Employees well-being

Ambition

For six generations, people have been at the heart of the Hermès business model and the company’s activity. Hermès has extremely high standards when it comes to the quality of its working conditions. High-quality working conditions are essential to ensure employees continue to develop their skills and full potential, and to give meaning to their work. It is not only a question of health and safety but of implementing best managerial practices and creating working environments conducive to the well-being of every individual (on production sites, in shops and in offices).

Organisation

The Executive Committee supervises the actions carried out for the benefit of Hermès employees, with the support of the group human resources department as well as subsidiary human resources departments worldwide and the internal communications department. In France, social dialogue is managed by a Group Committee and a Social Dialogue Monitoring Commission. Each entity supervises operational actions at its level, through Committees for Health, Safety and Working Conditions  and Social and Economic Works Committees. A group Ethics Committee has been set up to provide advice and recommendations on the group’s culture and ethical practices and to collate and handle any alerts (H-Alert).

Objectives

The well-being of its employees is a priority in the company’s operational strategy. In order to create sustainable and meaningful jobs, the group has made commitments concerning:

Health, safety and well-being at work

A policy has been put in place to prevent accidents at work, occupational diseases and musculoskeletal disorders. Another policy aims to keep people in work in the case of such problems.

Working hours

Managed by each entity in compliance with the regulations in force and according to the particularities of its activity, working hours take into account a desire to respect the balance between personal and professional life, in particular through the implementation of flexible working hours in the French entities.

The health crisis has greatly increased the use of teleworking. During the two periods of lockdown, it is estimated that more than 4,000 employees worked from home. They performed extremely well and showed themselves to be highly committed, which helped limit the impact of the crisis on projects and deliverables.  Given that 84% of the workforce are craftspeople and sales associates, the challenges of teleworking have been less significant than in other industries.

Social dialogue

Hermès continually strives to implement and guarantee high-quality social dialogue and freedom of expression for its employees. Harmonious labour relations are strengthened in France by the group agreement on social dialogue and the exercise of trade union rights, which is regularly made use of both locally and centrally.

Remuneration

Remuneration at Hermès consists of different individual and collective remuneration tools. In addition to fixed salaries, individual and collective bonuses and paid holidays, the group has introduced performance-related and profit-sharing schemes, depending on the country. A long-term initiative is the employee share ownership plans that have been allocated to all group employees worldwide.

Social benefits

Remuneration is supplemented by health insurance and welfare schemes, including voluntary social security cover to complement the mandatory legal schemes, implemented as soon as possible and in line with local market practices; a comprehensive maternity policy, which includes full retention of basic pay for a minimum of 16 weeks’ leave and 100% coverage of maternity-related health costs; and a supplementary defined-contribution pension scheme for all eligible employees in France.

Management system

Within the framework of the regulations in force, the group human resources department implements management procedures and coordinates the action of the human resources departments in the subsidiaries and entities. The Hermèsphère intranet helps to strengthen internal communication.

For industrial operations, the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) network, which is made up of some twenty employees, meets several times a year to set objectives, share results and learn from the best practices of each of the métiers. Activities are supervised by a specialised external firm which carries out HSE compliance audits in the different units, spread over three years. An information system makes it possible to monitor and check compliance and to evaluate the safety culture of each site, thus covering the entire industrial activity of the company.

Discover how employee's well-being takes part in our strategy "All artisans of our sustainable development".

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• "Employee well-being"