BSB signs a partnership with Coca-Cola European Partners

Interview with Ronan Kervadec, Employer Brand & School Relations Manager at CCEP

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BSB has just signed a partnership with Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP), mainly on HR dimensions. An opportunity to ask a few questions to Ronan Kervadec, Employer Brand & School Relations Manager at CCEP, to tell us about this win-win partnership that combines BSB with a new big name in the business world.

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Can you introduce CCEP to us in a few words?

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We are the world's first Coca-Cola Company bottler. Our mission is to produce and distribute drinks from the Coca-Cola group, i.e. fifteen brands including famous names such as Fanta, Sprite, Monster or Capri-Sun. In France we have five factories, which produce 90% of the Coca-Cola group's drinks sold in France. On this French market, we are the leader in soft drinks with 20% of the market share. We have 2,500 employees across the country, with jobs in factories, at headquarters, as well as salespeople.

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Our main business challenge is obviously to remain market leader, by mainly using two levers: by capitalizing on the Coca-Cola brand, which is widely known and recognized; and by diversifying, as we did recently with the acquisition of Tropico, or by launching for the first time this year an alcoholic drink, Topo Chico.

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But our challenges are also linked to CSR since we also want to be leaders in this area, thanks to a policy called “In Action”. It is deployed through six main themes: drinks, packaging, packaging, society, water, value chain and climate. We are also particularly attached to this last point since we have the great ambition to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040.

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Why partner with BSB?

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This partnership already formalizes an existing reality a little more, since we realized that we were already recruiting a lot of interns, apprentices and BSB graduates! With this agreement, we can go further. Partnerships with top schools allow us to go beyond the impact of our brand, which is certainly powerful but not sufficient to attract the best talent.

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It is important for us to target schools to continue building the company of tomorrow, and in this BSB corresponds 100% to what we are looking for in terms of employee profiles, but also in terms of values and relationships. What I appreciate about BSB is the quality of listening, and this great ability to adapt to our requests. They really help us find the profiles we are looking for.

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Such a partnership also allows us valuable visibility among future talents and allows us to discover the reality of our jobs — for example thanks to the interventions I do at BSB. We benefit from the academic excellence of the School, while the School benefits from our professional excellence: it's a win-win! Finally, there is another asset to our partnership: BSB's territorial positioning in the Grand Est region, which is very relevant for us.

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What are you looking for in a graduate from a Grande École de Management?

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Obviously we are looking for skills, which of course depend on the positions in question. At BSB, we are going to focus on commercial and marketing profiles instead. But we are committed to ensuring that candidates can benefit from other experiences, whether related to the job or not: any experience is often good to take... and to value!

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We are looking for a desire to learn, curious and passionate people. For a commercial profile it is important to have the fiber... commercial! In any case, this can make a difference in maintenance. We sometimes meet candidates who want to join us just because we are Coca-Cola... That's good, but it's not enough: it's also important to want meaning in what we do.

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What is your general HR philosophy?

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All our positions are open to everyone! We have a real creed around diversity and inclusion, with a strong desire to avoid any discrimination. We try to get minorities to talk, in particular through five thematic working groups on disability, gender, ethnicity, age and sexuality.

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We also want to create real career paths, by keeping people with us for a long time. Today our average length of service is 13 years, which is considerable. 40% of our recruitments take place internally, for example I myself am a former intern! But we don't want these career paths to be predefined: we're going to look for personality rather than skills to develop these paths internally, with employees who do very different things throughout their careers in the company.

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Finally, we pay particular attention to the quality of life at work. It is essential that people feel good in their work environment, that they feel committed to the company, that the interaction between professional and personal life is as smooth as possible.