Digital transformation lies at the heart of Orange’s strategic plan and its promise to be both a “digital and human employer.” The company is a pioneer in launching ambitious programs aimed at developing digital practices and culture among its employees. The objective: to onboard everyone—regardless of their job, role, age, or level of digital maturity—so that each person becomes an active participant in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
What are the challenges of Orange’s digital transformation?
In a world reshaped by digital technology, Orange seeks to leverage digital tools as drivers of transformation to support progress, enhance quality of work life, and foster employee development. Its ambition to be a “digital AND human employer” involves supporting every employee through this transformation, relying on proactive programs launched as early as 2014 and intensified over the past two years to adapt to a VUCA world—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous—that demands speed and agility. In September 2016, Orange became one of the first companies to sign an agreement formalizing this commitment and its intent to onboard and support all its employees in this digital transition. This agreement strikes a balance between seizing opportunities (facilitated collaboration via the internal social network, improved workspaces, or customized employee experience) and safeguarding employees by anticipating the potential risks linked to the use of digital tools.
What are the main challenges associated with this transformation?
With a symmetrical approach to stakeholder care, Orange aims to offer its employees an experience as enriching as that of its customers, by placing its culture of innovation and digital expertise at their service. However, expanding the use of digital tools is only one aspect of the challenge. The other, more complex and long-term, is cultural. It involves evolving our ways of working, managing, and behaving across all areas of the company, in step with technological and societal changes—especially the “Y generation’s” expectations for a new relationship with work and the company. Ultimately, the goal is to simplify our operations and foster collaboration to transform our customer relationships.
What are the objectives behind your cultural transformation programs?
Our first awareness program was built around three pillars:
- Communication to raise awareness about the transformation’s stakes, help employees understand and promote the products and services we offer, educate them about social networks, and alert them to the appropriate use and risks of digital tools.
- Training, a key lever—though not the only one—for transforming skillsets. It provided a new, autonomous path to digital learning, supplementing training from our business schools and Orange Campus for managers.
These goals were supported by the launch of Orange Digital Academy, enabling every employee to acquire a common foundation of digital knowledge through an interactive, self-paced digital curriculum. As a result, X out of 75,000 Orange France employees obtained their digital passport. MOOCs like “Decode the Code” and COOCs, such as those on community management skills, enhanced the offering.
What about the third pillar?
It’s all about testing and experimenting—cornerstones of our employer promise to ensure useful skills for tomorrow, foster collective agility, and encourage individual engagement. Based on the strong belief that hands-on experience is highly effective for embracing change, we created various spaces where employees can try out new collaborative, creative, and open work methods: code rooms, digital labs, a Work Lab, and a “Corpo-Working” space—Villa Bonne Nouvelle, which has expanded to other Orange sites. This lab operates in “seasons” and brings together internal project teams, startups, and freelancers in a community of around sixty residents working through collective intelligence processes.
Our internal social network, Plazza, available to all Group employees since 2015, also helps break down internal silos by encouraging sharing, engagement, and collaborative exchanges across professions, hierarchical levels, and business units. Today, it hosts 9,000 active communities at Orange France.
You also launched an innovative network of “digital ambassadors”…
This initiative ensures that no employee is left behind. It stems from two commitments formalized in our 2016 company agreement: ensuring each employee has the time needed to master digital tools autonomously; and facilitating peer knowledge sharing and skills transmission. It embodies both digital culture values and our digital and human employer model.
These 1,000 digital ambassadors, guided by about 100 lead ambassadors, are volunteer employees driven by curiosity, an interest in digital tools, and a desire to share their experience—and learn collaboratively. With manager approval, they devote part of their work time to training peers on practical usage topics beyond those covered by the Digital Academy: social networks, Orange apps, connected devices, Hello Show innovations, employee digital environments, etc. We believe this network is a genuine lever for our transformation, promoting values of sharing, solidarity, and intergenerational cooperation.
What other recent initiatives have been launched?
They are numerous and diverse—because variety allows us to engage the many different employee profiles that make up the richness of the Group. Digital tools help us tailor approaches to the interests and work styles of each demographic. A few examples: to build tomorrow’s digital skillsets, we’ve launched training and awareness initiatives—even internal retraining programs—focused on data professions, design thinking, and agile practices.
Two key initiatives offer a new digital learning experience through digital tools:
- Orange Learning, which provides a new learning experience. Every employee becomes an active participant in their own skills development, accessing training anytime and on any device.
- Learning Expeditions for managers, designed to draw inspiration from innovative practices outside the company.
To strengthen our innovation culture and intrapreneurial spirit, we launched the OZ employee innovation program in late 2017. It allows anyone to submit ideas for continuous improvement or innovation, participate in team challenges, and apply to join the Intrapreneurs Studio, our internal incubator for innovation projects. We also created La Petite Fabrique, a program tailored to the “Y generation”: employees under 30 with a drive to change the world, focused on experimenting with simpler and more effective internal work methods. Soon, we will launch a pilot project where Orange employees immerse themselves in startups. Conversely, we are testing startup-provided solutions on emerging topics such as building a feedback-sharing culture.
Enabling everyone to be surprised, to explore different approaches, to test, replicate, learn, and share cultures, and to take initiative—these are essential levers for continuous learning and adaptation, bringing our teams along in the revolution we are currently living through.
