The number of new tech jobs offering remote working has skyrocketed as employers broaden their search for talent. According to a recent CompTIA report, this development reflects a “significant shift in the way of thinking about the workplace”.
Tech companies are engaged in these reflections. To attract and keep their talents, they must adapt to this new hybrid labor standard that is being put in place, at the risk of losing any good profiles and seeing their employees leave.
How are VMWare and Kyndryl redefining, in their own way, the contours of the desktop universe, in the post-Covid world?
Flexibility and mobility
Kyndryl has not yet blown out its first candle – this spin-off from IBM became independent in November 2021 – but intends to recruit with a vengeance this year, to boost its activity. Its reputation is to be made since the company separated from the ship Big Blue. This lack of reputation is also a strength, assures Christophe Malapert, human resources director of Kyndryl France, interviewed by ZDNet. The company, which has nearly 1,200 employees to date, wants to capitalize on a more “start-up” image, in a “construction approach”, to which many recruits adhere, indicates the HRD.
The ESN, which already has a well-established clientele, is struggling in a changing sector with “new workloads appearing in the cloud”, indicates Christophe Malapert. It is therefore necessary to integrate a whole field of new skills, with “varied profiles” in sales, but also consulting and IT production. Christophe Malapert, on the other hand, observes a “relatively low, below 5%” attrition rate, unlike other ESNs, which undergo a more marked turnover at the end of the crisis.
The real difficulty, according to the HRD, is to recruit talent on “a market that is really under pressure”. To increase its visibility, Kyndryl France, 50% of whose workforce is in Ile-de-France, has recently joined the Defense Cyber Campus, where cybersecurity players meet to share their expertise, including defense services. State, research institutes such as Inria and a number of private companies in various sectors.
Adapt the workplace
Seven months after its creation, Kyndryl is also working on the development of a teleworking charter with the social partners. Christophe Malapert advocates “more flexibility for employees and new hires”.
For him, the challenge of hybridization consists in asking more broadly “why employees come back to the site” when productivity at home is so good. On the basis of this reflection, the company undertook projects in its offices to accommodate an on-site organization more conducive to exchanges and meetings.
To retain talent, Kyndryl also wants to be committed on various fronts. The company wants to “build bridges between trades” and offers training courses to employees, in particular by creating an in-house “Kyndryl Academy”. “We are well aware today that to be attractive, you have to be inventive. We have the heritage of our past, but we create our identity by laying things flat,” says Christophe Malapert.
A balance between professional and personal life
VMware, a company specializing in virtualization and multicloud, is also trying to find a more open model. Olivier Savornin, vice-president and general manager of VMware France, defines the company as “a representative office, which hosts a number of employees who help customers adopt our technologies”. Because the cloud “is not that simple”, it requires “a number of skills that are difficult to find on the market”, according to the general manager.
The company, which has just over 400 employees in France, prides itself on implementing “a certain number of actions” to help its employees “find meaning in their work”. To identify what employees want, VMware France shared surveys, including on work-life balance.
VMware has also adopted a fairly flexible policy on telework. “We let employees choose to come back as needed, if they wish. Everyone decides as they see fit, depending on their productivity and their objectives, ”says Olivier Savornin, specifying that this is not just a post-Covid policy.
VMware thus offers three different types of contracts: the fixed format (i.e. at least four days a week in the office), the “remote” format (left vaguely voluntary in form) and finally the hybrid format, “chosen by the large majority of employees”, reveals Olivier Savornin. He specifies that “these contracts can always be changed, they have no fixed duration or minimum limit”.
Promote meeting places
The employees have not, however, deserted the offices. With these new forms of work, Olivier Savornin observes “very changing desires”. Faced with this observation, “we offer maximum flexibility to our employees. Rather than laying down rules, we have conversations between employees and managers to find out what makes more sense to enable productivity and keep the employee motivated,” he summarizes.
In addition, the feeling of belonging to the company remains “a fundamental thing”, admits Olivier Savornin. The French subsidiary has also launched “a dozen initiatives” to “move the organization forward on critical issues”. VMware has also reviewed the architecture of its offices to allow employees to meet. “You don’t come back to the office just to deal with your e-mails, for which you had to multiply the collaborative spaces”, comments the general manager. In meeting rooms in hybrid format, for example, “a big effort has been made on the sound part”.
VMware does not hesitate to innovate to attract young talent. The company relies in particular on partnerships with schools to make engineers want to join the group. With ESILV, the Pôle Léonard de Vinci engineering school in Paris, VMware participated in the creation of a “cloud computing and cyber security” major. The company also takes advantage of a “graduate” program in Barcelona to integrate students straight out of school into its various units. “We teach them the trades for one, two or three years, then they gradually integrate the company’s sales teams. The selective training, taught in English, is open to European students.
It is above all a strategy of test and learn, says Olivier Savornin: “The situation remains very dynamic, we are launching initiatives without knowing what will happen. Some will be strengthened, and others stopped. We have very little perspective on the situation. The future is to be written. »