“Companies with a mission” are now more than 1,000 in France

They were created by the Pacte law, three years ago: companies with a mission declare that their only goal is to make profits. Their number has just exceeded one thousand. These companies with a mission choose to modify their statutes to adopt a social or environmental mission. While the primary vocation of a company is to make profits, companies with a mission very officially set themselves another goal, written in black and white. For example “working for a healthier world”, such as a large platform for booking medical appointments, one of the very latest companies to have joined this movement. Or even “reconnecting its communities to nature”, like a manufacturer of beauty products.

The movement is growing at full speed since the number of companies with a mission doubles each year and, according to Alain Schnapper, general manager of the Community of companies with a mission, there is no reason why they should not be 2,000. in a year. 80% of them are companies with less than fifty employees, but large companies are arriving en masse, such as La Poste, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa or the consulting firm KPMG. They are found a lot in banking, insurance, consulting and new technologies.

Supervised missions

There is a double check as a guarantee that these commitments are not just words. First of all via a mission committee, in which at least one employee gathers around him external personalities on the way in which the company carries out its mission. The mission committee meets every year. There are also independent third-party organizations that check every two or three years, depending on the size of the company, that the mission is being respected. This body has the power to appeal to the commercial court to have the status withdrawn. For now, the ax has not yet fallen.

Alain Schnapper, from the community of companies with a mission, does not exclude that some adopt this status for the wrong reasons, to do “social washing” or “green washing”. It counts on the role of independent third-party organizations to exercise, in the future, all their power of control and eliminate bad apples.