How to make the most of your CSR commitments — Lessons from our Lyon roundtable

Ugo Le Borgne, Chief Operating Officer at Ditto, moderated the roundtable alongside two speakers:

• Alice Viault, CSR Manager at Ligne Roset, who drew on five years of hands-on experience at a 650-person family-owned industrial group.
• Léa Lamiral, Head of Climate Strategy at VERACY, who helps companies build their climate and decarbonisation strategies.

Several attendees also took the floor spontaneously, which made for a particularly rich discussion. Here are the three main takeaways from the evening.

1. Without sponsors, CSR never really takes off

When leadership is on board from the start

This was probably the topic that resonated most in the room. Building a CSR approach inside a company is inherently cross-functional. And cross-functional projects go nowhere without backing from leadership or internal champions.

Alice was fortunate to join Ligne Roset with the support of one of its two managing directors, Antoine Roset. His involvement in the Convention des Entreprises pour le Climat (CEC) was a major catalyst: it brought home the scale of the challenges ahead, introduced the concept of regenerative business, and sparked a genuine desire to take the company in a new direction.

"My arrival was a pretty strong signal from senior management. They were convinced this was the direction they wanted to take the company." — Alice Viault, CSR Manager, Ligne Roset

Léa underlines the practical impact of that kind of commitment: when leadership sets a clear direction, operational teams feel free to be ambitious. During the action planning process at Ligne Roset, no one worried their proposals would get shot down — which opened the door to bolder ideas and a real questioning of established habits.

When you have to build buy-in differently

Not everyone is that lucky. One attendee spoke candidly about a reality many SME and mid-sized company CSR managers will recognise: joining a newly created role, building everything from scratch, and finding the right levers to gradually bring teams and leadership along. A path that takes real persistence and resourcefulness.

At Ditto, we see this all the time. One approach that works: identify sponsors in key departments (one ally in HR, another in procurement), set up an initial steering committee, share early wins internally, and let positive momentum filter up to the decision-makers.

Alice backs this up. Her head of procurement was sceptical when she arrived. It was only when he understood the concrete benefits for his own work — alternative suppliers, material optimisation — that he became an advocate.

"Our head of procurement started getting genuinely interested in these topics and even became a promoter. He's now one of my strongest allies for moving things forward." — Alice Viault, Ligne Roset

2. The CSR manager role is changing fundamentally

From facilitation to technical expertise

This was a shared observation across the room. The CSR manager role today looks almost nothing like it did five years ago.

Ugo set the scene: when he started in this field, the role was about driving the process, raising awareness, and communicating values. Today, CSR managers are expected to handle carbon footprints, lifecycle assessments, EcoVadis and CDP scoring methodologies, performance indicators, and regulatory reporting.

Alice lives this every day at Ligne Roset. Lifecycle assessments require bringing in specialists. Tracking indicators, producing reports, responding to frameworks — none of this can be improvised.

An increasingly strategic role

Léa captures the tension well: CSR managers now have to navigate between science, regulation, and strategy to have any real influence at the leadership level. The role is both more data-driven and more strategic than ever.

"The challenge for CSR managers is to not get stuck in regulatory reporting, but to see all the value that sits behind it." — Léa Lamiral, VERACY

This struck a chord in the room. Several attendees mentioned the difficulty of handling all of this alone, often without a dedicated team.

Key takeaway: handing CSR to an intern or someone doubling up on responsibilities is no longer enough. Carbon accounting, frameworks, reporting, and strategic integration all require dedicated skills and time. We're moving from the CSR manager who facilitates to one who produces, steers, and influences.

3. CSR assessments have very real business consequences

Loans, funding, tenders

The third part of the roundtable tackled something every leadership team cares about: the return on investment of CSR.

Alice shared several examples from Ligne Roset. Their EcoVadis rating and EPV label helped them secure preferential-rate loans. An ADEME grant for an eco-design diagnostic opened up a major workstream on product durability. And in B2B commercial relationships, a structured CSR approach has become a genuine differentiator.

"Our commitments have helped us access preferential loan rates. CSR also gives us a privileged relationship with certain clients." — Alice Viault, Ligne Roset

One of the attendees confirmed the picture from the industrial supplier side: Airbus requires CDP, Naval Group asks for at minimum an EcoVadis medal, and Orano incorporates CSR criteria into 14% of its procurement scoring. This is no longer optional.

CSR as a condition of market access

Reda Bendjebbour, Director of Quality and CSR at Groupe Tosevents (who was both a guest and the evening's caterer), shared a testimony that stayed with the room. Initially facing a sceptical shareholder, he now estimates that between 30 and 45% of his group's revenue depends on holding a certification.

"Rather than asking what CSR is going to cost us, let's look at what it's bringing in. On a human level, day to day — but also in pure business terms." — Reda Bendjebbour, Director of Quality and CSR, Groupe Tosevents

His approach: a CSR duo with Patrice Knecht, Managing Director of La Fine Fourchette, leads within each department, CSR representatives embedded in job descriptions, and a method of explaining to each function exactly what its role in the approach looks like in practice.

At Ditto, we see these dynamics play out every day. Some clients have saved hundreds of thousands of euros in interest through subsidised loans; others have lost — and then won back — major contracts based on the trajectory of their EcoVadis rating. The two main entry points for banks remain EcoVadis for overall CSR, and a carbon footprint paired with a clear decarbonisation roadmap for climate-related topics.

Bonus: communicating on CSR without overpromising

A spontaneous discussion at the end of the evening touched on a sensitive question: how do you talk about your CSR approach without crossing into greenwashing?

Alice is open about Ligne Roset's cautious stance: the company prefers to move step by step and not make claims on topics that aren't yet fully structured. That approach fits naturally with the DNA of a 160-year-old family business.

Ugo observed that the greenwashing risk is highest when CSR is treated as a communications exercise rather than a substantive one. At the same time, many companies fail to communicate enough about what they're genuinely doing well.

The evening's consensus: own your imperfections, be transparent about the road still ahead, and build a consistent narrative over time. That tends to be far more credible than a polished CSR report.

Interested in this format?

This was our first CSR afterwork and we plan to run it again — in Lyon and in other cities. If you're a CSR professional and would like to join the next one, get in touch.

A big thank you to our partner VERACY for co-organising the event, to Alice, Léa and Reda for sharing their experiences, and to all the attendees for the quality of the conversation. And thank you to Reda and Groupe Tosevents for the thoughtful catered drinks that kept the discussion going well into the evening.

How to make the most of your CSR commitments — Key takeaways