Bureau meeting on February 16, 2022
20.04.2022
Koen Hermans, head of Group Social Relations and Hedi ben Sedrine, Secretary of the AXA EWC, welcomed the participants for the last time from a distance before, hopefully, meeting in person for the March meeting. February is an important month for the Group as it is the month in which the Group's results will be published.
Smartworking workshop
During the November plenary session, Thomas Buberl, CEO of the AXA Group, asked for the participation of European representatives in the Group's reflection on smartworking. Kirsty Leivers (Head of Culture, Inclusion and Diversity within the Group HRD) and Laura Anssens (Head of Employee Experience and Culture) organised a workshop on this topic for our meeting, prior to a Group Management Committee meeting dedicated to smartworking.
Kirsty says there are conflicting lessons to be learned from the last two years:
- AXA can work remotely
- In this situation it is more difficult to get employees on board remotely and to maintain the social link
An exchange between the representatives and the management then began on the directions to be given to smartworking, in particular its impact on employees. Many ideas and points of attention were synthesised by the EWC representatives to be reported to the Management Committee.
AXA in Africa
Hassan El-Shabrawishi, CEO of AXA Africa, member of the AXA Africa & Asia Management Committee and member of the Group Management Committee, and Latifa Saïd (HR Director of AXA Africa), present the African market to the EWC representatives. AXA in Africa has 2,800 employees (average age 35 years, with an equal share of men and women). AXA is present in Morocco, Egypt, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon and Nigeria for 5.8M customers. The growth rate reached 10% for a turnover shared equally between health, property and casualty and savings. It is the 2nd largest insurer on the continent, in the top 5 for each country. The dynamism of the continent, driven by a young population, makes AXA's relationship with Africa a success.
Hedi ben Sedrine remind that social dialogue as we understand it in Europe can be very different on another continent. It is important to understand how this dialogue works before trying to see it from an European perspective.
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