Agnès Solastiouk, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Air France, takes part in the NUMA feedback experiment. A look back at the Femmes Leaders program deployed in 2023, which was one of the pillars of the company's strategy to accelerate the professional development of its young and future female managers.

Hello Agnès, could you describe NUMA's mission in a few words?

Air France is a mixed company, with 46% of employees being women, but with disparities between departments, some of which have a high proportion of women and others less so. We also face the challenge of promoting women to positions of responsibility. It's against this backdrop that we asked Numa to train our new female managers, to give them the keys to becoming more assertive and proactive in their career development.

In what context did you deploy this training? And what specific challenges did it address?

In 2022, we signed our sixth three-year agreement on gender equality in the workplace. This is obviously a subject close to our hearts. And as part of this agreement, we had a number of ambitions, one of which was to promote women to positions of responsibility. For several years now, we have been running a program dedicated to women executives called Femme de Talent: pour un leadership authentique et assumé. It's aimed specifically at more experienced profiles, and gives them the keys to accessing the final steps, i.e. top-level positions within the company.

This program is working very well, and we wanted to take this approach a step further by supporting our employees at the start of their managerial or supervisory (non-managerial) careers. We therefore had a challenge with this population.

What criteria made the difference in choosing NUMA?

What really made the difference was your ability to listen to our requirements. We had a real exchange of views on our expectations, a real consideration of what we were looking for, with a real willingness on your part to adjust the program to be as close as possible to what we had in mind. All the while challenging us, of course.

What were the highlights of your experience with NUMA? What did you particularly appreciate?

From the outset, we benefited from attentive listening and genuine support prior to deployment. The idea was not simply to offer a standard training module, but to draw on what already existed (which was reassuring, by the way, as we weren't starting from scratch), and then to build together a version that was as well adapted as possible to our needs.

Secondly, I'd say Numa's support throughout the course. And last but not least, the coach who led the course had a very high level of expertise and was very comfortable with the subject of professional equality. She carried the group along very well! Feedback from participants was unanimous on the workshops, rating the course 4.8/5.

And what did they enjoy most about the various workshops?

This course gave them all the keys and understanding they needed to assert themselves and succeed in their jobs.

They have become aware of their strengths, learned how to exploit them effectively, and above all, how to put them into practice on a daily basis. As a result, they're ready to take action the very next day, with a concrete, real-world approach based on "test & learn".

In the end, was your objective achieved through this training program?

This training course is a first step on the road to professional development and the place of women in our company. It raised awareness of their skills, as shown by the final assessment in which each of them identified her own strengths.

This pathway provides a first foundation, but it is now essential to go further. This could involve other initiatives such as mentoring, individual coaching or co-development. What is certain is that this is the start of a long-term support process.
Our ambition is to involve more women in this program, in order to build a constantly expanding network. The success of this pilot group encourages us to pursue this initiative with other groups in the coming months.