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2013 ANNUAL ACTIVITY AND RESPONSIBLE COMMITMENT REPORT
RETAIL
LOCAL JOB CREATOR
SINCE 1959
With more than 120 jobs and
10,105 stores throughout the world,
Carrefour provides many employment
opportunities, welcoming people with
different profiles to work in its stores,
and always seeking to recruit local
people as a priority. Recruitment and
training provides social mobility to
several thousands of people each year.
And, aware of the social responsibilities
that it has, the banner provides 93.4%
of its employees with permanent
contracts, giving them the job security
they need and confidence in the future.
The Group enters intomany partnerships
with schools, universities and
professional bodies so that it can look
ahead and facilitate the recruitment
of future talented people. In China,
for example, Carrefour entered into
agreements with 30 universities in 2013,
and should recruit around 1,000 young
Chinese graduates over the next
three years.
And to support this ambitious policy,
the Group continues to invest heavily
in its recruitment schemes. In Brazil,
for example, it has selection centres in
a number of different regions, located
as closely as possible to its stores,
which welcomedmore than
100,000 candidates in 2013. All of this
is evidence of the efforts to which
Carrefour goes in order to attract the
retailers of the future. In France, the
teams in charge of recruitment receive
more than amillion CVs every year.
For 2014, they expect to recruit more
than 7,000 people on permanent
contracts and 5,000 on work-study
training courses. To go even further,
Carrefour has just launched its 100%
mobile recruitment site, featuring
a unique account system so that
candidates can apply for jobs directly
from their smartphones.
FROM A RETAIL TO AN
ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET
The Group also draws its dynamism from its franchise partners who run some
of its stores. Carrefour provides its franchisees with all the support they need.
This involves sharing its expertise with them at all levels (purchasing, logistics,
communications, etc.) as well as in offering management-lease solutions through
which they can acquire a store over several years. The franchisees can give
free rein to their management skills and entrepreneurship, maintaining a close
relationship with their customers and responding to their needs. Clear and robust
foundations for a win-win partnership and a long-term relationship built on trust.
their skills, the better able they will be to
advise customers, talk to them, and draw
inspiration from their comments so as to
improve what’s on offer in the store. Being
able to show initiative is what underpins the
retail mindset at Carrefour.
TAKING THE INITIATIVE
Carrefour has implemented a decentralised
organisational structure in which respons-
ibilities are delegated to people as close to
the field as possible and in which managers
in the store can be autonomous when it
comes to operational issues. They can
detect and promote talented employees,
organise their departments as they see fit
and communicate and stage events, enter
into contracts with local suppliers and
deploy tailored offers, without forgetting
their involvement in the local community in a
range of different ways (support for asso-
ciative events, sponsorship, contribution to
economic and environmental projects, etc.).
Through such commitments, they are able to
better anticipate local changes and keep
pace with the local ecosystem.
STRONGER TOGETHER
Needless to say, the expertise and auto-
nomy that everybody has in the jobs they do
are even more effective when they fit in
and work in synergy with others. Carrefour’s
retail mindset is also about collective intelli-
gence and the ability to group people with
different skills, talents and profiles together
within the same team. Working together as a
team is essential for ensuring product offers
that are high-quality, varied and competitive.
For the most part, this depends on a steady
flow of information between the front-office
(stores) and the back-office (purchasing,
logistics, IT systems, etc.). Carrefour there-
fore constantly strives to simplify and shorten
the supply chain, bringing it as close as
possible to the stores, with cross-functional
teams comprised of department and section
managers, buyers, logistics experts, trans-
porters and warehouse managers. Through
this multi-disciplinary organisational struc-
ture, stores can be more responsive and
adjust their purchasing capacities and the
Group’s logistics to meet the requirements
of each.
The retail mindset is also built on on-going
discussions and the construction of long-
lasting partnerships: with franchisees, to
develop our store network and establish a
presence in new locations; with schools,
universities and professional bodies in order
to perfect the training that we give our
employees and foster future talents; with
the stakeholders that operate in a region in
order to contribute to balanced develop-
ment and generate employment; and, need-
less to say, with suppliers in order to provide
customers with choice, low prices and high
quality. Because customer satisfaction is
always the ultimate aim.