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Making the cultures fit after a foreign takeover
Keeping an ear to the ground: Veolia is keen for managers to spend time networking
In an occasional series, managers and staff explain how being acquired by a foreign utility can lead to a clash of cultures but a meeting of minds.
Annabel Andrews talks to Julia Cherrett, customer services general manager for Veolia Water UK, and Bruno Vinel, group financial controller, about what it's like dealing with the cultural clash that comes with a foreign takeover.
The target audience...
Julia Cherrett is customer services general manager for Veolia Water UK, formerly with Thames Water Services.
She says: It's probably politically incorrect to say it, but I think some cultural stereotypes do ring true. One of the things I've noticed is that coffee and lunch has a much bigger importance to the French people I work with than for the Brits. My boss, Frederic, will always end a meeting by saying: "Oh there are some lovely restaurants around here, go off in twos and threes and catch up and network." You can see the Brits are just panicking because they're thinking: "I've got too much to do, I was just going to grab a sandwich and a packet of crisps." I think it's genuinely been the intention to encourage sharing and informal networks, and I think the ex-Thames people have struggled with it a bit because it's counter-cultural. It's almost as if you're skiving. It doesn't feel right.
I think they've got a very French view of the world. Veolia is very serious in its intent to become more multinational - in practice that has tended to be more French or former French countries with a very strong culture, and they've been very interested to find out about business in the UK. What works well in France doesn't necessarily work well elsewhere.
For example, most of the customer service experience in France is on behalf of municipalities. In the UK, customers compare the service they receive from utilities with other commercial organisations, so I think there is a higher expectation. I think Veolia recognises the need to translate that across all the businesses, not just in Europe but across the world, particularly when some of the way that the contracts in France are structured is now being challenged politically. Veolia recognises that the most powerful voice in those political arguments is customers and if customers are saying we like our service provider then that wins.
Starting out in a new place...
Bruno Vinel is group financial controller for Veolia Water UK. He previously worked abroad for parent company Veolia.
He says:
I've been working for Veolia for the last 14 years. The last position I had was in Morocco. It was quite challenging - not the language, because they speak in French for business, but it's a different culture. People work in a different way.
I am discovering this huge, complex system of water regulation. I'm quite impressed with how it works. I can compare this British system of water regulation with the French way and also the Moroccan way. I see the big differences. What is very interesting for me is the importance of reporting and the control of the performance benchmarks here, which is probably a bit more fuzzy in France.
Even if there is some formal reporting done by the water companies to the municipalities, there is not this permanent challenge put on the water companies. They are not so much under pressure of permanent control, except for water quality. For customer service, for instance, here in the UK customer service has always been one of the important things the regulator controls, whereas in France it is something that ten years ago was just starting. We were just talking about commitments of quality of services being implemented in France, so there is this huge difference in terms of quality of service. Now it's evolving a lot in France.
I'm used to working in French, and also in Spanish, because I worked in Spain for seven years. But I've not had much experience of conducting work in English. I worked for one year for Veolia in Mauritius, where the official language is English, so the meetings and official reports were in English. But day to day people speak French or Indian or Creole, so I was already exposed to the experience living in a country where people speak a different language and sometimes you don't understand what they say.
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