin, Human Resources Director of the Société Générale group explains: “It seemed essential to us to quickly define a new organizational model that would meet the expectations of our employees after the unprecedented remote work experience that we had to put in place in the urgency in the face of this unprecedented crisis . This agreement is structuring in many respects: teleworking will be generalized and become the standard for all our employees,  bringing the expected benefits in terms of quality of life. It will also lead us to rethink the management ofteams and the use of workspaces. Our pride: it is the employees, through the Future of Work consultation process , who have themselves defined the model we have chosen, in agreement with the unions. „

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Teleworking has existed at Societe Generale since 2016, before the crisis it concerned nearly 12,500 people in France. The health crisis has accelerated the reflection on increasing its deployment for all and more generally on new working methods. In spring 2020, the Group’s human resources department launched a vast internal consultation on the Future of work in order  to understand the challenges and expectations of employees in terms of work organization. Almost 6,000 employees contributed. These contributions were compiled and analyzed in a white paper presented to senior management which served as a basis for the telework negotiations.