Our practices are evolving to reflect our scale

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Inside Ardian

Our practices are evolving to reflect our scale

  • 02 July 2024

  • Private Equity

  • Talent

Reading time: 4 minutes

    The company’s rapid growth has required us to attract large numbers of talented people to join Ardian across every department. Our priority now is to build the conditions for everyone to thrive.

    Talent Retention

    Talent Retention

    Over the past three years, Ardian has competed successfully to hire new talent. We have doubled our headcount to more than 1,000 people as we structure the company to execute our growth plans and have attracted candidates from a wider range of backgrounds. Having succeeded in hiring a more diverse group of new employees, one of the most important priorities of our HR strategy now is to ensure that they stay at Ardian, develop their skills, and build a long-term career with us.

    To succeed in this, we must fulfil the promise of Ardian’s Employer Brand – “We invest in you”. Providing a comprehensive induction process together with ongoing training and  mentoring is essential. But we believe it is also critical to reinforce our HR processes, and to make sure that they are well communicated and understood.

    To generate employee engagement, you need consistency and objectivity.

    Maria Stasse, Co-Head of Human Resources

    Transparency and Objectivity

    Transparency and Objectivity

    Prioritizing transparency and objectivity will make clear that everyone at Ardian is treated in the same way and will strengthen feelings of inclusion within our workforce. We are working closely with managers to make our appraisal process more comprehensive. Combined with the skills framework we have developed, it will allow employees everywhere to have a clearer view on their career development.

    Better technology tools are key to making our HR processes more transparent and consistent right across the company, so we are implementing an HR Information System adapted to our scale to replace the processes we have relied on in the past. This represents a central element of our effort to ensure continuous improvement of our processes. It will help us ensure that all HR policies and practices are applied consistently in all our offices. It will also enable us to capture more information from our teams and help to develop the way we practice HR in areas including training, career development and performance evaluation. This implementation also gives us an important opportunity to become a more datadriven department and to focus more effectively on the company’s strategic development.

    Support for Managers

    Support for Managers

    Ardian intends to provide greater support for managers across the company, including the introduction of dedicated training programs. Managers are the first point of contact in helping employees develop their career and gain the training and experience they want. Equally, they play a vital role in helping us identify and nurture people with the potential to become future leaders within Ardian.

    Ardian is moving to annual recruitment planning that sets out hiring conditions a year in advance. This will require managers to consider the company’s strategic objectives and develop hiring plans that reflect them. In April 2024, we are therefore launching People
    Conversations, under which we will support managers in developing their departmental plans, talk about recruitment and review the skills of the people in their team and decide how best to develop them.

    We are shaping a future where progress and fairness go hand in hand.

    Flavie Jean, Co-Head of Human Resources

    FOCUS

    HOW WE ADVANCED THE I&D AGENDA IN 2023?

    In 2020, Ardian started working on Inclusion & Diversity by developing a global strategy. Since then, we have started concrete initiatives focusing on diversity at large. In 2023, we have expanded our focus by working on disability and sexual orientation. We have launched a comprehensive policy addressing disability at work to encourage employees to notify Ardian of disabilities and access support. We also joined Out Investors, an international network of private investment professionals that promotes inclusion irrespective of sexual orientation.

    To strengthen the inclusivity of our work environments, we provided training on microaggressions and on how to provide inclusive feedback for managers. Improving Ardian’s gender balance remains a key concern and we were delighted to receive the France Invest Award in October 2023 rewarding our efforts in trying to promote gender parity and acting as an ambassador in the French private equity industry.