An interview with Thierry Baril,
Head of Human Resources, Eurocopter

What is your policy towards diversity?
We believe absolutely in diversity for both ethical and pragmatic reasons. Eurocopter is an increasingly global company at a time when all the high-technology companies are competing for the best people. Embracing diversity in terms of gender, nationality, background and so on gives us the greatest choice of people and allows us to recruit the best.

Diversity also adds breadth to our skills. If we are in India we need Indian people in order to understand the country and the way of doing business. Recruiting people from the automotive industry teaches us about series production. We want 10% of our 2006 engineering recruits to have lived or studied outside France, Germany or Spain.

What CSR challenges arise from being the EADS Division with the most international presence?
To put this into context, we have 11,000 employees in France, Germany and Spain and another 2,000 spread across our 15 international subsidiaries. In 2004, we started to lay foundations for a more global implementation of HR policies. With our global internal HR database we are now able to monitor our people worldwide and to ensure more equal opportunities. We also brought people from our subsidiaries to Europe for training for the first time, for example at the EADS Corporate Business Academy, and offered customised local career development opportunities.

What difference has the International Framework Agreement agreed with the European Works Council made?
We have had subsidiaries outside Europe for 25 to 30 years and have always maintained European social standards across these operations. The International Framework Agreement reinforces our standards, but we have always been a respected and attractive employer. Between 2002 and 2005 we doubled the headcount outside Europe but had no difficulty recruiting highly valued people.