IMPACT partners (finally) put employees at the heart of ESG with a new method

Capitalizing on ChooseMyCompany’s know-how, the IMPACT ESG Index was born and makes it possible to interview employees within the company and to objectify all the E, S and G issues. IMPACT partners initially carried out the exercise within the management company itself, involving the 45 employees of the platform spread over 5 offices, in Paris, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Milan and London.

ESG data is considered essential to guide investments, less so to accompany them. But the extra-financial challenges facing companies cannot be reduced to collecting data to invest and direct savings.

« We wanted to enrich the shareholder dialogue by integrating the ESG vision of employees and today we interview all the employees of all our holdings. This is useful for managers and I hope that it will become a standard », explains Mathieu Cornieti, President of IMPACT partners.

IMPACT partners, with 15 years of experience working with entrepreneurs, offers a renewed ESG approach that goes beyond the « traditional » due diligence and other annual collections (some sixty extra-financial questions for each holding, required by the underwriters for their own reporting).

This accumulation of information does not contribute enough to shareholder dialogue, not enough within CAC40 companies and even less when it comes to SMEs, which are at the heart of private equity issues. Collecting ESG information by management on quantitative criteria limits the exercise… How is the company’s energy efficiency perceived internally (Environment)? Is the company inclusive (Social)? How can the reality of the company’s mission be reflected (Governance)?

Mathieu Cornieti continues: « Almost all of the entrepreneurs we work with feel that ESG data collection is a cumbersome exercise that is not very useful… even though our holdings see themselves as companies with a mission.

« We provide objective and qualitative information to the entrepreneur and ChooseMyCompany acts as a trusted third party to guarantee reliability and anonymity, » explains Laurent Labbé, president of ChooseMyCompany.

All of the participants have taken up the tool.

Grégoire Le Texier, CFO of Wefight, a publisher of a virtual assistant to support the care process, believes that « far from being intrusive, it allows us to discuss the company’s ESG issues with our shareholders by including all employees. It is a useful continuous improvement approach that is easy to implement, even in a context of hypergrowth.

For Lionel Guimont, Administrative and HR Director of Vélogik, a specialist in bicycle fleet maintenance, « our challenge was to be able to address these issues with all our employees, including those on an employment integration programme, in a context of internationalisation. We can now better understand the aspirations of our teams, particularly in the United Kingdom where we have recently set up.