Talent attraction and engagement

As a fast growing and inclusive high-tech leader, recruiting and retaining the best talent is a critical cornerstone to supporting and sustaining our business growth ambitions. We aim to be recognized as a market-leading, attractive, people-centric organization; an innovative employer where entrepreneurial spirit, feedback, cooperation, responsibility, and leadership are the norm. 3-3

Enhancing employee experience

Our business growth ambitions depend on our ability to transform and adapt to challenges. In 2022, we launched our company-wide transformation program called Horizon. This aims to positively transform the experience of everyone at ST throughout every stage of their career, thanks to a simplified process and new digital tools.

Horizon addresses many aspects of the professional journey:

• leadership and culture
• talent acquisition
• onboarding/offboarding
• performance management
• learning and development
• career, internal mobility, and competency management
• well-being

Reinforcing our leadership culture

We strongly believe all employees are leaders and role models for the Company, and that success comes not only through what we do, but how we do it.

Our leadership model represents a set of common behaviors across the organization that capture our values of people, integrity, and excellence, while also driving ever-increasing levels of performance to meet our strategic ambitions.

This model is not only being embedded into all our people processes (talent selection, assessment, development, succession planning, and performance management) but also into our daily work at all levels of ST.

Revitalizing our employer value proposition (EVP)

In mid-2023, we launched a project to refresh and reinvigorate our EVP, to support our ambitious growth goals, to build awareness of these goals with our target talent market, and to enhance our attraction and retention strategies. 

We started with primary research: 

• 7 regional workshops covering all our ST regions: Italy, France, India, EMEA, Americas, Asia Pacific, and China
• 32 leadership and newcomers’ interviews 
• 8 human resources (HR) focus groups 
• 740 participants in a conversation-survey with our people 

The objective was to discover insights from across the globe and build a 360° view of the organization. This initial discovery phase allowed us to ensure alignment with ST’s current transformation. It also ensures we continue to align the internal reality with the EVP messaging to manage external market expectations and showcase what makes ST different from our competitors. The aim is to develop a consistent and accurate portrayal of what it is like to work at ST – and why people should choose to join us. 

To help attract talent, our people act as ST ambassadors during external events, such as campus fairs, job fairs, and conferences, as well as on social media. ST ambassadors share their experience as employees, showcasing our opportunities and promoting ST as a great place to work. 

In 2023, we continued to build strategic partnerships with universities and engineering schools throughout the world to ensure a robust and healthy pipeline of candidates, while also establishing education pathways to respond to our specific skills needs. During the year, we collaborated with 53 strategic academic partners globally and over 250 sourcing partners. 

We also launched the ‘ST student job world tour’, a series of video testimonials from interns and graduates who have experienced working at ST. The videos aim to inspire future talent by demonstrating the diverse career paths we offer.

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Student job world tour

In 2023, we launched the ‘ST student job world tour’ as an innovative approach to attracting and retaining talent. The series features video testimonials from interns and graduates who have gained practical experience at ST through internships, PhDs, and other opportunities. The videos provide a glimpse into their daily life at ST and offer a chance to explore various aspects of the Company’s culture. Participants from many countries and regions, including France, Italy, India, Singapore, China, the USA, and Switzerland have contributed to the series.

The student job world tour is designed to engage a diverse group of students, including internal and external candidates from different backgrounds, genders, and roles. It also showcases the different career paths available at ST and our Company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. The videos are available on our intranet and social media, allowing prospective candidates to gain a deeper understanding of ST and envision a career with us.

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Developing and supporting our talent pool

We aim to offer our diverse workforce a rewarding career experience, providing flexible opportunities for growth and development, as well as transparent processes for advancement and progression.

To support this ambition and build on our progress in recent years, we established a new center of excellence for end-to-end talent management in 2023 to engage, empower, and enable our workforce. We also launched a new performance management approach to bring greater objectivity and consistency to how we recognize and reward performance. This is supported by 300 regional change ambassadors and dedicated training for more than 4,000 people managers.

Each year, we have a goal setting process for employees, followed by a mid-year goal review. This helps ensure that objectives are clear, relevant, and achievable. We have incorporated the pillars of our leadership model into this process to encourage employees to demonstrate these behaviors in their work. Performance is evaluated annually. To complement this, we have implemented a ‘continuous individual feedback for development’ program. This provides an efficient way to help employees progress and offers a collaborative and holistic approach to team management.

In parallel, we are continuing our journey to digitize the talent experience, including the processes around recruitment, onboarding, learning, and development.

2023 involved a focused effort to build knowledge and awareness of our new leadership model, which helps to frame the expectations of leaders across the organization, including more than 40,000 employees participating in relevant awareness and development sessions.

We also accelerated our rollout of digital learning solutions covering a mix of themes from diversity, equity and inclusion to leadership development and technical and engineering topics. Our approach included internally developed e-learning (34,700 employees engaged) and leveraged growing partnerships with external providers, such as LinkedIn Learning (12,300 employees engaged) and Coursera (1,000 employees engaged). Overall, we delivered more than 88,000 digital learning hours across the organization. When considering our entire development portfolio, we provided an average of 49 training hours per person in 2023.

Our commitment to embed the leadership model and support succession planning was further enhanced through coaching activities. This included the delivery of 158 individual coaching programs, with female participation boosted through our ‘Advanced Women in Leadership’ and ‘Coach Her’ initiatives. In addition, 36 ‘Team Up’ team coaching sessions were delivered to foster collaboration and improve organizational alignment.

In our 2023 succession planning process, we extended our efforts to cover all senior management, going beyond the president and executive vice president roles. We are now well placed to focus on business continuity, further grow the succession pipeline, and foster a culture of growth and career development.

Achieving the full potential of our people

Listening to our employees

As our employees are at the heart of our success, listening to their feedback and input is essential to evaluate progress towards our transformation and growth.

Our 2023 employee survey consisted of 75 questions covering key categories including engagement, organizational agility, quality, and customer focus. The global participation rate was 87% of employees and the overall engagement index was 86%. This is an increase of three points on 2021 (when our last full engagement survey was conducted), and one point above the Global High Performance^{(1) th} Benchmark (75^th percentile score).

Overall, we saw positive trends in most categories, including organizational alignment, direct manager support, and employee experience. In particular, the results showed a six-point increase in ‘receiving feedback that helps me improve my performance’ and 87% of employees ‘would recommend ST as a great place to work’, four points higher than 2021.

We regard the survey as a critical source of information to identify opportunities to better understand and meet the needs of our evolving workforce. We have embarked on an action-planning process across regions and functions to ensure we analyze and understand the vital input it provides.

Once again, in 2023 we were independently awarded ‘Top Employer 2024’ in both Italy and France by the Top Employers Institute.

Considering the voice of the younger generation

By the end of 2023, over half of our employees belonged to generations Y and Z, and by the end of 2025, they will represent 75% of our workforce. It is crucial to listen to their perspectives to enhance employee experience and make ST an attractive and engaging place to work. With this in mind, we launched our ‘Blossom’ program three years ago to enable younger employees to voice their opinions, offer their ideas, be creative, and share their expectations.

In 2023, the Blossom network successfully organized 56 events. This included 14 meetings between groups of ‘Blossomers’ from around the world and our President and CEO, as well as 23 meetings with ST Presidents and Executive Vice Presidents. These regular exchanges between the Blossomers and senior management are crucial for ST as they allow our leaders to gain a better understanding of the expectations of generations Y and Z. This, in turn, helps us take follow-up actions to keep these generations engaged, as they are the future leaders of our Company.

During the year, Fabio Gualandris, President of Quality, Manufacturing, and Technology, met with Blossomers during his site visits to several countries, including France, Italy, and China. These visits provided open discussion and feedback on various aspects of the organization. As a result of these discussions, an action plan was launched, targeting key areas such as careers, collaboration, and innovation. We plan to incorporate the feedback received from Blossomers into concrete actions that will help us continue to improve and grow as a company.

Alexandra Viaud

Extra-financial reporting, Corporate Sustainability

As a member and ambassador of the Blossom network at ST Rousset (France), my job is to understand the expectations of the younger generation of ST employees. Our 2023 survey revealed the importance of issues such as career evolution, mobility, and sustainability. I’m proud to have helped build a roadmap for 2024 to engage employees on these topics and build a sense of belonging at ST for all Blossomers.

Enhancing quality of life at work

We believe that hybrid work can improve quality of life and help us to attract and retain talent. We have introduced a company-wide framework for flexible working arrangements. This allows employees to work from home or other locations, in accordance with local regulations.

We understand the importance of supporting the well-being of our employees. Our STCare program, among other initiatives, offers a range of resources which help promote a healthy work-life balance (see Health and safety).

In addition, we have introduced a new parental leave policy which supports new families and protects their rights (see Labor and human rights).

Compensation and reward

Our compensation and benefits policy is a critical part of our employee value proposition, supporting our growth and recognizing the contribution of our people.

We offer a short-term incentive scheme to almost 23,000 employees. As well as rewarding operational performance, it also recognizes the achievement of our sustainability objectives through a dedicated sustainability index focusing on four of our priorities:

• health and safety
• environment and climate
• diversity and inclusion
• people management

The same sustainability index applies to every ST employee, including senior management.

The sustainability index is also one of the three criteria for our long-term incentive (performance stock awards) scheme. In 2023, we increased the number of beneficiaries in our long-term incentives scheme by more than 1,300, to include more young and entry-level talent.

Appreciation and recognition

In 2023, we celebrated the 30^th edition of the ST Annual Recognition (STAR) awards, recognizing more than 2,000 employees. This edition of the awards fully reflected our leadership model, with the creation of a leadership award and the inclusion of leadership criteria in several award categories. Innovation being essential for us, we also celebrated our Innovation awards, which recognize three categories of innovative achievements: extraordinary competitive advantage patents, high potential inventions, and technical papers.

Contributing to the SDGs

Our commitments and programs described above contribute to UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

SDG target 4.3 – Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical vocational and tertiary education, including university.