The Tandem program: empowering Orange Wholesale’s talents to break the glass ceiling

As part of its ESG and Corporate Social Responsibility commitments, Orange Wholesale actively supports the fulfilment of all potentials within the organization. Every year, the Tandem mentoring program helps dozens of talented staff break the glass ceiling with an advanced mixture of individual mentoring, peer trainings and group exercises. As the 2024 edition kicks-off, sponsored by Orange Wholesale International’s CEO Emmanuel Rochas, results of the 2023 program show rising satisfaction from all involved parties.

A full program to empower Orange Wholesale women

The 2023 edition of the Tandem mentoring program empowered a great diversity of women all across Orange Wholesale, helping them expand their telecom careers and embrace new levels of seniority or skillsets.

More than a simple mentoring program, Tandem works as a real community as it involves careful matchmaking to create effective mentoring couples, group sessions to dig deep on common concerns and year-long follow-up by the organizing team, as well as sponsoring by prominent executives to help spread the word.

In detail, mentees of the 2023 edition benefited from:

• One-on-one meetings for the mentee/mentor couples with complete confidentiality guaranteed, allowing mentees to receive guidance on how to overcome their most personal difficulties,
• Small group sessions for mentees to share experiences, challenges, tips and boost networking,
• Large group behavioral trainings with guest experts.

More satisfaction, more participants

A poll conducted with all participants of the 2023 edition of the Tandem mentoring program showed clearly encouraging results:

• The mentoring and personal development aspect was rated 4.3 on a satisfaction scale of 5,
• Overall satisfaction about mentors was rated 8.5 on a scale of 10,
• 85% respondents met with the mentor at least 6 times,
• Only 3 mentor/mentee pairings out of 60 were reshuffled at the request of either of the two participants, validating our matchmaking skills.

Benefits were clearly praised by the mentees in open-ended verbatim, as 93% respondents declared a significant career development, 64% a boost in self-confidence, and 36% a valuable networking experience – with some declaring more than one of these benefits. Another unequivocal result is that 46% more application were processed for the 2024 edition of Tandem, which will involve 60 mentor/mentee pairings.

Alongside with our other initiatives on inclusiveness in wholesale telecom, the Tandem program clearly helps Orange Wholesale reach its 2025 feminization rate targets in tech (25%) and management teams of (35%).