To present an organization introducing the concept of Internal Marketing we chose the SNCF, the European leading company of the railway sector. Today this huge company owned by the French State is trying to switch from their old engineer-oriented culture to a more market-oriented one with the help of all the new managerial tools. Therefore we thought interesting to see the application of a marketing concept to a service provider which is famous to have always encountered many difficulties in this management field.
INTRODUCTION.
French National Railways (SNCF) employs about 242.163 people throughout France and her territories. The executive staff category, which describes all managers below senior executives, represents either 11% or 30% of the total, depending on whether supervisors and foremen are included. Consequently, SNCF is a labour-intensive business and 95% of employees are full-time, permanent staff, enjoying tenured status as defined by a collective bargaining agreement. Tenure guarantees job security and also gives railway men and women special health, welfare and retirement schemes: the famous entitlements defended by the unions.
When the subject of human resources at SNCF comes up, people often think of either strikes or layoffs, and it is true that successive company policies in recent years have led to substantial staff cutbacks, even if these have been achieved through retirement. This tendency has certainly contributed to labour unrest, which has been exacerbated further by a gulf formed between workers and managers. The social conflict' has virtually upstaged collective bargaining, and has had negative effects both on service quality and on human relations in the company. Undoubtedly, the long, tedious and painful labour conflict in November and December 1995 has contributed to invigorated revival of human resources management, even if some revival was already underway before the conflict.
