Alexandre Gérard, CEO of Chronoflex, saw his successful company collapse during the 2009 crisis. On the brink of bankruptcy, he was forced to lay off around forty employees. He then decided to transform his company's organization to empower his employees. But how to align profit sharing with these new individual responsibilities?
January 7, 2012 marked the beginning of a revolution for the company, which took a leap forward armed with post-it notes and working groups composed of diverse employees. Meanwhile, Gérard embarked on a journey around the world, his childhood dream, leaving his company and employees to self-determine. Sounds pretty cool on paper.
The employees must therefore together find an answer to one of the most essential questions: how to devise a fair and equitable profit sharing in an organization where employees are each autonomous and responsible at their level?
Recognition now comes not from the title, but from competence. "Before, my team was at my service, today, it's me who is at theirs," says Richard Thebeaud, former technical director turned team leader.
The "Well-being" group tackles this issue and leads a 9-month experimentation project to propose an adapted variable remuneration system.
This reflection on the variable part of the remuneration leads to the following distribution proposal: each technician earns an individual bonus corresponding to 15% of the margin generated by their individual performance, another corresponding to 15% of the margin generated by the collective performance of their team, and finally a bonus every 6 months of 15% of the margin generated by the entire company. This last bonus is also offered to all employees.
This distribution is based on the P&L (Profit & Loss) linked to each technician's truck, which is used to measure their performance.
But for employees and technicians to be able to manage their individual performance and profitability, they need to understand the ins and outs.
This is where the transformation of the former CFO's role comes in. He now dedicates part of his time to explaining the figures to the employees.
Beyond understanding their profitability, operators are able to see the impact of their commercial actions (which are now their responsibility) on their results and those of the company. This allows them to make the right decisions and activate the right levers to contribute to their own success, that of their team, and that of the company as a whole.
A technician employee shares that he earns an average of €200 more per month thanks to this new system. After one year, the company's turnover increased by 15% and absenteeism decreased, which may not be solely attributed to the new remuneration system, but to the overall transformation.
