Legrand North Central America (LNCA) recognized that within our core industries- electrical, audio visual, building controls & lighting- gender diversity remains a challenge. Women and racial/ethnic minorities remain underrepresented in these industries compared to the overall working population-- especially in technical roles and at the leadership level. ​

In 2014, LNCA formed Elle to cultivate a community that fosters retention and advancement of women across Legrand. Through Elle the company has invested in professional development training resources and career navigation tools for women across Legrand – exposing them to additional career paths and networking. Elle created a mentor/mentee program to pair women with leaders across the company for 1:1 coaching and growth opportunities. To assist in connecting our women at the local level (Legrand has over 60 locations in the US), Elle introduced Lean-In Circles (based on the program created by Sheryl Sandberg). Each month, colleagues meet in small groups to build relationships, participate in peer-to-peer mentoring and navigate topics together such as Building Confidence in a Remote World.  

While these initial steps have been successful, the group recognizes progress must be made in order to meaningfully change our gender diversity in leadership and technical roles. For example, the group has learned that an inclusive culture can’t be derived from exclusive programming. The active participation of the male majority is key to the success of building institutional change. As a result, Elle is developing a plan to improve the 1:1 manager to employee relationship. The goal is for leaders go beyond day-to-day performance evaluation and understand their role in fueling Legrand’s culture- learning to nurture talent, be empathetic, and to coach. Elle can assist in the transformation of managers – men and women alike- to become mentors for their teams. Focus group discussions will be held in the first half of 2021 to assess the status quo and identify primary themes & opportunities. Additional specific actions surrounding this goal will be announced later in 2021. 

Elle will continue to deploy training content to help women in Legrand navigate their careers. Targets include growing the mentor program by 15% in 2021, which has been accomplished early Q1as they enrolled 207 people in the Elle mentoring program including 106 female mentees and, for the first time ever, 20 male mentees. Additionally, the mentor program will run a pilot with select hourly candidate from 3 US locations in 2021.

Health & safety permitting, Elle will host Regional Networking opportunities in late 2021 for women to have face-to-face access to the leadership teams at their site allowing them to build their network. KPIs and targets for the manager development program will be announced by mid-2021.
​

Megan Knedler