Aiming to recruit around 6,000 young people each year, VINCI companies maintain long-term partnerships with educational institutions and academic circles. These partnerships involve a wide variety of initiatives: sponsoring of graduating classes, support for specific degrees, site visits, recruitment fairs, sporting events, internships, etc. The general policy in this area is to further develop VINCI’s employer brand to underpin the recruitment strategies of Group companies. In France and other countries, Group companies forge many local partnerships with apprenticeship centres, universities and other institutions of higher learning. Most of the partnerships in France are led by the human resources Pivot Clubs, which have strong local roots and bring together HR managers from across the Group. Some of these partnerships are presented in further detail in paragraph 1.3.1, “General approach to ensure an attractive positioning, build employability and develop skills”, page 180. VINCI also supports the educational community through the allocation of the apprenticeship tax, which is coordinated both at Group level and by entities building relations with educational institutions in their local areas.
6,590 young people under the age of 26 recruited in 2021
● Social joint ventures
In addition to the programmes supporting professional integration in France as mentioned previously, VINCI’s business lines and the Fondation VINCI pour la Cité have set up various social joint ventures (collaboration between a VINCI company and a non-profit).
In 2021, the foundation continued to develop the five social joint ventures, after three of them had launched their activities in 2020:
Present in around 100 countries, the Group’s companies contribute to creating and maintaining local employment around the world.
In emerging countries in particular, their contribution to training and improvements in local skills supports regional development.
As they are highly labour intensive, VINCI’s energy and construction activities have substantial direct, indirect and induced impacts on regional employment. For employment at its worksites, the Group encourages the use of local human resources, contributing to training efforts in the various regions. Furthermore, practices in the Group’s business sectors and the relatively short duration of projects encourage professional and geographical mobility. Accordingly, training efforts of VINCI companies address the needs and issues raised by these skills transfers. The mobility of VINCI employees benefits the entire industry and promotes regional development.
In Africa, Sogea-Satom (VINCI Construction), which systematically uses local human resources for its sites, favouring those located close to its activities, once again demonstrated its long-standing commitment to the training of local managers: in 2021, 80% of its managers and 85% of its staff were African. The year also saw further growth for the Africa Pro Campus, created in Morocco in 2015 to expand training opportunities for its employees in Africa and reinforce the company’s shared culture. This campus manages training for 19 subsidiaries in 18 countries. In 2021, 11,949 hours of training were provided for 658 participants (compared with 6,051 hours for 480 participants in 2020). Africa Pro is also continuing to develop its training programmes for new staff (Foundation – Onboarding) and more senior employees (for each professional branch). This year, it covered 45 participants and 16 trainers, with 10 different nationalities represented and a combined total of 1,540 hours of training for all of the participants. The training programmes focused specifically on the following areas: site / project management and organisation; quality, safety and environment; construction equipment and technical aspects.
VINCI Construction Grands Projets continued rolling out its Skill Up programme, which aims to develop the knowledge and skills of operational and supervisory staff (manual workers, team leaders and site managers) around the world by setting up training centres tailored to the requirements of each project. These centres are designed to serve local teams employed on the projects. With courses delivered to over 360 participants (employees, subcontractors and partners), they help to improve their employability upon completion of work at the sites. All of the training programmes are covered by a final assessment, with a certificate for participants. Some employees may then be taken on by subcontractors. In addition, a permanent training centre was set up for the project to build the Cairo metro. Since it was created in 2018, more than 15,000 people have been trained. The HS2 project in the UK has a strong focus on providing training and developing the skills of its employees as well as stakeholders in the vicinity of the project sites: setting up a Skills, Employment and Education (SEE) programme, welcoming 650 young apprentices in 2021, establishing various partnerships with job centres and schools, providing professional support for certain activities and groups of workers, etc.
Building on this approach, with the ambition to support local skills development, several of the Group’s subsidiaries are setting up their own networks of relations with educational institutions in the regions where they operate. Illustrating the many different initiatives carried out, Cegelec (VINCI Energies) in Cameroon signed a partnership agreement in 2021 with the Institut Universitaire de Technologie de Douala with a view to training and recruiting students.
