The AXA European Works Council, with union representatives from AXA operations in Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK is being held in Bristol.

The UK delegates are asking Group President Henri de Castries the following questions:

1.As big companies such as Accenture, JP Morgan and PWC move away from performance reviews, are there any plans for AXA to change the way we do Performance Management?

2. As the UK Government announces that companies should be publishing salaries and bonus differences between females and males, how confident is AXA that we are paying employees fairly with regard to gender. Will AXA have to manipulate bonus amounts so that they reflect a fair spread between females and males?

3. Do you know how many people are working flexibly across Europe? Do you look for trends by country at how many flexible working contracts are there, are some countries doing better than others?

4. Travel to work forms part of working hours- time spent travelling to and from first and last appointments by workers without a fixed office should be regarded as working time the European court of justice has ruled- potentially AXA could be in breach of working time regulation, what plans has the company got at a European level to combat this?

5. When will AXA be brought into 2015, and issue smart phones and tablets as standard to those job roles and grades warranting the use, instead of old Nokia’s and blackberries – again the higher levels have them?

6. What plans have AXA got to improving systems to ensure we do not keep losing business days as has happened throughout Europe in the last few weeks?

AXA’s European Works Council is meeting in Warsaw with employee representatives attending from Belgium,  France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Group CEO Henri de Castries addressed the employee representatives, telling them how the group had delivered solid results in 2012, that there was encouraging momentum with the company was on track with AXA Ambition and that he was now planning towards 2030.

Delegates raised a number of issues with him including the global economic situation, youth employment, cost reduction, offshore operations, social dialogue, global IT and bank operations and corporate social responsibility.

The UK delegation asked the CEO questions on cost management, gender equality, his participation in the Bilderberg Group and pensions.

AXA’s European Works Council is meeting at the group headquarters in Paris with employee representatives attending from Belgium,  France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Group CEO Henri de Castries gave a generally upbeat message on AXA‘s global position despite the worldwide economic crisis before facing questions from delegates on a range of subjects from AXA‘s profitability in Europe, dialogue with employee representatives, lean management and the AXA Ambition project.

AXA Group President Henri de Castries was challenged over the alleged sacking of several workers at AXA‘s offshore centre in Morocco for being union members by French EWC delegates.

De Castries responded that he had been advised that the workers in question were members of an illegal trade union and had resigned not been dismissed. However, due to the difference between the information received from Morocco he agreed that he would investigate the allegations and respond at the September EWC Bureau meeting.

AXA’s European Works Council is meeting in Rome with delegates attending from Belgium,  France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and the United Kingdom. Group CEO Henri de Castries addressed the employee representatives, explaining his vision for development of the group with much emphasis on technological evolution, especially the need to embrace the opportunities of the internet. He feels that the most technologically developed entities are the most successful and the challenge is to get traditional entities up to speed (or as he put it “the elephants need to run at the same speed as the antelopes”).

A copy of Henri de Castries presentation to the AXA European Works Council has been uploaded to the EWC website here.

AXA’s European Works Council is meeting in Dublin with delegates from Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxemburg, Poland, Portugal and Spain as well as the United Kingdom and Ireland. Group CEO Henri de Castries is addressing the employee representatives, outlining AXA Ambition and his plans for Selectivity, Efficiency and Acceleration with much emphasis on opportunities the emerging markets especially Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Turkey.

Delegates have raised issues of a malaise amongst employees, living in fear of the impact of lean management, a lack of meaningful social dialogue and more cost cutting threatening job security.

The AXA European Works Council secretariat has called on AXA management for the inclusion of social consequences in any future negotiations over the sale of any parts of the business to another party.

In the February bureau meeting today with Group HR, a review of the Friends Provident sale led to this call when the level of compensation to members of AXA‘s Defined Benefit pension scheme was discussed.

Management agreed that it was important that social partners (such as the European Works Council and unions) were involved as early as possible but this can depend on the third party agreeing to this.

At the AXA European Works Council in Paris today, AXA President Henri de Castries was challenged over the quality of jobs being created within AXA in Western Europe and whether AXA was moving to a “McJobs” culture of low pay, low prestige roles driven by a cost cutting culture.

In response he stated that whilst there was a need for everyone to “accept flexibility” there was “no long term benefit to customers and we will not remain successful through poor quality jobs”.