Farandou was talking exclusively to the French newspaper La Journal du Dimanche on his last day as executive chairman of SNCF’s subsidiary Keolis. He told the newspaper that he wants to stamp his mark on SNCF immediately and has given himself one year to achieve his initial goals.
Farandou says he does not want to see any more strikes at SNCF following the series of strikes in 2018 over the government’s reform programme which will see SNCF become a public limited company on January 1 and changes the status of new recruits to eliminate jobs for life as well as reforming the national pension system. He says he plans to talk to representatives of the four railway trade unions as soon as possible.
“There cannot be a good service to customers if there is no social peace in the company,” Farandou told La Journal du Dimanche. “I want to give a perspective, a clear vision of the future to all railway workers. I want to build this new SNCF project with employees and their trade union organisations.”
Farandou says there have been too many reorganisations and management changes at SNCF in the last few years, and he wants a period of stability. Where changes are proposed, he says he wants managers to ask whether they are good for customers and the competitiveness of SNCF, as well as consider their social impact.
He wants employees to be better integrated into the company. This month, Farandou will launch a round table to discuss the working conditions of train drivers.
Punctuality drive
Farandou describes the three initiatives on safety, punctuality and passenger information launched by Pepy as excellent, but he intends to go further. For example, he wants to eliminate train delays caused by SNCF itself to achieve Swiss or Japanese levels of punctuality. He wants to add a fourth initiative so that employees are more involved in the transformation of SNCF.
While Farandou praised Pepy and his team for good management, he told La Journal du Dimanche that improved productivity must not be at the expense of customer service, and he plans to reduce queues at station information centres by employing more staff so that by next summer passengers do not have to wait more than 30 minutes.
Farandou says he wants to improve working conditions for SNCF employees by investing more to renovate buildings.
SNCF’s two-tier high-speed strategy with its TGV inOui premium service and Ouigo low-cost service will continue under Farandou, but he wants SNCF to become an operator of excellence for Paris commuter and TER regional services.
Farandou told La Journal du Dimanche that seven years working at Keolis bidding for contracts to operate rail and bus networks has prepared him for the start of mainline rail competition in France. He says SNCF teams are working to hard to win the first tenders to operate inter-city services on the Nantes - Bordeaux and Bordeaux - Lyon routes. While he says it is a real battle to win the trust of the customer, he believes SNCF has “all the weapons to reinvent itself, surprise and win these tenders.”
Jeantet returns to Keolis
Keolis has appointed Mr Patrick Jeantet to succeed Farandou as executive chairman. Jeantet has been chairman and CEO of SNCF Network, the national infrastructure manager, and deputy chairman of SNCF since May 2016.
Prior to this, Jeantet was COO of Aéroports de Paris for two years, following an eight-year stint with Keolis initially as deputy CEO, international, and then CEO, France.
