Please meet Géral­dine Soulié, 51, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er in charge of Inter­na­tion­al Man­pow­er Resources and Rela­tions at the Renault auto­mo­bile Group. She is a qual­i­fied mechan­i­cal engi­neer with over 26 years’ expe­ri­ence in the auto­mo­tive sec­tor, cur­rent­ly in charge of inter­na­tion­al social dia­logue, man­ag­ing and coor­di­nat­ing the Renault Group Works Coun­cil. How does she see the rise of women in man­age­ment positions?

Since 2021, Géral­dine Soulié has been in charge of the rep­re­sen­ta­tive body for all Renault Group employ­ees in Europe and else­where in the world, com­pris­ing around thir­ty del­e­gates who rep­re­sent some fif­teen coun­tries. Her pro­fes­sion­al career has tak­en her through a num­ber of very dif­fer­ent spe­cial­ties, from pur­chas­ing to qual­i­ty and engi­neer­ing, via safe­ty and HR, whose human dimen­sion has always been a source of inspi­ra­tion and moti­va­tion for this woman whose dri­ving force is to learn and act. She is also an advo­cate for greater rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women man­agers. «Women are still under-rep­re­sent­ed in tech­ni­cal and dig­i­tal pro­fes­sions and even if the quo­tas imposed by the Rix­ain law are aimed at cor­po­rate gov­er­nance bod­ies, it is impor­tant to con­tin­ue to devel­op a proac­tive approach in this area at all cor­po­rate lev­els, whether it be in terms of recruit­ment or career build­ing and progress, mon­i­tor­ing the progress of gen­der bal­ance in teams and man­age­ment com­mit­tees enables us to pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to women man­agers and exec­u­tives, and to over­see their devel­op­ment,» says Géral­dine Soulié, the Renault Group always ensur­ing equal treat­ment for men and women. In any case, after more than 22 years’ expe­ri­ence with­in the group, this is the con­clu­sion Géral­dine Soulié draws in terms of treat­ment, devel­op­ment, pro­mo­tion and career paths.

Boosting women’s careers at Renault

Numer­ous actions have been imple­ment­ed with­in the Group to pro­mote diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, inte­grat­ing all tal­ents so that every­one can make their con­tri­bu­tion under the best pos­si­ble con­di­tions, for the ben­e­fit of both indi­vid­u­als and the com­pa­ny. «It is based on the Diver­si­ty & Inclu­sion Department’s strat­e­gy, which rests on four pil­lars: guar­an­tee­ing fair and respect­ful treat­ment, offer­ing an inclu­sive work­ing envi­ron­ment, sup­port­ing inte­gra­tion and devel­op­ment and increas­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of diver­si­ty. These four pil­lars are inter­de­pen­dent. To guar­an­tee fair treat­ment, in addi­tion to the Zero Dis­crim­i­na­tion pol­i­cy com­mu­ni­cat­ed to all employ­ees and inte­grat­ed into all HR process­es, dis­crim­i­na­tion aware­ness pro­grammes have been set up through­out the Group, includ­ing cog­ni­tive bias train­ing for all employ­ees, inclu­sive man­age­ment train­ing for all man­agers, sur­veys to mea­sure employ­ees’ per­cep­tions of the inclu­sive­ness of their work­ing envi­ron­ment, etc.,» explains Géral­dine Soulié.

As for the devel­op­ment of women, sev­er­al spe­cif­ic pro­grams have been designed to sup­port them: men­tor­ing, coach­ing and train­ing pro­grams to boost their career devel­op­ment. The Women@RenaultGroup inter­nal net­work com­ple­ments the actions tak­en by the Group to pro­mote the vis­i­bil­i­ty of women and ‘sis­ter­hood’ for greater gen­der diver­si­ty with­in the com­pa­ny. The auto­mo­tive and mobil­i­ty sec­tor is under­go­ing con­stant change, and for Géral­dine Soulié, accom­pa­ny­ing the com­pa­ny in its trans­for­ma­tions offers many chal­lenges that she is more than ever ready and will­ing to tackle.

KD