HARIBO: THE BON BON OF CSR
EDITORIAL FROM ODILE VERNEAUD, EMBA PARTICIPANT
I have the responsibility to set up and coordinate CSR policy at Haribo France and the opportunity to make it the subject of my BDP as part of the Executive MBA I started at Kedge in October 2013. So, I put into practice in "real life" lessons of my academic training, especially during Business Ethics and Sustainable Entrepreneurship. So, I put into practice in "real life" the academic teachings of my MBA programme, in particular the modules of Business Ethics and Sustainable Entrepreneurship.
The yard is large, each stakeholder (customers, retailers, consumers, suppliers, employees, shareholders ...) having expectations or requirements that may be in conflict with those of the nearby sphere - social, economic and environmental:
- retailers who want to be delivered daily whereas green logistics requires that all trucks systematically leave full and run less frequently
- ecodesign, which recommends to favor a more "ecological" packaging but which requires to reduce the paces of bagging, thus productivity and consequently economic performance
Decision-making often involves choosing the best compromise because the ideal solution that combines the three components of CSR is unfortunately rare. Hybrid vehicle (gasoline-electric) for the automobile fleet rather than diesel? Yes! For the environment and for the image of the company. But for the rural areas, broader than urban areas (> 20,000 km / year), fuel consumption and diesel fuel costs still are more interesting than gasoline. And to refuse diesel means losing VAT credit on diesel. It's double jeopardy because of the mismatch between taxation and the desired environmental objective.
If the Grenelle Environment Act II has the advantage of setting a regulatory framework that pushes companies to take CSR seriously into account, the only legal constraint is not enough to appropriate the concept and to resist temptation of "green washing". We must score points quickly on the "projects" more easily achievable. We have to demonstrate and convince by pragmatic action plans that efforts do pay: the actual savings generated through greater energy efficiency, optimization of packaging, lower absenteeism through greater mobilization of employees ... positively impact on the company operating account, so the employee profit sharing (CSV?) and participate actually in saving our planet.
Transforming legal constraints into opportunities is a major challenge for Haribo, in order to add value to our values.
To be continued in the next newsletter...
