Virginie Raisson-Victor, “We need to put the public interest back at the heart of business”.

As part of our third ForHum magazine, we asked Virginie Raisson-Victor, President of the Pays de la Loire Giec and co-founder & spokeswoman of the Grand défi des entreprises pour la planète, to share her point of view. Virginie Raisson-Victor enthusiastically shares her vision of this necessary movement to transform business models.

ForHum: From your point of view as President of the Pays de la Loire Giec, what is the role of companies in the ecological transition?

In my opinion, they play a major role. And yet, until recently, this awareness was not shared by all their representatives. In July 2020, for example, at a seminar for small business leaders, I was struck by the contrast between the ambition of the proposals put forward by the Citizens’ Climate Convention, which were being presented at the same time, and the difficulty these business leaders had in seizing their share of responsibility in the face of climate change. Their objections seemed unambiguous: “There’s no point in getting involved if the Chinese don’t do anything”, “It’s impossible to make a commitment and remain competitive”, “What’s the point in changing if my suppliers and customers don’t move at the same time”, etc. Some of these executives even considered the issue to be the preserve of environmentalists, or even an ideological problem.

Seeing that the Citizens’ Climate Convention had enabled a very diverse group of people, including climate sceptics, to increase their skills and commitment, I thought it would be interesting to propose the same method to corporate players. Because it was becoming clear that the only way for companies to get to grips with environmental issues was for them themselves to become the bearers of transformation stories.

The Grand défi des entreprises pour la Planète project was therefore born from there, in January 2021, with the desire to accelerate the transition of the economy towards a model of humanistic and regenerative prosperity. After drawing lots for around a hundred companies of different sizes, geographical origins and sectors, their management, employee and shareholder representatives were trained over the course of six sessions by scientists from the IPCC, OFB, economists and other experts. At the same time, they worked with collective intelligence to formulate a hundred or so proposals, which were officially presented to the CESE on February 9.

ForHum: During this year of exchanges, which scenarios were the most popular: degrowth, sobriety, technological solutions?

The proposals that emerge from these sessions are not at all ideological. Nor do they suggest that we should all live in straw houses. Rather, they are about imagining how, in concrete terms, companies can integrate planetary limits into their business models. Because from now on, each and every one of them will have to consider this filter. None can avoid it.
This step is all the more crucial for the industrial sector, since most of the impact of consumer goods on carbon and biodiversity comes from the production phase.

How are companies tackling this change?

I’m convinced that we need to put the public interest back at the heart of business, as it was before the financialization of the economy. Insofar as companies use common goods and depend on their preservation for their production, it is essential to return to this vision. This is the whole purpose of the Pacte law2 and of the status of mission-driven company. Today, there are over 1,000 such companies in France3. And as a member of mission committees myself, I can verify the transformative effects of this approach, which I can also see are greater for companies that give priority to collective intelligence and participative implementation. Similarly, companies are finding that employees are increasingly looking for meaning in their working lives, or that commitment to the fight against climate change is increasing employee involvement. This trend is also illustrated by movements such as “the great resignation “4 and “quiet quitting “5.

How can we get more organizations to rethink their prosperity model?

History shows that major transformations are always driven by a critical minority, who tip the balance. While it’s hard to say where this minority stands today, we can see that it is gaining ground with the success of initiatives such as the Grand défi des entreprises pour la planète and the Convention des entreprises pour le climat.
Similarly, awareness of the need for change is growing in several European countries.
In fact, we’re already seeing a proliferation of texts on the subject: CSRD, duty of care, imported deforestation, plans to index executive remuneration on ecological performance, and so on. It’s clear today that companies are sufficiently mature to deploy a new regulatory framework. And while regulation is not everything, it does accelerate change. Take the example of the Pacte law: nothing is mandatory at present, and it’s mainly a question of enabling and encouraging. But already, the positive experience of the first mission companies is convincing others.
However, there is still a long way to go, particularly in the financial sphere. All too easily, investors continue to favour the most profitable investments, starting with fossil fuels, to the detriment of those who act or innovate to decarbonize the economy.
This is clearly short-sighted. For the cost of not acting fast enough and strongly enough will be far greater than the cost of adaptation and transformation. Not to mention the duty of vigilance, which will expose more and more companies to recourse from civil society.

ForHum: What role can new, innovative players like Hoffmann Cements play?

As Hoffmann well understood, it is urgent to take into account the very strong constraint of planetary limits, at the risk of aggravating the global ecological crisis and compromising the future of generations to come. We must stop trying to hold on to models that we know to be obsolete and destructive. On the contrary, we need to turn constraints into opportunities, relying on the co-benefits of change and innovation. Of course, the transition will be complicated, but it is also exciting, promising and stimulating. For it invites us to position ourselves and to invest in the development of new models and narratives, particularly on a regional scale. It’s not a question of rewriting the copy, but of taking a blank sheet of paper and imagining what it’s possible to do within this framework of constraints. And the most likely outcome is that the first to enter these new fields will be the best served.

This interview is taken from pages 36 and 37 of our ForHum magazine, currently available for free consultation on our website.

1 – Convention citoyenne pour le climat: an assembly of French citizens chosen by lot, set up in October 2019 by the Economic, Social and Environmental Council at the request of the Prime Minister to “define structuring measures to achieve, in a spirit of social justice, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 40% by 2030 compared with 1990”.
2 – The May 22, 2019 law on business growth and transformation, known as the Pacte law, is a law designed to help French companies grow and rethink the place of business in society.
3 – Source: OBSERVATOIRE DES SOCIÉTÉS À MISSION – companies referenced at 30/01/2023. Geneviève Ferone announced 1,000 a few days ago.
4 – The expression “great resignation” has been used to describe the situation in the US labor market during 2021, where following Covid-19, the number of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs has risen sharply.
5 – Quiet quitting is a phenomenon that appeared on the American social network TikTok in 2022. It brings together people who decide to do the bare minimum at work and share their techniques on video on the networks. The employees concerned don’t actually quit their jobs, but prefer to stay on and do the bare minimum.