The European Economic and Social committee in Brussels, today launched the Arborus Endowment Fund for equality at work in Europe and the European Equality Label.
Orange is proud to be one of the founding members together with other major groups recognised for their commitment to equality at work.

The Arborus Endowment Fund is a European initiative for equality at work
The Fund's objective is to promote a common European culture with regard to equality at work by reinforcing the position of women in organisations, in all jobs at all levels in the company hierarchy.
Arborus participated in the planning for the Equality Label in France, launched in 2004 by Nicole Ameline, government minister for equality and parity, and now wishes to contribute to meeting this major challenge of the future of society which is one of the basic pillars of the European economic and social  policy.

How the Endowment Fund will operate
The Endowment Fund is a pioneering initiative in this field aimed at bringing about common culture and processes. This vision of gender equality will be put into practice by a number of actions implemented by the Endowment Fund. The European Equality Label is being launched today, in parallel, in a move to recruit new companies into promoting equality in Europe.

The resources of the Arborus endowment fund will be allocated to specific support projects in the founding companies such as:
Carrying out a survey of company best practices in each member state,
Responses to specific questions on transposing or implementing existing arrangements from one of their subsidiaries in another situated in another member State,
Holding workshops,
Legal, sociological and human resource benchmark studies to be carried out with male and female students from major European universities,
A training centre for men and women so as to have available a network capable of working in all EU countries and, especially in the first instance, able to train male and female employees in the founding companies.

Finally, the Arborus Endowment Fund operation includes introducing an annual survey of European HR work equality indicators.

The Orange commitment to equality at work
In becoming a partner in this European initiative Orange is seeking to promote a common European culture with regard to equality at work and to benefit from innovative ideas that can make this ambition a reality across all its European subsidiaries.
The Group has a significant presence in several European Union countries including Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, the UK and Slovakia, and has entered into a "Work Equality" commitment whereby it will obtain labels and certification rewarding its efforts towards equality at work everywhere where such awards exist. This newly created Fund will accelerate the process of putting into place such awards where they are currently lacking.  
Brigitte Dumont, Group HR Performance and Development Director confirms that "this label will enable us to evaluate the coherence of our initiatives across all our subsidiaries in a uniform and objective way. A pan-European approach to sexual equality is, in our view, a very effective way to change people’s mentalities".