Aiman, hello, hello. I am delighted to be with you today and thank you very much for giving us a moment for this interview. With great pleasure, we are at the heart of this COMEX Insider episode dedicated to the Legal Department of Capgemini. You are an emblematic CEO of the C40. Why? Because you have a career, you have done everything here. You arrived for the first time, I think, in 1991, you had a first period, you left, you came back, and for 20 years you have been VP, in charge of strategy, operations, even Group CFO, and you are CEO of the group. A first word perhaps on this journey within the group which is ultimately your home.
That's true, that's true. I have spent many years, I think I will soon reach 30 years in the group. Obviously, when you have a group, you are attached to its values and culture. I think that's the strength of Capgemini — the values and culture, and our ambition from the start is to help our clients use technology in their transformation. That's what we have done for over 50 years and will continue to do in a world where technology is evolving.
And what is your vision of this great digital transformation challenge that affects absolutely everyone? It was perhaps the domain of a certain category of companies before, but now the world is going there. And also with increased regulation on topics from payment to HR onboarding, it's everywhere. What is your vision of these great challenges of digital transformation?
It's an evolution. It's about the role technology plays. Initially, IT services were very focused on the CIO and internal efficiency: how to make finance, HR, logistics, procurement, sales more efficient, how to make better decisions. What is evolving today is that technology has entered the customer relationship. The channel and customer relationship became digital through the web and mobile. So we entered that customer relationship to improve services, deliver more value, accelerate sales efficiency. Now it is entering everywhere. In parallel with this digital transformation, there is the sustainable transition. How do you see this sustainable transformation and how do you organize it within a group like Capgemini?
First of all, it is fundamental. I think it is necessary. We started a long time ago, since 2016, we set our first CO2 reduction targets for the group, and we achieved them 10 years early. We took new commitments. We were among the first companies to get SBTi certification on the new standards in 2022, with a commitment to reduce emissions by 90% by 2040. Because net zero is a 90% reduction in our scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. So it is a fundamental change.
I imagine it was also important to evolve the group towards this discourse for your own employees.
Of course. Today, 40% of the people we hire are young talents coming out of university, and it's very important. We have a very young population, average age around 32-33 worldwide. So we have many young people with strong expectations. But we do it not only for them. It's important for our employees, for our clients, and for society in general.
I was making a transition because you mentioned the average age. We know that there are more than 350,000 employees worldwide. How do you see the issue of talent, in terms of the market, the pool, the training that evolves in different countries and geographies?
Especially, we train new talents because most of the time, talents in new technologies do not exist. So we are a training school. We train talents who later leave and feed the rest of the economy. For example, in years of high growth like 2021-2022, we hired nearly 140,000 people per year, and half of them were fresh out of university or without any training, and we trained them because there was a shortage of resources. So is there a shortage of talents in digital and sustainable fields? Absolutely. We are not producing enough, so there will be strong demand. We need to accelerate training, and training is not only for engineers; it's also for people with 2-3 years of training focused on specific skills like data management, cybersecurity, software development. There will never be enough engineers to feed this new digital and sustainable economy.
You mentioned social diversity since you take people from different backgrounds, engineers and people without degrees. There is also a huge pool: the feminization of your profession.
