At Foyer, this conviction has led us to adopt an approach that combines strategic vision with collective engagement. Looking back, one of the most important lessons has been that a CSR approach gains real impact when it becomes a space where employees can genuinely get involved, contribute, and bring the company’s values to life on a daily basis.
A strong CSR culture is built over time by creating the conditions for employees to engage concretely, take initiative, and give meaning to collective action.
Creating the conditions for sustainable engagement
Employee engagement cannot simply be mandated. It develops progressively by leaving room for initiative, experimentation, and grassroots ownership of the topics. The most sustainable initiatives are often born from employees who genuinely want to take action around causes that matter to them.
This is precisely the mindset that guided the first initiatives developed at Foyer as early as 2015 around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Even before further structuring the approach, the objective was to enable committed employees to turn their convictions into concrete actions.
Over time, these initiatives gradually evolved into genuine internal communities and working groups, bringing together employees from different professions, hierarchical levels, and backgrounds around shared themes such as solidarity, health and well-being, humanitarian causes, and ecology. This cross-functional dimension plays a key role in a CSR culture, as it helps move these topics beyond a purely institutional framework and integrate them more deeply into everyday corporate life.
Experience also shows that a culture of engagement thrives on visibility and recognition. When employees can see the concrete impact of the projects they contribute to, engagement becomes more natural and more sustainable. This often relies on simple yet structuring mechanisms, such as introducing initiatives during onboarding, creating regular spaces for sharing, and highlighting internal actions and achievements.
Structuring engagement without losing authenticity
A participative approach does not mean the absence of structure or indicators. One of the major challenges of CSR is precisely finding the right balance between grassroots dynamics and strategic support.
In the most sustainable approaches, the company primarily acts as a facilitator. It provides a framework, resources, and continuity to initiatives that emerge naturally, without stripping them of their spontaneity or authenticity.
At Foyer, this evolution was progressively built through the implementation of dedicated budgets, logistical support, long-term partnerships with associations, and official Executive Committee sponsorship since 2025. This structure has helped amplify the impact of projects while preserving a dynamic driven by employees themselves.
This approach reflects an important reality of today’s CSR strategies: the most credible initiatives are often those where strategic leadership supports an already vibrant culture of engagement.
Finally, companies that successfully anchor CSR sustainably within their culture are often those that also recognise everyday acts of engagement. Beyond major strategies, institutional commitments, or working group initiatives, a company’s culture is reflected in individual behaviours and spontaneous actions carried out on a daily basis.
This is why Foyer has chosen to spotlight committed employees through an internal campaign celebrating those who act, in their own way and at their own scale, to create a positive impact around them. It is a way of reminding ourselves that a strong CSR culture is built as much through strategic direction as through the human dynamics that bring it to life every day.
An approach aligned with the company’s identity
Regulatory, governance, and ESG resilience issues naturally remain essential. However, the most credible and sustainable approaches are often those that go beyond ESG frameworks to make CSR a genuine culture of engagement within the company.
It is this combination of ESG expertise, strategic support from the Group, and employee mobilisation that allows our approach to remain sustainable over time. More than a programme, CSR has become at Foyer a living dynamic collectively carried forward every day.