Introduce yourself in a few words

My name is Flaubert VUILLIER, I m 49 years old and I ve been working in HR for over 20 years. I studied law and got into HR by playing Boggle (a game that no one under the age of 20 could possibly know). I was HR Manager at Club Med, then HR Manager at McDonald s, and HR Director of the Sushi Shop group. More than two years ago, I created La Manufacture RH based on a conviction: a company s greatest asset is its human capital, what some call the company s lifeblood. The most complex function is the one that looks after this lifeblood: the HR manager! So I help these HR managers achieve their objectives by recruiting all the HR functions in their team and coaching HR Managers to develop their leadership skills.

What do you see as the next big challenges for HR managers?

The list is long, but I m thinking of :

o The ability to get a community of employees who work remotely to work together. What makes the difference between a successful team and another is the common project, the feeling of contributing to it and making a difference. This feeling can be undermined when people don t share a common daily routine and only see each other by videoconference. The HR department needs to recreate this feeling of working together.

o The relationship with work and the company is also one of tomorrow s challenges: how employees experience their company since it arrived in the middle of their living room. The return to the office is very divisive, between those who are for it and who smile in the morning traffic jams, and those who have taken on a new rhythm and want to avoid reliving the office and its perks. How is the company going to manage all these specificities? The answer lies in the hands of the HR department.

o Managing the post-crisis state of mind of employees, with questions such as: "What sense do I give to my career?" "What relationship do I really have with my manager?" "Are the values I m advocating being lived out on a daily basis?

o Adapting resources to the company s economic situation, and more generally, communicating the economic situation to the employee community. Life is set to pick up again, and there will be plenty of questions, whether from staff representatives or from employees themselves. The important thing will be to provide answers, and HR departments have a real role to play here.

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‍Employee well-being is central to a company s success, so what can you do to help improve it?

Well-being at work, yes! But let s not confuse the issue. The real issue is well-being in the workplace, and to improve it, we need to work on the following topics:

o The quality of the work the person feels they are doing

o the organization in which the work is carried out

o the tools available to do the job

o The interactions they have with the people around them

o Employees career development

On the other hand, I don t believe in the theory of happiness at work, which creates more frustration than anything else. That work brings fulfillment, yes, but that employees seek happiness in it, I wouldn t go that far.

There s no denying that HR tech is driving the individualization of relationships and the empowerment of employees. Do you think this is a step in the right direction?

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Yes and no... Yes, if we look at it from the angle of empowerment, i.e. the empowerment of each individual, which is something virtuous. And certain solutions or tools enable us to work on the community of collaborators and on bringing people and skills closer together.

No, because I don t believe in magic tools. Man is a social animal who needs human relationships, and we can never rely entirely on tech tools. Human beings are not always where we expect them to be, and this complexity cannot be managed by tools alone. The human hand and, above all, the human voice still have a bright future ahead of them in HR and management.

Do you think that HR players are ready to improve the monthly salary system and give employees more flexibility?

HR players are pragmatic, and they know how to adopt what brings them a solution. I worked with employees in the UK. They were paid on a weekly basis, and that got me thinking. Why not provide this flexibility and give employees direct, faster access to the fruits of their labor? I ve known two companies where advance payments were a regular way of working for employees. But while these instalments bring a lot to employees, they often generate an administrative burden, and any solution that preserves the benefits by removing the constraints will quickly be adopted by HR players.

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