David Puls outlines how Alstom is harmonising benefits after buying Bombardier
In February 2021, Alstom acquired Bombardier Transportation, almost doubling our workforce to about 75,000. Both companies manufacture rolling stock, but in different locations. More and more people want to travel by train, and cities are growing in size.
Bringing the two companies together and continuing to grow are our main objectives. We are recruiting as fast as possible to meet our needs across the 60 countries in which we operate. We need a lot of engineers and manufacturing staff with specific skills, such as welders.
But it’s a tough market to recruit – and retain. Last year, we needed to hire 10,000 people. But we lost 6,000 people to natural attrition. We also need to harmonise employee benefits and improve engagement and motivation across the workforce. Rising salary costs and pensions liabilities remain a risk.
We are two years into our benefits harmonisation programme, and I’m also focused on misalignment with the benefits market and employee expectations. We are transparent if we fall below the market median for certain benefits, and make it clear how we plan to deal with that.
There is also a big workstream focused on any inequality of rewards. We are addressing any unfair differences in pay or benefits between different groups. Reviewing the benefits policies to make sure we have one policy in each country has been really important. Ensuring countries are complying with our single global benefits policy is a major task.
