Of Greenwashing to a real corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy: where are we really? Since the establishment of the European Directive on the publication of extra-financial data (CSRD), companies with more than 500 employees must analyze the financial risks to which they are exposed but also the environmental consequences of their activities (quantity of CO2 emitted , damage to natural environments, etc.). This sustainability report will reflect the reality of their CSR policy. However, in the application of this European directive, France is rather ahead. Little by little, a whole movement is developing, with on one side the constraints of the law, and on the other, the weight of employees convinced of the social and environmental role of companies. Even new technologies in general and AI in particular are putting themselves at its service. Silent, the CSR revolution is inevitable.
“Professions in corporate social responsibility (CSR) are today a career accelerator. However, I would never have said that a few years ago,” assures Caroline Renoux, the director and founder, in 2010, of the recruitment and headhunting firm Birdeo, specializing in professions with a positive impact. A craze for positions linked to CSR also observed by Agnès Alazard, the co-founder of Maria Schools, a training campus dedicated to future skills which opened, in March 2024, a program to become a CSR manager. “We had to refuse people, I didn’t expect to have so many requests!”, she is surprised.
More and more commitment
It must be said that employees are increasingly sensitive to these issues. According to a OpinionWay survey published last November, more than two thirds of them would like their company to focus more on environmental or social causes. And they no longer just beg, they act! “In recent years, the number of engagement committees created by volunteer employees has increased dramatically,” says Véronique Delpla-Dabon, CSR director of the American group 3M.
In its Tilloy-lez-Cambrai (North) factory, a group of young employees, for example, recently launched an equity, diversity and inclusion committee, which works in particular to achieve greater representation of women within management. For companies, it is their ability to attract and retain the best talent. According to a study conducted by Paul Polman, former CEO of the multinational Unilever (Knorr, Maille, Ax etc.), almost half of the 4,000 British and American employees surveyed plan to resign if their employer’s values do not or no longer correspond to theirs. The former leader gives a name to this new trend: “conscious resignation”.
Feminine impulse
“CSR has become a central element of business strategy, indicates Denis Terrien, president of the French Institute of Administrators (IFA). Not only because employees or customers demand it, but also because legislation is tightening .” This is evidenced by the application on January 1 of the European CSRD directive on extra-financial reporting obligations (communication of data).. As a result, environmental and social issues are gradually emerging within senior management: 80% of the boards of directors of the 120 largest listed French companies will have a CSR committee in 2023, according to a barometer produced by the IFA and Ethics & Boards. They were only 25% in 2015! This study also reveals that half of these companies integrate at least one environmental performance criterion into their manager’s remuneration policy. The most used being the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
This growing awareness of CSR is mainly driven by women. “They represent two thirds of our candidates,” confirms Caroline Renoux. According to one investigation by the Russell Reynolds firm, the CSR committees of the 120 largest French companies are 75% female. Finally, the generational dimension is also of growing importance. According to a survey by Universum conducted at the start of the year, nearly 4 out of 10 students and young workers do not want to work for a company that is not committed to social and environmental aspects. A proportion up 10 points in one year. A real lasting trend.