“I am a binational.”
I’m Celica, an American who arrived in France to study here. I worked for L’Oréal in human resources and was in charge of the very first global employee survey. At that time, I met Laurent, a Frenchman – also HR director at L’Oréal– who was thinking along similar lines of how to improve well-being in the workplace, and had put into place an HR blog and a job board. Our experience had shown us that the opinions and testimonies of those who worked in organizations were the very best source of information for candidates to make their career choices. It meant more to make these important decisions not only on the basis of job role and duties, but especially on the values and meaning of each company. At the time, it was an innovative idea. Thanks to my position, I was aware of the knowledge and the necessary data and its analysis, and Laurent was an entrepreneur at heart. He saw an opportunity and, together, we took on the challenge!
“Virtuous companies were never in the spotlight, and the voices of all those who work there needed to be heard. There was room for improvement.”
In conducting the international HR surveys at L’Oréal, we noticed two problems. On the one hand, at the time, online rating sites were frequented mostly by employees with negative opinions about their company which could become a corporate HR reputational issue. On the other hand, virtuous companies were never sufficiently recognized. The existing approach did not give a fair view of the company. We had therefore identified a market opportunity.
How can we enable companies to be identified as virtuous with their employees?
We wanted to create a platform that allows companies to share their culture, their professions, and their daily experiences based on 100% reliable opinions from their employees. We wanted this platform to be ergonomical, which would encourage employees to give their opinion. In addition, certified reviews in large numbers give a fairer picture of companies, and protect them from easy smear campaigns. In 2011, we created ChooseMyCompany, a complete service to meet the following needs: review collection, a rating system, a certification program, feedback on verbatim reports with suggestions for improvement. All of this in a secure manner for employees and employers, without risk of reprisals.
ChooseMyCompany started with the HappyAtWork product, which surveyed employees to collect their feedback, but the process was too clunky at first. We learned from this and made a radical change in the direction of our product and our initial ambitions.
We decided to focus our attention on interns and work-study students, who no one listened to at the time.
This decision was a success. The voice of young people is powerful! In two years, ChooseMyCompany has worked with 75% of CAC 40 companies, who employ many interns and work-study students. Trust from large buyers like these has allowed us to prove our business model—a SaaS subscription. Today, we are a company with a mission to improve relationships at work for everyone. The company collects the opinions not only of interns, but also of candidates (recruited or not) and employees on their commitment to, as well as their opinions on their company’s CSR policies. Additionally, we have created bespoke solutions for clients, such as students who rate their higher education institution. It’s a 360-degree look at an organization’s stakeholder relationships. Opinions are analysed in order to implement action plans with recommendations targeted to HR managers. We also give awards to the most virtuous companies, who are promoted in the press. Data collected by our customers demonstrate a financial performance within their declarations and annual reports. To date, we have collected over eleven million certified reviews from over two thousand organizations with collaborators working in over one hundred countries. The company currently has almost seventy employees.
The primary impact is a social one, because we give a voice to people in the company who are not usually heard. By giving a voice to employees, interns and work-study students, candidates and students, we collect their suggestions and allow companies to make continuous improvements to their professional integration and development programs. The anonymity and trusted third party position of the ChooseMyCompany platform help to guarantee the protection of workers. When positive exceed a certain threshold, companies can receive a certification label, find themselves in the top rankings, and be highlighted in the media.
Impact Partners helped us build the WeImpactIndex, so that all employees can provide qualitative data on their employer’s ESG performance.
Thanks to the evolution of questionnaires and the help of Impact Partners, we can now evaluate companies’ CSR policies in a very original way. The WeImpactIndex barometer developed together is based on employee responses to questions on ESG criteria for “environment, social and governance”. We also leave room for employee suggestions, which allows the company to improve its practices. Impact Partners also encouraged us to become a mission-driven company. Together we have defined a clear social objective, which is to improve the relationship at work for everyone. In return, we now help Impact Partners and the companies they support improve their ESG performance and practices every year. ChooseMyCompany surveys all Impact partners’ portfolio companies at the end of the year in order to provide entrepreneurs with another perspective thanks to anonymized data on employee opinions.
Lastly, Impact Partners puts its large network of contacts at our disposal. This allows us to meet inspiring personalities interested in impact and governance. Positive impact is at the heart of our vocation and is directly considered in our products and services. With open access to our procedures – any company can administer the questionnaire for free and are positioning ourselves as an open-source human resources facilitator. This approach gives is a win-win for us, because our economic growth creates positive impact and vice-versa.
Unlike the websites of the 2010s, where whistleblowing activity was predominant, we want to show a more balanced picture.
The challenges that we encounter in our line of work are more cultural than technical. With Impact Partners we conducted a major market study in Europe, which showed the need for our offering in a space with few competitors. We initially looked into expanding in Germany and Northern Europe, but ended up focusing our attention on Southern Europe, from a Barcelona office. All of our activities outside French-speaking countries are managed from Spain.
We grow largely from word-of-mouth. Once a company is convinced, they attract other companies. This happens frequently in Spain, where we get one hundred and thirty-four companies using the HappyAtWork Freemium program in one year. We are established in France and Spain, and today have more than a hundred customers there. We are in the process of opening up to Italy and Portugal. Our goal is to become the essential expert for organizations that choose to build their potential on the quality of relationships with their main stakeholders – employees, customers, and public and private partners.