Driving A Company Sustainability Agenda by Turning Groups Into A Community
THE CHALLENGE
Danone; one of the major FMCG actor in the world was undergoing a massive transformation. On top of its digital transformation and a product transformation, the vision of its leader was to truly merge the Sustainable development goals and the Business goals in the business.
The employees were truly excited around the “alimentation revolution” and the future of the business...they were also expressing concerns :
A certain fear of complexity and how this “revolution” would be concretely translated into the organisation
The needs for clarification of roles and responsibility regarding exciting employees partially in charge of the sustainability agenda
The needs to build a vibrant internal Sustainable community - build on inclusion and peer supports - that will help its employees take better business decisions, and participate to better business results for the company.
THE OUTCOME
A total of 300 people were involved, from 4 continents, from the 4 business pillars - Essential Dairy and Plant-Based Products, Early Life Nutrition, Medical Nutrition and Waters - and an heterogeneity of function and reporting lines.
Qualitative and quantitative interviews, group work were led for a period of 3 month to reach a collective assessment of what were the main challenges and the best opportunities to solve them
THE STORY
Danone is a central actor of FMCG worldwide and one of leaders in reconciliation of business growth and sustainable development. We had the opportunity to work previously with their Malaysian Office, and our founder being an agronomic engineer by training and a sustainability passionate advocate, we felt very aligned with their values and culture.
The following year, the company was undergoing a digital transformation as well as a products transformation (i.e soya products) that was, in fact, the transformation of their entire business. Despite the enormous effort toward their sustainability agenda, such as the BCorp certification process, both staff and customers were not aware of all the progress and success stories at Danone…which was problematic when competition - think Unilever - was doing better at showcasing their sustainable impact.
Thanks to this co-creation work with the 300 employees, we established
Suggested a Roles and Responsibilities structure
Identified the key messages communication plan towards roles and responsibilities
Identify the existing strong initiative on which the Sustainable Community could be built and establish a mitigation plan in order to remove obstacles and build a more vibrant community