Meeting with Floriane Hibelot : “My path from Consulting to Operations Manager”

At WeMaintain, uniqueness is an important value and every individual’s personality counts. We are convinced that it is through the diversity of our team members and their backgrounds that we collectively perform better.

Case in point, meet Floriane: Operations Manager.

Floriane, could you introduce yourself ?

I come from a little village in Bourgogne. I lived there until I was 16 years old and then I moved to Dijon. As a student, I travelled a lot. After having lived in England and Taiwan for a while, I finished my studies under the Barcelona sun.

During all those years, I really enjoyed learning Chinese which led to me spending a lot of time in Taiwan and China.

When you were younger, what did you want to do?

I wanted to be a psychologist. That was until I realized their offices bore no resemblance to what you saw on TV…🙃

I have always liked being in contact with people. I enjoy getting to know them and trying to help them progress and manage certain subjects.

What were you doing before WeMaintain?

At the end of my studies, after having moved every six months during the last four years, I wanted to settle and spend some time in one place. I decided to follow a pretty standard path: consulting.

For two and a half years, I was a digital transformation consultant for services and the public sector.

It was a great experience. Amongst other things, I learnt how to put in place efficient work methods and create and optimise processes.

Since then, I have always been looking for ways to improve my work and I am constantly checking that what I am working on is helping me achieve my overall goals.

I also learnt how to get out of my comfort zone and manage highly complex projects.

I was sent on different missions all over France, during which I had to manage enormous transformation programs. I discovered lots of different work methods: visual management, how to run a workshop or a meeting… Skills that I didn’t even know existed beforehand. But now I use them every day.

Why did you change and decide to join WeMaintain?

After 2 and a half years, I was starting to get a bit bored. I felt like a bird trapped in a cage. I knew that I still had a lot of things to develop, skills to learn and risks to take but that this wasn’t going to be possible at Capgemini Invent. Consultancy is a very structured universe with a lot of hierarchy already in place and not a lot of space for innovation or initiative.

After a lot of thought, I decided to follow a JoinLoin training session and find out what opportunities there were outside of consulting (other than joining one of my clients). For 8 Saturdays, I met a lot of different people and startups. And during one of these meetings, I heard a talk given by Jade, the co-founder and COO of WeMaintain.

I recognized the values that I had when working for Capgemini Invent in the public sector. Values which meant my mission made sense to me. One of them was giving back value to jobs which have been forgotten/bypassed by digital advances or overly micromanaged… A situation which does not occur only in the lift industry.

So, I decided to apply to WeMaintain as a Customer Success Manager. In the end, I wasn’t chosen for this position. But I had really enjoyed the interviews and felt we were on the same wavelength, so I got in touch again one month later with my sights set on either joining them in another position or moving on to something else.

At that time, they had started to identify a need for someone who could scale up the mechanics’ community. I joined WeMaintain in this new position and the rest is history.

My job at WeMaintain is to develop and scale the model that we have created with our mechanic community. A community which has already doubled in the last 6 months!

I define and setup the processes, rules, promises and limits of WeMaintain’s model. It is the framework which allows the mechanic community to grow alongside WeMaintain.

Today, a lot of contact platforms exist. However, there are big differences between WeMaintain and other platforms, more B2C delivery or transportation ones, which we use all the time :

• Firstly, our community is a lot smaller. There are only 3500 mechanics in the greater Paris region (compared to thousands of drivers or delivery people).
• We only accept qualified mechanics with at least 10 years experience. Also, the lift industry is so complex that we have an internal team dedicated to helping the mechanics. This means we have to work closely together.
• We are not in the “Gig Economy”. Our contracts are yearly and the same mechanic keeps their contract for the whole year. The long term relation we create is quite special.

My daily tasks can be very different from one month to another. My responsibilities include :

• meet the mechanics who would like to join this new model
• measure the quality of service provided by the community
• with a view to continuously improving the service they provide, work with the mechanics to put in place new processes
• spend more time on certain problems which need to be resolved
• discuss the mechanics’ needs with the product team
• accompany our mechanics on sites to understand how lifts work…

I haven’t yet managed to compare this model to one in another company. On a daily basis, I have to test a lot of things, understand what does and doesn’t work, and find the direction we need to move in to create a long lasting and solid model.

I use a lot of my existing knowledge to put in place and optimise processes. Beyond that, it is mainly a people orientated job and every day I have to make sure I understand their needs.

What has been the biggest “shock” since you changed?

I have noticed that inertia in the workplace can exist when there are only 3 people. In fact, even when there is just 1 person! I thought that the sentence “We have always done it like that” was only said in big companies. But inertia exists in humans, not in companies. Whatever the size of the company, it is important to fight against inertia.

What do you like the most?

At WeMaintain, everyone can be and is the same person at work and at home (that’s the value that we call “uniqueness”).

As a consultant, I only really showed 10% of my personality, now I can be myself.

What would you do if you weren’t at WeMaintain ?

I would look to join another small company. I like the energy they give off. Maybe I would try a different job, so I can continue to learn… Product Manager ?

What would you tell someone to convince them to join WeMaintain ?

For me, we really practice the values that we preach (care, grit and uniqueness).

Also, it is really cool to not be in a “normal” industry. It is a little bizarre, but so interesting to work in a sector which nobody knows and where there is everything to do. As it is so unexpected, it always provokes a good reaction at a party. 🎉

If you leave a big company to join a small company, the change can be quite a shock. We have to use our initiative and the word “autonomy” takes on a whole new meaning. That is something to bear in mind before making the change because it might not suit everybody.

WeMaintain is looking for new talents, especially to join our Operations team. You can find them here! 😃