Successful mobilization for equal opportunities by Renault’s After-Sales Department

Two kinds of activities implemented for the students

The Renault After-Sales Department identified a range of complementary actions, to provide a better understanding of the business to these young people and show them that they have a role to play.

- Activities to introduce the students to the world of work : group visits of the Cergy manufacturing site by some fifty middle and high school students, “shadowing module” for some twenty students to spend a day individually with a DAV staff member and his team whose job particularly interest them; and talks by DAV personnel in which they describe their career and their work (engineering, logistics, finance, sales, etc. …) and have open discussion on key issues such as finding the right university or “grande Ecole”, financing studies, career.

- Activities to help young people develop professional attitudes : summer jobs lasting between one up to two months at the Cergy and Flins sites; an apprenticeship contract for one of them in the Sodicam Parts and Accessories sales subsidiary; and the launch of the first partnering program for high school graduates conducted by the DAV director to provide better job orientation.

A key role for the after-sales staff in the partnership

Talented people are found in all milieus, but sometimes they lack contact with the world of business. This is why the Renault After-Sales Department (DAV) decided to get involved in this program and introduce the many-faceted activity of after-sales at a major automaker to students attending schools in the département of Val d’Oise, north of Paris, where the DAV has a large replacement parts warehouse.

Many DAV employees have volunteered to take part in this partnership program. All of them underline the richness and quality of their exchanges with the students, as well as the need to keep on developping more  opportunities to gather.

Action to foster greater social diversity in higher education

Set up in 2002 to promote equal opportunities, the program “Une Grande Ecole: pourquoi pas moi?” [A top school: why not me?] has the objective of giving young people from modest social and cultural backgrounds the means to succeed, notably by attending the best institutions of higher learning. Students from the business school ESSEC work as tutors with selected students at schools in the département of the Val d’Oise to support their personal and academic development during their final three years of high school. Employees from Renault help out on the professional side by broadening these young people’s vision of the possibilities open to them.

This partnership joins other corporate social responsibility initiatives like “Un avenir ensemble” [A future together] and “L’Ecole de la seconde chance” [The school of a second chance] that Renault has undertaken to help underprivileged young people get off to a good start in their professional careers.

Jacques Daniel, After-Sales Director, Renault

“In its partnership agreement with the ESSEC, the Renault After-Sales Department made a number of quantifiable commitments to encourage equal opportunity. We have met these commitments thanks to the fantastic involvement of our personnel. Now we have to do even more in the way of long-term actions, which are crucial to giving these young people better guidance in their higher education and thus to offering them the best chance of getting off to a good start in the professional lives.”

 

Renault After-Sales Department