8 Things To Know About Working At L’Oréal
L’Oréal may be a 110-year-old company, but we’re very far from being a cold and corporate workplace. We like to think that being present in 150 countries and working with over 86,000 employees worldwide from 158 nationalities injects a lot of personality and colour to who we are! And despite our global presence, the L’Oréal spirit can be felt everywhere — whether you’re a Commercial intern in China or a Supply Chain Director in Brazil. Here’s a little snippet of what it’s like to work at L’Oréal.
1. You’ll make mistakes and that’s really okay
At L’Oréal, you don’t have to be afraid to make mistakes. We strongly believe that experimenting and failing are inevitable to create the best innovations. Who gets everything right the first time anyway? The “test & learn” approach is really ingrained into our culture. And yes, we always look for quality and excellence in everything we do, but that doesn’t mean we forget we are human beings, who are constantly learning and striving to do better. We try, we fail, we learn and we try again — the importance is in learning from our mistakes and do better next time.
“I organized a webinar a while ago that was dedicated to 30 worldwide HR VPs. The tool we were using wasn’t as efficient as nowadays and I had trouble to adjust the length of the conference. It didn’t work out and in the middle of it, everybody got offline. It was too complicated to start it again, so I gave up and sent them an email to apologize.” — Renata
See? Told you! Everyone can make mistakes sometimes, but we always help each other get back up.
2. Your colleagues will be like your second family
Our founder Eugène Schueller once said that “a company is not walls and machines, it’s people, people, people.” Staying true to our founding spirit is how we work with our teams. Teamwork, encouragement of open discussions and team bonding opportunities (many celebratory moments involved…) allow us to create great proximity to our fellow coworkers.
By sharing your daily life with your team, the highs, the lows, the successes, and the failures, these people will feel like your second family! Yep, we call this team-bonding!
“I enjoy going to afterworks, the atmosphere is very relaxed and the feeling of belonging to the community is really strong there.” — Paul
3. Food matters. A lot.
If you’re anything like us, hunger strikes at 11 am (sometimes even before…) Thankfully, we have many lunch dates booked in our calendars to reassure those tummies.
At L’Oréal, we really embrace our “lunch culture”, which basically consists of meeting new people over lunch to get to know each other more. It’s a great way to connect with others, exchange ideas, projects and learn about different aspects of the business beyond one’s scope. In fact, we take lunch so seriously, that our US team uses an app called Never Eat Alone, where you can find other colleagues to lunch with! Yes, a shared love for food can make a happy workplace!
Here’s a little tour of some of our cafeterias around the world (jealous much?):
Newcomers particularly enjoy this lunch culture because it fosters a friendly integration experience.
“At first, it is quite surprising, but it’s a great system that allows you to meet people you would not have talked to if it didn’t exist. What is cool is that nobody would reply no to a lunch invitation!” — Susie
4. We wear sneakers at the office… and not only on Fridays!
What a relief not to wonder what you’ll wear to work every morning. You may expect L’Oréal to be a little like “The Devil Wears Prada”, but trust us, we couldn’t be more different. If you feel more comfortable in sneakers, then feel free to show them off at work! Same goes for leather boots, jeans, and t-shirts. Basically, dress to express yourself!
Corporate, who? 👟
5. Wellness is the basis of a beautiful life
Yes, you read that correctly. We all know rooftops are all the rage and yoga too. Just like we do for our products, we try to embrace trends in our workplace too. So, we started by organising some yoga classes on our office rooftops, from the 16th floor of our Parisian HQ overlooking the Eiffel Tower to the beautiful offices of L’Oréal Russia in Moscow. And now, our employees are even having some yoga classes on the beach! Knowing that our working days end with time to unwind gives us the motivation we need throughout the day! But this is not it, we want to make sure that all our offices provide our employees with spaces in which they can exercise, relax and take time off to be in contact with their mind and bodies.
6. LinkedIn is not the only place to network
We don’t just love lunching together, we also enjoy having coffee with our peers. Coffees are great opportunities to develop continuous relationships and to get to know different people. In fact, when a newcomer joins L’Oréal, their manager will share a list of people who’ll be important to connect with as part of their integration period. What better way to connect with people than over coffee?
7. There’s no such thing as a linear career path
At L’Oréal we strongly encourage mobility whether it’s international or within our divisions. Many of our projects are cross-functional as developing talents also implies to offer them a global vision of our company and its métiers. Skills can always be learnt, as long as the passion to do so is there.
8. Lastly… we’re together, wherever
You might be sporty — or you might not. You can be an introvert or an extrovert. An IT genius or a crazy scientist. A beauty queen or a nerdy geek or both. The point is, whoever we are, we are all a team and we’re always here to help, celebrate and cheer one another! That’s what makes the glue of L’Oréal: the people. And that is something we’re pretty proud of!
So, you’ll have understood by now that you don’t have to be prim and perfect to work here. You don’t have to get everything right the first time. You don’t even need a specific professional background. You will, however, need to share our love for food and cake! 😉
Why not find your next adventure with us at L’Oréal?
