The Day After: #Commitment

This context is providing a unique opportunity to companies and their employees to reconnect with life and to re-invent themselves to improve the world we live in. According to a recent survey by TLC Marketing Worldwide, 71% of the French people intend to consume more responsibly after the lockdown period we have experienced during this pandemic.

To make this transformation possible collectively, we believe in a responsible commitment that focuses on ensuring the positive impact that our economic activity will have on the living world.

Transformation and resilience will be the guarantees of a successful recovery

As a firm specialised in the digital transformation, we are witnessing the profound impact of new technologies and new digital uses on organisations.

Encouraged to make unprecedented organisational change, in recent years companies have experienced a huge acceleration in innovation, intensifying their efforts to win back their employees, transform their operations and develop strong customer trust.

The global health crisis we are currently in could be the trigger for a new and profound transformation of companies. Organisational resilience and an ability to reinvent oneself will once again be essential to provide a sustainable response to this new tremor. An organisation’s ability to anticipate, respond and adapt to sudden changes is crucial for survival, but beyond this ability to ensure short-term business continuity, it is the ability to sustainably shape an organisation that is coherent with its environment that will allow it to exist the day after.

For companies that would like to become “companies with a purpose” and discover their rationale, the following approaches are good starting points:

1. Be close to users and understand their needs at a time when customers’, employees’ and citizens’ expectations are converging;
2. Ensure an alignment between their current portfolio of offers and their rationale;
3. Create new high added-value business models that embody their rationale by meeting users’ every expectation.

It’s time for companies to reinvent themselves by taking the planet into consideration

In addition to proposing economically viable and desirable offers that are perceived as authentic by their users, companies must incorporate societal, human and planetary concerns into their strategic plans based on three areas: sustainability, profitability and performance measurement. This enriched “rationale” must be translated and be perceptible by its internal and external ecosystem in order to create a long-lasting and high-value relationship.

To be more sustainable, companies must incorporate new principles and methods. For example, the “Planet Centric Design” is a new way of designing products and services, no longer focused only on users but also on environmental and societal impacts. Another example concerning the digital component, “Green IT” makes it possible to design digital solutions by optimising their energy consumption.

In parallel, the concepts of growth and profitability are having to be redefined. First, because digital sobriety is essential in a crisis, proposing what is (really) useful and adjusted to behaviours is essential for strengthening bonds with users. The implementation of a behavioural observatory will make it possible to identify, monitor and incorporate in the long-term changes in users’ practices. It is also necessary to adopt a systemic approach to the components making up all the services of a company in a multi-purpose logic. Tools like “Design System” allow the “costs” of a brand’s digital services to be pooled while reducing the sum of their impacts on the planet.

It is essential to define new indicators to assess the progress and the impact of these transformations. It appears relevant to adopt a measure of the negative impacts of products and services and changes in the ecosystem’s mentalities, with the objective being to “switch to a measure of the positive impacts of a regenerative economy.”

Stimulate employee commitment

Creating conditions of awareness in the company allows employees to be actors of change, to activate actionable levers and to open the individual and collective paths of transformation leading to action:

• The initiative of the Climate Collage is a good example of raising employees’ awareness thanks to an accessible and dynamic position. Fun, collaborative and creative, it allows employees to become aware of climate-related issues.
• The organisation of in-house conferences with well-known personalities in the field create moments of inspiration among employees by exposing them to the paths and convictions of people invested in building a more desirable world.
• Awareness-raising sessions at the initiative of employees who have taught themselves in these subjects make it possible to instil a dynamic of skills’ development on societal matters and participate in the emergence of committed citizen employees, both within their company and in the private sphere.

Giving employees the possibility to express their values and those of the company is an excellent way to encourage them to engage in a more inclusive and sustainable economy.

The company can strengthen these initiatives by providing resources, for example tools to measure the carbon impact or intrapreneurship programmes on meaningful projects, like Danone, Engie and BNP Paribas, which started the “intrapreneur for good” programme. These initiatives not only make it possible to reduce the gap that may exist between the expectations of millenials that challenge the status quo and those of companies, but also to create a collective, an emulation around these subjects of society, by implementing the means to align employees to the company’s new rationale, making them want to stay and to commit.

Organisational resilience, implementation of sustainable methods and on-boarding of employees are the three levers that can be actioned for responsible commitment.

This article is an English adaptation of a post initially created in French.

Sebastien Joubert

Expert in Digital Transformation, Management Consulting

Vice President Brand & Experience, Capgemini Invent
Sebastien is an expert in Marketing & Sales areas, with a focus on sales channels optimization and customer relationship management for major players in the energy, services and industry sectors.
He joined Capgemini Invent in 2010, where he further developed his expertise into digital and data customer experience transformation for major B2B stakeholders, in international contexts.
Key projects
– Industries: Sebastien has supported the digital transformation of an Industry world leader and foster the customer relation functions as competitive advantage just like its products.
– Energy: He redefined the customer base and customer loyalty model of a stakeholder with a historically intermediated business model.
– Retail: He was a key player in the omnichannel transformation of a European leader wanting to take full advantage of digital and data to address its B2B customers.
And another thing…
A fitness enthusiast, Sébastien regularly takes part in the “Paris 20 kms” and the “Paris-Versailles” marathons.
He is also an active sponsor of Capgemini Invent’s “Invent For Society” initiative, which supports the transformation of society (from individuals to businesses) using a rewarding and sustainable approach: planet-centric design.