Why Skills Expire Every 3 Years in Tech (and What HR Must Do)
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Vincent Lecerf, Executive Vice President, Human Resources at Orange, to unpack how purpose, diversity, and skills become real business levers inside a fast moving telecom and technology environment.
Vincent explains why serving communities is not brand marketing, it’s an operating model, from safer phones for children to digital education for seniors, and why HR must integrate DEI directly into strategy, governance, and incentives, not treat it as a side initiative.
Most importantly, he shares how skills expiration, inclusive leadership, and AI acceleration are forcing CHROs to rethink reskilling cycles, leadership accountability, and how change happens with people, not to them.
🎓 In this episode, Vincent discusses:
How diverse teams drive innovation and inclusive AI
How Orange embeds DEI directly into business strategy and incentives
How AI acceleration changes HR’s role from policy owner to skills architect
Why skills expire in three years, not decades, and what HR must do about it
Why community service and inclusion strengthen brand trust and performance
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00:13
Vincent, how are you doing, my friend? I'm doing great, thank you very much. Nice to see you. You didn't bring me a phone? No, yet. Not yet. So I'm going to get interested in the story. Because I wanted to know whether you would like an iPhone or an Android. When I was younger, my first provider was Orange. My phone. And don't tell me you have switched to another provider. I'm not going to say that on camera. Okay.
00:42
Yes. Don't tell me. I'm going to say I plead the fifth. Okay. Where are you based? In London. Okay, okay. Basically, the brand comes from the UK, as you know. But the...
00:58
We've left London, as you know, a few years ago. When I was younger, everyone, all my friends, everyone had orange top-up cards. But we love some of this brand and the color, so it's very distinctive. Even now, though, right? Anyone from definitely my generation, everyone knows the brand. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure of that. Is that carried through to now when you interview people or when they think about working for you? Yeah, I think the brand has a special flavor. Very strong.
01:27
and it's very human. And if you look at the way we communicate, you don't see a lot of technology and stuff, but you see more people, the way they interact, the way they communicate, the way we can make a difference. And the way you can reach people, right at the moment, more than other providers, because the network is better, because the service provided is kind of safer, especially with cybersecurity, with the services we provide. So at the end of the day, it makes a difference.
01:55
Yeah, definitely. And it's something that I feel like you build a lot of loyalty and trust. Also, when you think of the brand, and let's go into our topic of questions today, you serve the communities around. So I grew up in East London, and the orange shops, they were part of our community. And as we talk about DEI,
02:18
that your brand became synonymous of as a brand. You know, serving the community is really part of our DNA, meaning that the purpose is we want to be responsible, take care of the people on the planet. So in very concrete terms, that means that not only provide very good service, but we make sure we provide specific solutions, for instance, for our young kids.
02:41
When parents are kind of stressed because their kids ask them for a phone, but at the end of the day, they don't want them to go spend a whole day on social networks or to be exposed to things they should not see. We have introduced new solutions, what we call Safer Phone, where basically parents can help and control
03:03
and they can build a contract. And so we take care of the community. We also educate young people around coding, around the digital universe, but we also bring some education to older people or people who are less familiar with digital world to help them to deal with that. And that's very, of course, good for the brand, but that's really good for the community. And even when you look at about HR,
03:33
we want really to promote diversity, including in the tech functions. And you know that you don't have that many girls in engineering schools. And what you do, and you know,
03:47
the very moment where people make a decision, would I be an engineer or not, the young girls, it's not at 18 or 20, when they are 10 or 12. So many of our own employees go into schools and explain why those type of jobs are great, why engineering is good for girls as it's good for boys, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, we really take care of the society and not only of our customers.
04:15
And at the same time, though, we also have to, from an equity point of view, provide access for these young kids to be able to do that because it's expensive in many ways, in some spaces. Yeah, that's right. So we have sometimes special prices or second brand to provide good access with the best quality access with the best network at a lower price. Yeah. It's a secret. Don't tell too much because the person will buy. It's only a few people. Oh, yeah, yeah.
04:45
How have you integrated your DEI strategy into your ESD strategy? I think it's very important to understand that, first, because of our purpose, the DEI strategy is really integrated into our key strategic priorities. Meaning that if you want to be serious about taking care of the people, making sure you offer safe connections, making sure that... Yeah, you...
05:15
We respect all your customers. You have to integrate that into our policy. So that's the way we market products. But for D&I, obviously, that's also very important for all people. And the starting point is that there is genuine belief within the company that diversity and inclusion makes a difference, not only in terms of respect, not only in terms of doing the right things, but in terms of business efficiency.
05:45
Very concretely, if you imagine you are looking for the best candidates, would you decide just to consider only half of the reservoir of talent? No, you would consider the whole talent reservoir, including girls, as well as boys. Same thing, if you look at efficient teams,
06:04
Research has demonstrated that diverse teams are more efficient than non-diverse teams. So at the end of the day, what kind of decision do you make? You favor diverse teams, especially with young generations being attractive,
06:19
to younger generation candidates. Basically, having a true D&I policy makes a difference. It matters. They may choose us instead of those girls because of that. That's why we're able to attract more young girls from entering schools than the number of students that are
06:44
in percentage that are being graduated from those schools. So, D&I is really part of our daily practice. It makes sense, makes a huge difference. Just to give you a few illustrations. We employ worldwide 124,000 people, 35% of this staff
07:07
is female, 65 are male. For the leadership teams, we are at 36 person, meaning proportion well more female at the leadership positions than for the whole population. And if I look at the executive committee, it's 40 person. And my CEO is a woman.
07:26
And that's one of the four women who is leading one of the top 40 French gloves companies. So it's genuinely, it makes sense.
07:38
It has been done over the years. We have been conducting many initiatives around that, around recruitment, the way you select the panel of candidates. We have been launching many initiatives like what we call inside a woman up. That's programs where we select ladies that we really help to grow and develop with thanks to mentoring, some to training. We've been communicating a lot around
08:09
and conscious bias,
08:10
We've been training many leaders around that. So at the end of the day, there are many practical initiatives we've been taking around that, and that makes a difference. Yeah, I love that. And I think also you mentioned around the diversity, not just from the lens you just said, but also in terms of the innovation that brings sort of organization into your products. Yeah. Into your solutions and the way they approach different problems, right? Quite frankly, yes. Diversity gives you a different perspective on things. If you have different approaches,
08:40
with different backgrounds, you will innovate in different manner. Certainly. And that also can be very important to, for instance, to develop what we call inclusive AI. When you develop inclusive AI, of course, you must get rid of the bias when you code. But just imagine, if part of your team, which is coding, is made of female, naturally they will take care more
09:10
they will take more care of that concretely. They will make sure that what they are coding makes sense also from the diversity standpoint. So yes, in terms of innovation, we integrate that at the very beginning, plus we think that that will bring fresh, different ideas. Yeah. What are the biggest challenges in terms of scaling inclusive leadership? Because I found many companies find this quite a challenge.
09:39
Well, it's very much a matter of education. It's a matter of training. It's a matter of leading by example. Having a female CEO, having a very diverse executive committee makes a difference.
10:03
but also you must not tolerate behaviors that are not tolerable, for sure. You must educate a lot around that. And yes, it's important to educate because quite frankly, for a manager, that's sometimes easier to hire people like you. Yeah, that's easy. And when you say, okay, but if the team is diverse, you're going to be more efficient. Yeah.
10:31
it's going to take more time to explain everything and I'm used to those persons and okay, it's going to work. Quite frankly, you've got to insist sometimes. Yeah. Have you linked that back to how their performance reviews? Definitely. So that's part of our... Otherwise, you're not going to drive the change, right? We have diversity and inclusion KPIs included into the short-term performance reviews
10:57
and bonuses. So basically we measure the percentage of women in leadership positions and every leader has a part of his bonus linked to that. We review that in detail in every department. It's not kind of a name and shame process, but still. Yeah, of course. That's something you look at. That's also part of the long-term incentive plan.
11:27
So where we measure also these diversity aspects. So yes, it's included into the bonus scheme, that's included into the objectives, that's included in many initiatives that leaders have to take. I must say also that this is included into our management training modules and in our values. Our first value is, we've got three values, caring, responsible, and bold. In caring, basically,
11:57
the diversity inclusion is very much included. And responsible too. Yeah, I love it. As you look ahead, what are you most excited about? The diversity inclusion or more globally? Both. Well, the key thing is that Orange is operating in a fast-moving
12:19
technological environment. Things are moving extremely fast. Just look at what you are doing every day with your phone and what you were doing five years ago. Yeah. You've been... You're doing...
12:31
way more things today. And the technology is evolving all the time. What you see on your phone, but what's behind the screen, it's moving extremely fast. So it means for CHRO that the key stake there is to make sure that you always adapt the skills of your people to the new stakes. Knowing that the skills they have today
12:56
will not match the needs of tomorrow in three years' time, not in 20 years' time, in three years' time. So the reskilling part, upskilling part, the evolution of skills and competencies is really paramount. If you can do that also with talent that is diverse, that's even way better. So that's my biggest challenge. So we are living a very exciting moment. And just imagine that with AI,
13:25
Things are even accelerating and we have to anticipate that. For instance, that means we've trained 55,000 people around AI over the last two years. That means that we have built our own AI tool and we have more than 90,000 people using that on a regular basis.
13:46
We have created a bunch of ambassadors and we have many use cases. So we know that things are accelerating and that means that you can make it with the people, with a clear,
14:02
common agenda with the people or against the people. We are playing the game where we want to make it with the people. Letting them grow, educating, training, letting them experience that. And I think that's going to make a huge difference in terms of responsibility, in terms of ethics, and at the end of the day, in terms of performance.
14:25
We're sighting times ahead. Yeah. I appreciate you coming on. It was great. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you very much for welcoming me. And as I said, the brand is close to my heart. Okay. As a child, like my first ever phone. And don't forget, it should be also your present phone. Yeah. No, we'll make it. But you come back to the UK. Yeah, I will. I will. If I come back to the UK, then it will be my phone. Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much. It was great.
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Vincent Lecerf, Executive Vice President, Human Resources at Orange.