- On Thursday, Paris 2024 launched a tour of France to present its Entreprises 2024 and ESS 2024 systems, intended to help small businesses wishing to participate in the preparation of the Olympic Games.
- Marie Barsacq, executive director and “impact and heritage” director on the organizing committee, details the details of this initiative, which aims to cover all strata of the national economic fabric.
The preparation and organization of the Olympic Games necessarily reserved for large companies? Paris 2024 aims to change the (bad) habits that prevail in the design of major sporting events. The Organizing Committee (Cojo) intends to concern all strata of the national economic fabric.
To do this, he began to put in place tools to help VSEs-SMEs and Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) companies to respond to calls for tenders for the hundred contracts awarded within the framework of the Games . Marie Barsacq, executive director and director of “impact and heritage” on the organizing committee, explains the ambitions of Paris 2024 on the subject. And reveals an approach that could serve as a reference for future major events organized on French soil.
Why is the economic aspect as important as the athlete when organizing the Olympic Games?
Throughout the campaign, we talked about Useful Games. Since winning the organization, we have endeavored to propose a new organizational model for the Games, more virtuous, responsible and sustainable. One of the major projects, identified very quickly, is that of economic development and its impact. It is “easy” to organize Games without generating impact for those who need it most. It may have been in the past. We used the experience of the previous Games to prepare very early and get as many actors on the train as possible.
What did you learn by observing what had been done during the previous Olympic Games?
London [in 2012] had made big companies work a lot, for example. In Rio [2016], I had observed that the organizing committee had set up a unit equivalent to the CGPME (General Confederation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) which worked alongside the purchasing unit. It was interesting, because this organization had up-to-date economic information and could transmit it to its members, and that ultimately made it possible to award contracts to very small businesses. We drew on this experience to go even further, that small businesses are no longer necessarily at the end of the subcontracting chain, but in groups, associated with larger ones. We have the ambition to associate big and small.
Gold medals, village wood… The Olympic Games 2024, a green springboard? https://t.co/gnjDuYaG2v
- 20 Minutes (@ 20Minutes) November 22, 2019How do you integrate small businesses into the process?
Very early on, they were told that we had this logic of opportunities for all. Suddenly we built with them tools, launched for the most part last April (or even framed). We wanted to give them time to understand how our markets, which are linked to public procurement and which are not simple, work. We are also in the process of finalizing a mapping so that they have in mind the timing of market launch and that they can prepare. They are also encouraged to do it together, as a consortium.
What are, in concrete terms, the first results?
Today, we have 10,000 companies referenced on our two platforms, which interact very regularly with us. 60% of the contracts already awarded have been awarded to VSEs / SMEs, including 10% to SSE companies. These markets concern about 2% of our markets, it is not huge, but we are only at the start. We will generate a total of nearly 2.5 billion euros in Paris 2024 markets, now is the time to adopt the right reflexes. This week [Tuesday January 28], we organized a workshop with 150 companies of the SSE of the events sector, to which we detailed our needs in the fields of catering, logistics, hospitality. They can start to think, alone or together, of the answers they can give to these future markets. In total, there will be around 400 workshops like this.
What can these small businesses bring compared to the larger entities?
Their quality is often their capacity for innovation. They can be proactive, we are early enough in time for that. SSE companies and VSEs are often very agile and creative, and we also need to know what their functionalities are to feed our markets. Afterwards, as I said, we would also like to connect them to large companies. For example, we saw during the Women's World Cup that Coca Cola had worked with Lemon Tri [a start-up based in Pantin which recycles plastic bottles, metal cans and cardboard]. It is in this sense that we want to go. We will encourage our sponsors to associate with SSE companies, but for that, they must be able to respond effectively when this happens.
What feedback are you getting from economic players for now? Do some people criticize that this is all a question of image?
It's true, we have to win people's trust. The connection between the Games and the solidarity economy is not obvious to everyone. It must be restored, and for that it is not enough to say it, it must be done. This is why we often meet people in the field. With Tony Estanguet [the president of Cojo], we have been going for more than a year very regularly in Seine-Saint-Denis to meet actors of integration through activity, entrepreneurs, to know if we are going in the right direction and let them tell us if it meets their expectations, if it is too ambitious or on the contrary not concrete enough. In everything we do, we promote this message that sport must be a lever.
That is to say ?
Take the example of employment. We closely followed an experiment conducted by Pôle Emploi Hauts-de-France and the Regional Athletics League, which had set up job -dating on an athletic field. During the morning, recruiters and job seekers do athletics, without anyone knowing who is who. Then they have lunch together, and finally only the interviews are done. It emerged that the insertion rate was on average higher than on traditional job -dating because this format reveals talents. Job seekers show their skills rather than their CV, and recruiters look differently at job seekers on a sports field. They see the one who is cooperative, the one who has leadership, the one who has the ability to listen. We decided to generalize this practice for Paris 2024. We signed an agreement with Pôle Emploi national and the French Athletics Federation to organize 50 job -dating , by the end of 2020, throughout France.
For which areas?
All. It will not necessarily be jobs related to the Games, at first. But from 2021, there will be the first jobs created for the Olympic Games, especially in the construction sector. Between September and December next year, we are going to mobilize job -dating in Ile de France dedicated to jobs related to construction, in particular the Olympic Village.
"A period of major employment opportunities" in Ile-de-France https://t.co/v7DiAio0DL
- 20 Minutes (@ 20Minutes) January 10, 2020How many jobs will be mobilized in total for the Olympic Games?
Over 150,000. We carried out a mapping to list the areas of activity, the jobs we will need and when. It allows us to work on audiences far from employment to train them so that they are ready in time to occupy them. Training courses will be set up for those who need to catch up on digital technology, foreign languages, etc. The idea is the long term, because we know that our jobs are short-lived. The Games will stop in 2024, but with this strategy we want to strengthen the employability of people for the future.
How could what you put in place be used for other sports competitions organized in France?
It is also our goal. We want all of this to serve everyone. The Medef, with which we created the Entreprises 2024 platform, is today discussing with France 2023 [the organizing committee of the Rugby World Cup] for the duplication of the tool adapted to their needs. ESS 2024 is the same, it is made for us today, but it may very well have functionality for other competitions tomorrow. There are the Ski Worlds in 2023, too. This is part of the inheritance logic that is close to our hearts.
Tailor-made tools
Two platforms were opened in April 2019
- “Entreprises 2024”, launched in partnership with the Mouvement des entreprises de France (Medef) for VSEs and SMEs.
- "ESS 2024", launched in partnership with the Maison des Canaux (an association "which supports economic actors committed to solidarity and the planet") for companies in the social and solidarity economy.
They are the main entry point for companies to learn about the economic opportunities linked to the organization of the Games. It contains all the information on the workshops offered by the Cojo and everything you need to know about public markets. These two platforms will remain active after 2024, via Medef and the Channels.
In the field of employment, a virtual Pôle Emploi agency entirely dedicated to Paris 2024 will be launched in September 2020. Parisian leaders are currently working on this project, which should be “an agency more agile than a conventional agency, with simpler, more accessible recruitment tools, both for recruiters and job seekers ”.
- Sport
- Economy
- OJ 2024
- Paris 2024