Innovation

Crédit Agricole Assurance has an ongoing campaign on bees protection. They built hives in Vaison La Romaine and in Paris. They collect the honey from it and sell it to the employees.

The Money made with these sales is used to support local charities and invested in product from the website giftforchange.fr. Crédit Agricole Group buys small objects from this online company that employees from Crédit Agricole Group can buy back. The money that goes to giftforchange.fr goes to different types of actions such as charities. Locally Vaison La Romaine works with bees.

The project is local, this helps the employees to feel connected with the project. Also, they are able to know the name and location of the apiarist when sponsoring the bees. By this, when employees invest they can see what change their investments make to the environment, what keeps them active and interested.

Inspiration

Jean Louis Marin, technical architecture manager at Credit Agricole Assurance in Vaison-La-Romaine, France is involved in the project for the bee protection as the beehives were built on his working site, Vaison-La-Romaine, and in Paris. According to his interview, "this type of projects is really interesting as this allows us, at our scale, to have a real impact”. The leader emphases on the involvement at the local scale.

Indeed, many companies support climate change or charities actions, however, the employees are not able to measure the impacts. Through this onsite project and the direct investment made possible by the online website, the leader is inspired by his individual input to achieve a more global goal. This motivates him to dedicates time and money for the evolution and expansion of this project and to share his experience with his colleagues and persons he knows outside the company.

Overall impact

This innovation is following the trend of protection of the environment via the saving of bees. The short-term effect of this action is the assistance of plants replication in the region where the beehives were built and by the funding of other apiarist beehives. This action also helps the employee’s wellbeing by their implication on a sustainable project.

On the long-term, this innovation supports the realization by other companies of sustainable actions such as this one by showing the beneficial impact of a project such as this one. Moreover, this action increases employees and customers of the company awareness concerning environmental policy and their willingness to be involved in similar projects.

Business benefit

This innovation benefits the business in different manners. Firstly internally, these measures improve the employee wellbeing by allowing the employees to be involved in the company in a sustainable project. Moreover, this allows the company to connect their employees to their environmentally friendly policy and to the company culture.

Secondly, the company is improving its image and perception by external stakeholders. As the environmental consciousness is increasingly important and well perceived in the Western World, this enables the company to be more in line with standards. This could potentially increase its number of customers by the addition of well-perceived actions such as this one.

Social and environmental benefit

This innovation benefits both the environment and Society by the protection of bees. This action benefits the environment by assisting the replication of plants in the region where the beehives were built. The bees are responsible for 80% of the pollination for the replica of plants. As the bees are currently disappearing particularly because of pesticide, actions such as this one are valuable.

For the Society, this action helps to raise awareness among the employees and the customers of the company. This action could also inspire other companies to follow the same trend and to help more globally to the bees protection.

Interview

Jean Louis Marin, Manager Technical architecture at Credit Agricole Assurance