Living wage, benefits & learning opportunities for Michelin employees

Michelin has introduced a number of measures aimed at fostering “social and societal cohesion.” The company intends to guarantee all Michelin employees worldwide a ‘living wage’ and ‘universal social protection floor’. It is also implementing what it calls a ‘lifelong learning approach’.

When speaking of a living wage, Michelin refers to the concept set out in the United Nations Global Compact, to which the company has been a signatory since 2010. A living wage is defined as remuneration enabling each employee to provide for their family’s essential needs, such as food, housing, transport, children’s education, healthcare, while also providing for unexpected events and buying consumer goods. Michelin Group will guarantee all its employees a salary at least equivalent to this living wage.

The Fair Wage Network takes into account the fixed components of employee remuneration, and earlier this year, the non-governmental organisation certified Michelin as a Global Living Wage Employer. This certification attests that all employees, excluding those employed by companies recently acquired or in the process of being sold, receive remuneration at least equivalent to the living wage.

Social benefits in 3 key areas

Implementation of the living wage complements the current deployment of a universal social protection floor as part of the Michelin One Care Program. The programme provides a package of social benefits to all Michelin Group employees worldwide, focusing on three priorities:

• Offering time to welcome a child, with the introduction of at least 14 weeks maternity/adoption leave and four weeks paternity/adoption leave at full pay.
• Protecting the family of a deceased employee, with the payment of a death benefit equal to at least one year’s salary and an education annuity for orphans until the end of their post-secondary education, regardless of the employee’s length of service.
• Providing access to a healthcare programme for all employees and their families, through healthcare coverage including not only hospitalisation or emergencies, but also maternity care, consultations and outpatient treatment.

Permanent access to learning

Providing details of its lifelong learning approach, Michelin states that continuous training has always been a “central focus” of its social policies. Faced with the accelerating transformation of work life and jobs, the company has overhauled its continuous training offer by developing a lifelong learning approach that aims to foster its associates’ employability. Each year, Michelin will dedicate more than 240 million euros to training.

The ambition is to go beyond training in the event of a specific need or job change to offer all Group’s employees easy and permanent access to learning throughout their career. This project will build on the development of The Talent Campus, Michelin’s 2022-opened company university. With its 1,000 teaching contributors, The Talent Campus already offers all employees, regardless of their level, training courses in a range of technical, scientific, managerial and behavioural fields.

In addition to unlimited access to an online training catalogue spanning 55,000 modules available 24 hours a day, The Talent Campus will build upon its training engineering expertise to develop online and classroom courses to meet employees’ aspirations and the company’s future needs.