Cristina Mancas, Schneider Electric: “The values ​​are what we want to live both inside and outside the organization”

“Organizational culture is not an abstract concept; it is made up of people. It is not an object that we buy off the shelf and put in a company. I can’t see myself working anywhere else because of the people I found at Schneider Electric.

Culture is not a concept that we can copy from another company, things don’t work that way. At Schneider we have an internal platform through which every employee, regardless of the department they work in, can report ‘near misses’. We like to listen to our colleagues and we like to reinvent ourselves. Schneider now is completely different from the Schneider company where I joined 9 years ago. The people are the measure of an organization’s culture, and the leaders are the ones at the helm,” Cristina Mancas, Human Resources VP SEE, Schneider Electric said during People Empowering Business Forum organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“This year we changed the values ​​for the entire company globally. The request came from us employees, but also from the board. For us, values ​​are not things that we write on a wall or in presentations with the company logo. Values ​​are what we want to live both inside and outside the organization. When I say inside, I mean my colleagues. When I say outside, I mean those who can become our colleagues at Schneider.

We wanted to choose something simple and that will have an impact, so our slogan is “impact starts with us”. If we put good bricks in the foundation, then the building will grow beautifully, meaning the company will be successful.

We don’t just evaluate KPIs, that balance scorecard, the things that we all know we have to do in a multinational company. We look for colleagues with behaviors similar to ours, but we also introduced an element called my contribution to the success of others. That is, I don’t turn my back and say <<it’s not my job description>>. If you struggle on your own, things don’t work out as well as when you work in a team.”