ALTEN reviews

Thank you for you review. We are striving to create a collaborative and inspiring environment for all our employees so I am sorry to hear you feel that way. As a growing company, receiving feedback is a priority in order to ensure a long lasting development and we will continue to find ways to improve. I would like to address a few of your specific points here. No transparency: on top of the description of the role and responsibilities from the recruitment process and during the induction, each recruiter is provided with a yearly target letter that defines the performance expectations. This letter can be reviewed once a year to best reflect the needs of the business. If the expectations are not clear, there is always the opportunity to discuss it one to one with your lie manager. No reasonable benefits: depending on what people consider as “reasonable”, Alten provides a private medical insurance, a pension scheme, a travel insurance, a maternity cover, a long-term sickness cover, a cycle to work scheme to name a few. Working from home was indeed not part of our practises before the pandemic, however we have now obviously implemented it and I am sure you will understand that it is not your place to speculate on what the company intends to do in the future on that topic. Holidays: in the UK it is perfectly legal (and common practise) for employers to request their employees to take holidays if and when their offices are closed. So we don’t make it “seem like” we offer 24 days of holidays, our employees actually do get 24 days of holidays. The number of days we request our employees to take over Christmas varies from one calendar year to the other. Discrimination: if you were the witness or victim of any form of discrimination, I invite you to contact our HR team immediately so that we can launch an investigation. These allegations are serious and we do not take them lightly. Working culture: speaking in the name of someone who left the company to speculate about the culture is not something that we can take seriously and answer to. If you have any specific comments on the working culture from your point of you, I’ll be more than happy to receive and consider them. Finally, we appreciate your advice to management but this, once again, cannot be taken seriously considering the lack of accuracy of your statements. To be very factual, today the people operating under a V.I.E contract are coming from different areas (France, Spain, Italy, Greece) and they represent less than 5% of our headcount. We actually pride ourselves in being a very multicultural organisation, having more than 35 different nationalities in the company. In a nutshell, I can see that most of these topics are the fruit of a lack of communication and misinformation about the company. I actually identify this as an improvement opportunity. Your review tells me that: although Alten is striving to make sure all necessary messages, processes and policies are communicated on the most accurate way, it seems important to keep on getting better at it. On the longer run, I would advise you to tackle any issue/frustration at its ignition so that it does not become disproportionate.

Thank you for this detailed comment. ALTEN has developed its activities over the last 30 years following a pragmatic model based on both customers and employees satisfaction. Hence, receiving a review is a real improvement enabler for the overall organization and it is a pity to hear about some of your statements. While I understand the Business Manager position can be quite intense and challenging for some people, it is important to emphasize that it is built around entrepreneurship. As a Business Manager, you are the head of your own Business Unit, inside ALTEN. You are “in charge”. Being “in charge” means that you need to cover all the aspects of the development of a company from the recruitment of your team of consultants to the identification of new customers or the management of your Business Unit’s financial viability. Considering the responsibilities associated to the position, from your start in the company, you are associated to a Business Coach (your manager) who is in charge of giving you continuously: the tools, guidelines and support in order for you to be successful. In addition to the day-to-day support, your coach is effectively following-up your activity through KPIs enabling you to identify the areas of improvement you need to focus on. This approach enables you to enter into a continuous improvement mode, virtuous for your own skills and career development, regardless of your seniority level. As a Business Manager, you are as well an entrepreneur striving to deliver excellence to your customers and consultants, which is correlated to a strong follow-up of your activities. This follow-up is performed both remotely and in person, meaning that depending on the location and number of your different customers, you effectively need to travel within the UK. This close governance enables ALTEN to deliver a bespoke engineering service to its customers and tailored support to its employees. As a Business Manager, your performance is depending mainly on your ability to work with people and more specifically, with your identified “business partners”, namely: Recruitment team, HR team, Technical Direction, Finance, other Business Managers, Middle Managers,… and teamwork is simply the only way to succeed. There are no “self-made man/woman” at ALTEN. The environment being very dynamic, constructive feedback is welcomed at any time and provided by all seniority levels in the company. I am sorry you had to face some levels of discomfort in that regards. If it is the case, we encourage each employee to escalate any misunderstanding to his/her management, who will launch corrective actions. Finally, while ALTEN was effectively born in France, more than 50% of ALTEN Group’s activities are spread across 24 different countries focusing on local and international recruitment. Thus, diversity is one of the strength and pride of the company. ALTEN UK HQ is actually composed of people coming from more than 10 different countries, creating an healthy and vibrant working environment. Thanks again for your feedback and I am sorry you did not seem to enjoy your stay in the company. Please be sure we will take this into consideration and continue to strive to offer the best experience to all employees.