Progress in the Group’s organisations and businesses is gathering pace, resulting in new responses and improved programmes of action that emphasise the development of employees’ skills and employability.

In its recruitment, induction and the cultivation of loyalty among its talent, PPR Group strives to offer everyone training that is thorough, specific and allows everyone to evolve throughout their career. For each brand and each Subsidiary this means ensuring continuous development of business and behavioural skills among employees. Through continuous performance and development of skills each employee guarantees their employability whether within or outside the Group.

The Group and its Subsidiaries have implemented ambitious training programmes designed to serve both short- and medium-term needs, to allow everyone to improve their employability, maintain eagerness to learn and develop and encourage involvement and motivation among all employees.
 

Today, promoting diversity is a strategic challenge for all companies. Their economic and competitive positioning, their capacity for innovation and the maintenance of internal cohesion and dialogue will be determined by their ability to integrate all the diversities of the community in which they evolve into all levels of the company. Promoting diversity is both a business challenge and a socially responsible commitment.

In view of this, PPR has undertaken to guarantee equal opportunity and treatment, to foster diversity of ages, genders and backgrounds and to integrate disabled workers into its teams. Promoting diversity at all levels and in all Group companies requires a behavioural evolution of all employees. However, this is above all a managerial and human resources management challenge. In fact, managers, as team leaders, will be key actors in promoting diversity. They take the final decisions in regard to the recruitment, promotion and mobility of employees in their teams. They must therefore be trained so that the promotion of diversity becomes a reality within the scope of their daily actions and decisions.

In a globalised economy, with consumers demanding ever greater transparency on the products they buy and companies increasingly committed to ethical principles in the conduct of business, the management of supplier relationships has become a key issue and the focus of more and more projects to address CSR concerns: supplier compliance audits, delisting of companies whose corporate social responsibility is found wanting or violates the basic principles of human rights, the cultivation of local partnerships, etc.

The PPR Group wishes to maintain lasting relationships with its service providers and business partners. Accordingly, the Group set up a framework defining the reciprocal commitments between PPR and its partners. Its approach is based on the mutual promotion of respect for human, social and environmental rights and the integration of partners from the social economy.
 

The impact of human activity on climate change has been confirmed and while there are still many questions as to its scale and consequences, the consensus is now virtually unanimous as to its causes. As a result, the need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, first and foremost carbon dioxide (CO2), has become in just a few years a universal obligation.
 
The Group’s activities are mainly in the retail sector and its emissions are therefore not comparable to those of big industrial groups. But PPR has nonetheless chosen to focus its efforts on the biggest source of greenhouse gases to affect its business: transport. While logistics systems must continue to deliver products at the best possible cost, their design must now take into consideration the levels of pollutants that they generate.

Poor energy efficiency, inadequate thermal insulation, energy-hungry heating and air-conditioning, sharply rising electricity consumption, high water usage: these issues make buildings a sector that contributes around 20% to the emissions greenhouse gases. Buildings represent the biggest potential source of energy savings in Europe. Besides greenhouse gases, the operation of certain infrastructures, most notably industrial plants, poses environmental risks to their immediate surroundings (atmospheric or soil pollution, contamination of the water table, etc.).
 
With 2,300 shops and over 1.3 million m² of warehouse space around the world, PPR Group is concerned about the environmental impact of its buildings. Although it mainly rents the infrastructure that it occupies the Group has opted to implement a pro-active policy to reduce the environmental impacts of the buildings it uses and to offer its customers a “shop window” that meets the Group’s commitments in its shops.

Companies have long been held responsible for the products they sell. All companies have established recall procedures for faulty or hazardous products, and they all implement measures that aim to ensure quality and safety standards for their products. However, heightened attention to CSR and greater expectations from society on issues related to CSR have played a part in reinforcing corporate responsibility, and companies are now expected to make a commitment above and beyond these standards.
 
Within the context of sustainable development, the Group and its Subsidiaries continually work to guarantee the safety and quality of its products, to increasingly include responsible products as part of what they offer and to increase customer and consumer awareness to responsible use of the products they purchase.
By choosing this area as a priority focus, the Group’s brands have reaffirmed their drive to truly promote and recommend responsible products and usage to their customers around the world.

A commitment to engage with wider society, local communities, the charitable sector and NGOs is now an accepted part of Corporate Social Responsibility. By contributing to the “health” of all the fields where it has an impact a company can help sustain itself over the long term.
 
PPR Group companies and brands are active in 58 countries and territories with highly diverse societies and cultures, where the issues around education, employment and health can sometimes be crucial. Given this background, while the possibilities for action are plentiful or even unlimited, the Group has chosen to act in those areas most closely touched by its businesses and where it has the greatest credibility.
Since 2009, the PPR Corporate Foundation for Women’s Dignity and Rights has galvanised support within the Group for a major issue - Women’s Dignity and Rights - that matches PPR and its brands’ activities and clientele, and can accommodate a decisive role for the Group alongside public authorities. Besides, each PPR brand has identified its own fields of solidarity action, in line with its activities and locations, and develops relevant NGO partnerships. Within the context of the two broad product families that it retails and services – new technology and books, DVDs and music – Fnac has also defined two avenues for helping communities: combating the digital divide and acting as a cultural mediator in the promotion of free speech. Similarly, consistent with its business of retailing furniture and household appliances and thanks to its network of stores, Conforama is helping provide home comforts to the needy through its work with associations.