The 2022 Best Firms to Work For: Publicis Sapient

Client Industries Served: Retail, Energy & Commodities, Financial Services, Health, Public Sector, Telecommunications, Media & Technology, Transportation & Mobility, Travel & Hospitality

CMAG: How would you say you've managed to stay among the industry's Best Firms to Work For amid these unprecedented times?

In consulting, navigating change is core to what we do. Whilst we have evolved over the last 30+ years (including during these unprecedented times), we continue to stay true to our purpose and culture as the foundation for the work we do and the kind of company we are.

As a purpose-driven digital business transformation company, our focus (now more than ever) is centered around our purpose, helping people thrive in the brave pursuit of next, and we are constantly thinking about how we enable that to happen through our work, in a way that produces better products, services and experiences for people. The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic made that purpose all the more urgent – for our own organization, as well as for clients whose requirements changed fundamentally and urgently.

Today, we see our purpose manifest in a number of ways:

• Clients–by partnering with them on their transformation journeys and helping them evolve, stay relevant and create the kind of impact they seek to have in the world
• Customers – by the work we do to make our clients' customers' lives better by delivering what they need more quickly and efficiently
• Our people – by creating an environment and opportunities for them to thrive

Our purpose orientation has been a powerful north star that connects the work of every member of our team to the impact they are creating, while our culture and core values shape the behaviors that differentiate what it's like working at Publicis Sapient from other companies.

I am incredibly proud of everything we as a company have achieved (particularly in these unprecedented times) through our relentless focus on our purpose and our commitment to creating inclusive & collaborative culture of partnership both with our clients as well as our own people.

As a testament to our strong culture and core values, Sapient is used as an example by Harvard and Yale of how culture can drive business success and impact.

CMAG: Were there any specific programs or initiatives (internal or external)  that contributed to you being a Best Firm to Work For?

We are a people business and people are our biggest assets. Over this past year (in particular), we have made significant investments around these three strategic pillars:

1) The Environment (creating a safe, inclusive and collaborative environment that enables our purpose and reflects our values)

2) The person (creating the ecosystem to develop, grow and retain our people and help them thrive)

3) The Experience (creating simple and seamless experiences for our people through our flexible work culture, creating processes and tools that are clear & transparent and creating a sense of pride and connection)

Here are a few of the many initiatives that we launched under each of our strategic pillars:

The Environment:

• Our overall orientation is to continue to create an environment where everyone can thrive and we have programs and policies to help create a more diverse and inclusive environment in which people can not only work happily and effectively but can see opportunities to develop and grow their careers within the company. For example, Spring, a program we launched in India is all about bringing back women into the workforce. It can be a huge challenge to retain women following life events such as marriage and raising a family because the industry generally creates an inflexible work environment that makes it too difficult for women to stay – limiting their career potential and our ability to retain key talent. Over the past year, we have hired more than 50 women following their career breaks – equipping them with the training and skills they need to get up to speed and reignite their careers. We have seen similar success in parallel programs for new LGBTQI people, as well as for people with disabilities.
• Additionally, we have several programs focused on people wellness. These include but are not limited to: An official Buddy Programme, over 25 trained Mental Health First Aiders, free access to the Headspace App, dedicated business resource groups aligned to a number of wellbeing focus areas, and a wide variety of annual events and workshops designed to promote holistic wellbeing including Blue Monday, Mental Health Awareness Week, Stress Awareness Month, Men's Mental Health Week, World Mental Health Day, Summer Fete as well as a wide selection of benefits that support our people wellbeing.
• We also host regular safe space conversations on a number of topics where our people can provide open feedback on issues ranging from career growth and challenges to topical issues happening in the world.

The Person:

• Having doubled our investment in learning & development, our biggest investment is and continues to be in our people. We are focused on the future of work, technology-based learning, and on having people with the right skillset, toolset, and mindset to ensure that learning is continuous and effective. To that end, we utilize a variety of bespoke learning tools including classes on Marcel – our custom-made AI platform that connects the 80,000 people across Publicis Groupe to opportunities, knowledge, and expertise. Amigo, our in-house created, AI-driven chatbot, acts as a digital facilitator for our learning programs, while Mentimeter & Mural allow for better engagement and collaboration in virtual sessions.
• Additionally, we have several other learning programs including Core (learning focused on core consulting skills curriculum), Craft (focused on respective crafts such as engineering, data analytics, product management etc.) skills learning programs and Industry specific trainings that are all focused on enabling our people to be successful in their current and future roles.
• Finally, and in order to create new avenues for growth and recognition for our people – we have several leadership development and rewards programs including the Fellowship in Transformation Leadership, the Accelerator program, the Next Generation Leadership Team (NGLT), School of Next, Aspire Awards and Core Value Awards.

The Experience:

• As a people-centric company, we continue to focus on creating an environment that is optimal for our people and allowing them to function what works for them to help them thrive. For example, in India, whilst we have four main campuses, we now have a total of 80 cities from which people can work as home-based employees. This flexible and hybrid work culture allows our people to work in both physical and virtual mini-hubs not just in India but also globally.
• Also, we have unique programs including "Circle" and "Industry Vertical Circle" for people working remotely in cities to interact (either physically or virtually) and network with colleagues which enables better connectedness and pride among our people.

CMAG: What's unique about your firm? What sets it apart?

Over the last few years (and especially the last two years significantly accelerated by the pandemic), we've seen a digital shift from being tangential to our clients' core business to being existential. As a result, we've seen a shift from clients wanting an integrator who could help them digitize a function or process to looking for a partner to help them on their journey to become a digital business.

As a digital business transformation company, what makes Publicis Sapient unique is our entire focus globally is on helping our clients transform into digital businesses. For us this means our success is not about the ability to implement a program or tool; it's inextricably linked to the ability to drive specific business outcomes and evolve products, services and experiences over time so that the business can be ever-relevant with their increasingly digital consumers.

We partner with established organizations to help them get to their future, digitally enabled state, both in the way they work and the way they serve their customers, helping them build both the capabilities and ways of working to continually identify and realize value at pace to drive transformation. We unlock value through a start-up mindset and modern methods, building solutions that fuse our SPEED capabilities: Strategy: developing and testing your hypothesis on priority value pools, Product: evolving at pace and speed, Experience: how can you enable value for customers, Engineering: delivering on your promise, and Data: validating your hypotheses and uncovering insights for constant iteration. It is our ability to create solutions that integrate our SPEED capabilities coupled with the depth of industry expertise that help us drive impact in a very real way –unlocking the real power of DBT!

CMAG: What's the top priority over the next 6 to 12 months?

We continue to see strong growth as we look to the rest of the year and going into 2023. A key aspect of our differentiation that continues to drive that growth is our ability to bring our SPEED capabilities together to drive strong outcomes for clients. How we do that is through a combination of our culture, our ways of working, and the investment in bringing in and nurturing the best talent within each of these areas. Our priority for the next 6 to 12 months will continue to be on advancing these areas so that we continue to build the strongest digital business transformation offering in the market while nurturing the kind of environment where the best talent can thrive.

CMAG: When you look at the remainder of this year and 2023, what excites you? What opportunities do you see in your future?

Today's companies are operating in a world of rapid change across multiple dimensions: customer behaviors, technological change, changing business models, and societal change. There's never been a greater time for companies to innovate and expand the impact they have on not only their customers, but the world around them. As our teams engage with leaders at our clients' organizations, we consistently see where they are increasingly taking a multi-dimensional approach to how they think about the impact their products, services, and experience can create in the world.

At Publicis Sapient we've always held a belief in the positive impact digital can have in the world. What excites us about the opportunities we see in the future is how powerful they are and how they resonate so strongly with our purpose: from the digitization of governments to building digitally- enabled, sustainable cities, to creating the largest FinTech offering in Southeast Asia, building the next great competitor to the likes of AirBnB, to name a few. The impact our work can have on creating a better experience and more opportunities for people across the world has never been greater. As too is the possibility for the kind of people experience we can create for the people within our company. It's those opportunities to create meaningful impact through digital business transformation that are most exciting.

CMAG: What impact do you think being a Best Firm to Work For has on the firm? Employees? Clients?

This ranking celebrates the extraordinary efforts and impact made by our people. It also recognizes our continued commitment to clients, their customers and employees, our people, recruits and partners.

In the context of the last few years, "Best Firm to Work For" has meant creating a sense of community across our 20,000+ Publicis Sapient people and 50 offices that enables them to stay connected to the business, our purpose, strategy, and each other during a period where client demand for our digital business transformation (DBT) has been exceptionally strong and our ways of working (and where we work) continue to evolve.

Throughout this period, our teams have gone to extraordinary lengths to work collaboratively, remotely, and across borders to drive impact for clients. Being recognized as a Best Firm to Work For in Consulting means recognition of that team spirit, collaboration and impact. It means recognition of our success in rapidly putting in place policies and systems that allowed our teams and business to continue to meet client needs, and in stepping up the communication to our people globally to keep them informed and supported through one of the most challenging episodes of most of our lives.

Above all, it meant celebrating the collective win of 20,000+ Publicis Sapient people in creating an inclusive environment where all our people can thrive while driving exceptional business and people impact through the power of digital business transformation.

CMAG: Thank you, and congratulations.