In November 2022, Orpea presented a three-year restructuring plan, as the French private services provider (elderly, nursing, psychiatric, and ongoing health treatment), struggles to deal with the serious difficulties that the publication in January 2022 of Les Fossoyeurs (The Gravediggers) brought to light and most notably as regards how elderly nursing home residents were reported as being mistreated. During her meeting with mind RH, Fanny Barbier, Orpea’s freshly appointed HR head (October 2022), provides details about her priorities going forward, namely as regards structuring the HR department, restoring social dialogue, recruitment, training, etc. After discovering and understanding the scale of the task ahead, the HR head is giving herself time to restore the group's image as an employer (72,000 employees).
What was the situation when you arrived as head of HR at Orpea?
First of all, I saw, both in Orpea’s operations establishments and here at the head office, employees who were extremely committed in the sense of being dedicated to their work and their convictions, and in their determination to “save this company”. I also saw people who were exhausted at corporate level by a succession events including the cyber-attack, the Covid-19 pandemic, and then the ‘book ‘(Ed. note: Les Fossoyeurs, Victor Castanet, Fayard, January 2022). People were also disappointed to see just to which point the previous team of managers had led them and the company. Staff felt disappointed, betrayed and shocked, not least because some of them had even witnessed the investigation searches (raids).
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Article authors
Antoine Piel
Section Head at Mind HR