Life After Graduate School: Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an important part of how both large and small graduate employers operate, as environmental and social issues are increasingly seen as the responsibility not only of companies, but also of policymakers and non-governmental organizations.

If you land a job with a leading company after your graduate degree, CSR is likely to be something you will have to think about sooner or later. Caroline Nimmis is Vice President of Human Resources at Cap Gemini. She spoke with us about her company’s CSR policy.

QS: Could you briefly describe Cap Gemini’s business and its main activities? CN: Cap Gemini is a global leader in consulting, technology outsourcing, data center services, and business process outsourcing. We help clients transform their businesses through technology. Over the past ten years, our business has grown from 40,000 employees to 80,000 today. Cap Gemini is a global company headquartered in France. We have 21,000 employees in France. India is now our second-largest market by headcount, with 17,500 employees, followed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, each with more than 6,000 employees.

Good Business Sense

QS: What are the business benefits of Cap Gemini having an active CSR policy? CN: Cap Gemini is a knowledge services company. We need a strong brand and a reputation for genuinely caring about the people and businesses we work with. Our values are essential if our clients are to maintain long-term business relationships with Cap Gemini. Our brand and reputation are critical to our ability to recruit and retain talent. We want to have an impact on the wider communities where we operate. People are drawn to Cap Gemini because of our positive stance on CSR. We celebrated our 40th anniversary in 2007, and we are proud that “sustainable development” has always been a core theme for the company. We constantly encourage our people to make a difference in their communities and in their work.

Cap Gemini seeks to be recognized as a “thought leader” in sustainability. We help our clients become more sustainable in their supply chains, IT procurement, and IT systems architecture. Our clients recognize the need for sustainability, and they appreciate our genuine commitment to this business goal in both our advice and our implementation. As a publicly listed company, many funds and rating agencies prefer companies that are “socially responsible.” As a result, taking CSR seriously helps us access capital more effectively.

Energy Efficiency

QS: Can you give some examples of how Cap Gemini implements its CSR policy? CN: Everything we do is focused on CSR and sustainability. Our aim is to protect the environment. Our offices are designed to be carbon neutral. Our client solutions are energy efficient, with grid computing, optimized server capacity, modern system setups, and tools to measure our carbon footprint. We have cut travel significantly through video conferencing, reducing trips from Mumbai to Utrecht by 30% in just the last year. Cap Gemini also raises strong internal awareness of CSR issues through our internal news video channel. We have dedicated features on sustainability, as well as regular executive interviews discussing CSR initiatives. We are genuinely committed to engaging our employees around the world and ensuring that our shared values are understood.

QS: Where is Cap Gemini’s growth coming from, in terms of regions and services, and how does that affect your CSR initiatives? CN: Cap Gemini is growing all over the world. Our fastest growth is happening in markets such as India and China, where we have many of our centers of technical excellence and where major CSR challenges also exist. Cap Gemini can play an important role in stimulating awareness of CSR and sustainability in these markets. In India, our 17,500 employees are an educated elite who can spread our CSR initiatives. Our Indian employees are our most enthusiastic and engaged on this topic. In China, we are involved in an increasing number of CSR conferences, and CSR is now at the forefront of the agenda there. Our graduate recruitment in China is also actively involved in the CSR policy of our Chinese business.

Impact on Recruitment

QS: How has this growth affected your recruitment needs at graduate and MBA level, and what kind of people are you looking for?

CN: We recruit graduates and a smaller number of MBAs in most major countries around the world. Because of our distributed delivery model, our recruitment profile differs from country to country. In India, we hire 200 graduates every week, mainly with computer science backgrounds, who go into system development and application management roles. We look for similar talent in Brazil, Argentina, and Morocco, where they serve Spanish-, Portuguese-, and French-speaking clients. In France, the UK, and the US, the focus is more on business consulting, front-end design, and implementation roles, which require stronger client-facing and interpersonal skills. We also recruit MBAs regularly for consulting roles. In Poland, we look for graduates with finance and management backgrounds to work with our business process outsourcing teams. Elsewhere, our recruitment profile is fairly mixed.

QS: How does Cap Gemini coordinate recruitment across so many markets and target such a diverse talent base? What training and development opportunities do you offer new recruits? CN: Most of Cap Gemini’s recruitment is handled locally, but several areas are coordinated globally. Compensation, for example, is set globally. Employer branding is coordinated centrally and then executed locally. CSR is an important part of our recruitment message and one that really sets us apart from many competitors. Our message to candidates is that Cap Gemini will “release your energy” by encouraging collaboration, teamwork, and CSR.

Cap Gemini also provides all new employees with an onboarding kit to ensure a shared induction process and reinforce our shared values. Our training commitment is extensive, not only through our internal corporate university, which has been running for ten years and was recently named the most innovative corporate university. More than 9,000 employees attend the university in France each year. We also offer more than 3,500 online courses for employees, supported by a knowledge center that enables us to spread knowledge quickly and keep our people at the forefront of thinking, technology, and social responsibility.

QS: Finally, is gender and diversity a major challenge for Cap Gemini? CN: Diversity is a huge challenge for Cap Gemini, as it is for all our competitors. Attracting enough women is particularly difficult. Our business in Norway is roughly 50/50 male and female at all levels, they have a very good business, and they score highest in our employee satisfaction survey. We are working to increase diversity in other markets and to raise the number of women in our senior management team. We have joined the European Professional Women’s Network, and we take part in the QS Women in Leadership Forum, but we are always looking to do more in this area.