Safran has had a presence in Morocco for 22 years. In your opinion, what are the country’s assets and challenges in terms of skills development?
Moroccan schools offer relevant education pathways and provide their students with skills sought after in today’s job market. Some profiles are much easier to find in Morocco than in other countries. In France, for example, Safran often has difficulty finding women engineers to fill executive positions.
One of the challenges we face in Morocco is retaining these skills because many people with in-demand profiles – particularly IT and technical profiles – are poached to go and work abroad, in places such as Canada, France or the Gulf countries.
Safran set up its own training centre in Morocco in 2024. What was the reason behind this?
In Morocco, the government helps young people to enter the labour market with ‘ANAPEC contracts’, ANAPEC being the National Agency for the Promotion of Employment and Skills. Under such contracts, which can last up to 24 months, the young people recruited have the status of trainees and companies are exempt from social security contributions, which is a way that the government supports employers too. Only people who have obtained a baccalaureate or equivalent government-recognised qualification are eligible to be hired under such contracts. Unfortunately, many students in Morocco have to leave school before obtaining any qualifications, often due to financial reasons.
To give them a second chance, we set up our own Apprenticeship Training Centre with the support of Invest for Jobs and the Moroccan Ministry of Economic Inclusion, Small Business, Employment and Skills.
This centre is the first of its kind to provide training for the aerospace sector in Morocco. It gives young people the opportunity to learn a trade and obtain a government-recognised diploma. The course, which lasts one year, includes technical training in the different trades, soft skills modules and French language classes. With the SEPM diploma under their belt, young people have a better chance of landing a job with Safran or with another company. The diploma also makes them eligible for an ANAPEC contract, enhancing their employability.
What’s more, we’re constantly on the lookout for skilled workers. Thanks to the training centre, we can regularly recruit new employees with the specific skills we need. Now that we have this new facility, the length of training has been extended and the quality improved. Trainees are more satisfied with their experience and more inclined to join our teams once they complete their training.
What role did Invest for Jobs play in setting up the training centre?
Invest for Jobs gave us financial support to recruit the soft skills trainers and French teachers. The courses are held on our premises, at the company. As French is our working language, the language classes are essential to improve the trainees' comprehension, reading and writing skills. At the same time, the soft skills training provides them with the tools they need to interact effectively with qualified professionals and strengthens their interpersonal skills in the workplace.
Invest for Jobs is also supporting us on the technical front by providing an advisor with the expertise we need to conduct an energy audit. The aim of this initiative is to improve our energy performance and, reduce our carbon footprint, particularly in relation to the extension of our production facility. We are very satisfied with this collaboration and look forward to continuing it.
What results have you achieved by setting up this centre?
The training centre enables us to develop a pool of new recruits with the skills we need. With the construction of our new production facility, we have growing recruitment needs. So far, we have trained 183 people and taken on 80 per cent of the first cohort of graduates as factory operators. Our target now is to recruit a further 400 people – 80 per cent of them women – by May 2026.
What advice would you give to companies wanting to invest in Morocco?
To set up a business in Morocco, it is crucial to receive good human resources advice. It is essential to know about the education system, schools and local culture in order to attract and recruit the right people. In industry, it is companies that have adapted their training approach effectively that have been most successful in retaining talent. The fact is that training is very important to young Moroccan, who do not focus solely on the financial rewards when making career choices.
The project with Safran Electrical & Power Morocco is being implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH as part of the Special Initiative "Decent Work for a Just Transition" of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).