Created in 2021, ETHIKUS Consulting is a company specialised in CSR solutions. Initially in consulting, ETHIKUS has extended its services with digital products integrating its CSR expertise mainly for HRM (human resources management). This choice was born from the belief that change can't be possible without the company's most valuable asset: its human capital that carry into practice policies and means. In doing so, ETHIKUS itself has grown its human capital, with new skills (HR-accounting) to supplement its initial expertise in CSR/ESG (environment, social and governance).
This faith in humans had also inspired the name ETHIKUS, derived from the Greek word "Ethikos" designating the morality and customs which condition the search for good in human life all over the world. Thus, ETHIKUS must be understood as ETHIK from the Greek word, and US from the English pronoun, to symbolise its mission aimed at detecting the ethical potential in each of us to trigger our capacity to support CSR. In other words, our capacity to mobilise our specific resources towards CSR.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The business world is evolving, due to the tightening of regulations on CSR at the European level (and from regulatory trends at the international level), now imposing legal contours for approaches that have long remained voluntary. This is evidenced by the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) in Europe, which is changing CSR reporting (in particular the DPEF, Declaration of Extra-Financial Performance) in France.
In addition, external stakeholders (customers, suppliers, investors, banks, etc.) are increasingly looking at the companies' CSR strategies. That generates risks for them (legal, financial, reputational, operational...).
Therefore, companies need to detect CSR potential of their teams to address the tomorrow's CSR issues.
OUR SOLUTIONS
ETHIKUS offers two levels of services:
- Its digital product ETHIK.YOU (planned for demonstration by March 2024, we apologize for the delay to the prospective clients we met during the HR Technologies event of last January. However, the product should be available soon for a demonstration). Dedicated to HRM (Human Ressources Management) and based on a CSR analysis model applied to humans, this product offers perspectives for developing new CSR projects and for anticipating and managing growing phenomena such as conscious quitting. ETHIK.YOU should gradually be supplemented by other products.
- CSR advice, support, training sessions and coaching related to CSR and CSR-based topics (environmental law, sustainable development, responsible finance...). These services mainly come from expertise from ETHIKUS, but if necessary, relying on professionals from regulated activities, in particular with EXPERIO (company of lawyers and accountants).
In this page, you can find the following sections:
- ETHIKUS Team
- Services Proposed by ETHIKUS Consulting;
- An Article about the Origins of CSR;
- ETHIKUS' Working Approach;
- Contact Details.
We wish you a pleasant visit.
The ETHIKUS Consulting Team
1. ETHIKUS TEAM
| Boris | |
| CEO, Founder |
HR, Late Founder |
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2. SERVICES PROPOSED BY ETHIKUS CONSULTING
CSR
Over time, CSR has became a critical point for all activities, lucrative or non-lucrative ones, because of CSR transversality encompassing both internal and external issues. The stakes behind CSR have evolved in recent years, bringing as many realities as challenges for companies. Indeed, the first reality of CSR was the social pilar, carrying human rights dimension of sustainable development. In the second reality, CSR has evolved towards impacts on local areas where companies operate. Then, in recent years with climate issues, CSR has increasingly carried environmental dimension of sustainable development. In this context, ETHIKUS Consulting provides two kinds of supports:
1/ In terms of digital solutions, ETHIKUS is in the finalisation phase of its ETHIK.YOU product. Built with various expertise (CSR, risk management, law, psychology...), ETHIK.YOU is a solution that makes it possible to assess a person's CSR potential. In other words, the skill of a person to mobilise his specific resources to support CSR. This assessment is done through a CSR analysis model applied to humans.
As a solution dedicated to HRM (Human Resources Management), ETHIK.YOU allows it to:
- Identify the themes and projects that the teams, and potential candidates, can support in the company's CSR initiatives, including the leadership style to achieve this;
- Have planning tools (materiality matrices for SDGs, CSR indicators...) to define longer-term HR strategies;
- Reduce the risks of conscious quitting of the teams, and optimise each employee experience, by capitalising on individual's CSR sensitivities. In summary, reducing the likelihood that the employees resign from their positions if they feel that their ESG values do not or no longer coincide with those of their companies;
- Orient the teams' career paths and help them grow in light of their ESG sensitivities.
Other products should gradually supplemented ETHIK.YOU, putting HR at the heart of tomorrow's CSR solutions.
2/ In terms of CSR and sustainable development advice, ETHIKUS can help you:
- Identify and implement the milestones of a CSR policy/strategy to optimise social license to operate;
- Map CSR weaknesses and strengths;
- Elaborate CSR roadmaps according to entities' features, overcoming the sector;
- Develop CSR approaches adapted to sector challenges;
- Monitor and assess the impact of controversies on CSR risks and opportunities;
- Prepare voluntary reports taking into account the most CSR strategic points for sectors to address stakeholders concerned according to the specificities of each company, while being aligned with consensual CSR standards (Global Compact, OECD...);
- Implement CSR practices and measurement indicators to make business going forward, and meet key rating agency requirements;
- Animate courses and training sessions aiming at introducing CSR, its technical approaches and its challenges for an activity.
SUSTAINABLE FINANCE
Under the involvement of players having carried CSR all over the world, such as the United Nations, sustainable finance was born at the heart of the financial industry, which must adopt more and more complex methodologies and approaches. With the impulse of CSR concept, sustainable finance has appeared to extend the mindset of the first concept. Today, the impact of businesses having an influence in the financing and development of sustainable business models is becoming a reality, generating the emergence of complex analytical methodologies. Therefore, ETHIKUS Consulting provides support to:
- Analyse public and private listed companies from an ESG perspective, and unlisted companies subject to sufficient accessible data;
- Build and develop non-financial analysis methodologies to extend financial analysis (equity research, credit scoring...);
- Develop KPIs to study the ESG risks and opportunities of companies in the portfolio or outside;
- Define investment universe and build ESG portfolios;
- Design strategies based on CSR approaches from different cultures;
- Map ESG risks and assess the strengths and weaknesses of an activity (based on various topics such as the environment, climate change, biodiversity, social issues, governance...);
- Formalise and develop shareholder engagement strategies and methodologies both with issuers and international initiatives (Climate Action 100+, Net Zero, SBTi, Global Compact, UNPRI....);
- Conduct ESG research based on methodologies to identify evolving shareholder engagement topics aligned with the sector issues discussed in UN bodies inspiring the trend in countries around the world;
- Animate courses and training sessions aiming at introducing to sustainable finance (tailor-made training sessions for higher level, for instance on methodological approaches can be provided).
REGULATIONS
Global sustainable development issues, promoted by United Nations actors, have raised the call for regulations everywhere in the world. The European Union has heart this call by progressively bringing business actors to integrate sustainability into their activities. The evolution of CSR issues related to subjects as complex as finance, law, accounting or even sustainable development, has contributed to draw the need for a consulting offer free from the boarders between regulated activities and unregulated ones. Like regulatory issues of CSR having followed a multidisciplinary evolution by requiring knowledge of the multinational system, like the United Nations, which inspires the spirit of the regulations and the reasonings of the EU regulator and national authorities on global subjects of sustainable development. Moreover, the need for solid knowledge in finance and accounting because CSR is at the heart of risk management and business strategies. In the same way, meeting the regulatory challenges of sustainable finance requires, in addition to strong knowledge of global regulation, deep knowledge of financial techniques, asset management and data/IT being at the heart of these regulations. With this evolution, and the tightening of European regulations, ETHIKUS Consulting and EXPERIO offer the most accurate expertise as possible in each area affecting CSR and sustainable finance. For example, this allows clients to benefit from skills of an attorney-at-law, a chartered accountant and a CSR specialist, all coordinated to:
- Support compliance with European regulations (NFDR, CSRD, SFDR, EU Taxonomy...) and French regulations (evolution of the DPEF, article 173 LTECV, article 29 LEC...);
- Contribute to the preparation of regulatory reports relating to the aforementioned texts and to CSR, by supporting various teams (IT, Data, Legal, Portfolio Managers, Products, Marketing...);
- Help align with regulations related to CSR/ESG and their evolutions through metrics adapted to the activities and reflected in the spirit of the texts via the visions of an attorney, a chartered accountant and a sustainable development specialist;
- Promote change management towards the regulated CSR/ESG approach in all economic activity, and especially in asset management, which is particularly targeted by the regulations;
- Support the drafting of communications and annual reports increasingly requiring complementarity between financial and non-financial data through consolidated accounting and CSR/ESG information;
- Conduct regulatory research to map evolving issues that may impact business activities;
- Carry out regulatory monitoring and interpret texts by balancing legal, business management and CSR risks.
3. WHERE DOES CSR COME FROM ACCORDING TO BORIS?
The origins of CSR, as complex as the transversality of the concept itself, have taken on meaning in the international context according to my experience. Indeed, when CSR was still little known, I worked with the first actors at the UN having carried this topic all over the world. Alongside them, I had the historic opportunity to contribute to the construction of the CSR principles and benchmarks that underpin today's ESG analysis. So in this context where CSR was still an "atypical" topic, I could help its development beside public actors, but also private ones who have played the game. It was namely the case of some multinaltional corporations, like the ones I was negotiating with* the engagement to the Global Compact and its principles. These latters are still the basis of corporate CSR guidelines and ESG analysis methodologies used in the financial industry. By also bearing in mind the contribution of UNEP FI, which has contributed to extending these methodologies through its work and the PRI, initiative born in 2006 from its collaboration with the Global Compact.
Based on this movement, other stakeholders at the UN have fed CSR and sustainable finance guidelines such as the ILO and the Human Rights Council. An example is the EU regulation on sustainable finance which uses these guidelines (SFDR, EU Tanonomy's minimum safeguards...). That has led, jointly with non-financial rating agencies/ESG data providers (MSCI, Sustainalytics, Vigeo Eiris...), to bring business community to develop private initiatives for mainstreaming CSR at the heart of their activities. In this context, consulting firms have played an important role to support companies on cross-cutting CSR issues that keep evolving, requiring more than ever holistic CSR expertise, extending by knowledge in legal and accounting matters. Thus, the response to today's CSR challenges sees a growing demand for skills beyond unregulated activities.
Bearing this idea in mind, ETHIKUS Consulting and EXPERIO (law and accounting group) offer an optimised consulting service. With its legal status, EXPERIO is able to provide the best expertise in each area, both in regulated and not regulated activities. Therefore, in terms of CSR, clients can benefit from skills of a CSR specialist, an attorney-at-law and a chartered accountant, these three expertises being within the same organisation.
*https://ungc-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/74/original/COP.pdf?1262614166
*https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ungc-production/attachments/1931/original/COP.pdf?1262614297
4. ETHIKUS' WORKING APPROACH
These latest years, consulting offers in CSR have increased under market demand impulse and the emergence of methodologies built by pioneering players when CSR was still unpopular. The appearance of these methodologies in open source, and educative readings, has enabled new actors to discover the subject and see the opportunity to offer advice, sometimes by talking about expertise. Indeed, the fields of CSR, sustainable finance and the connected regulations have seen an increase of specialist or expert titles, even with junior profiles or at positions far from these fields. If we talk about strategical and operational CSR or even ESG shareholder engagement, that leads to approaches without the added value of CSR scientific contribution whose expertise is built up gradually, as in all fields, with years of relevant experience fed by knowledge from different angles. This is all the more true with CSR and sustainable finance, whose expertise is based on the transversality of these fields, based on a myriad of subjects interacting with each other. Thus, it is natural to question this abundance of expert titles in CSR and sustainable finance that have appeared in recent times only to grab the opportunity to respond to the growing market demands.
In this sense, expertise in CSR, as well as in sustainable finance and their regulations, comes from years of experience in relevant and complementary positions (methodologies/sectoral ESG analyses, operational reality of the business community, regulation), allowing to acquire specific concepts, reasoning and methods, like in all the other social sciences. For example, with the law where reading a legal text and explaining it theoretically is quite easy, but using it to defend the interests of a client requires mastering legal reasoning and its methods. Thereby, the necessity of a law professional who can claim expertise after years of practice. In the same way than in the accounting field with everyone that knows what a turnover is, but establishing a balance sheet strictly in line with the regulations, requires knowing the accounting principles and methods behind it. So the necessity of an accounting professional with years of experience having given an expertise in this fied. It is the same for CSR because proposing an approach is easy, but mastering the methods of the field is necessary to provide a solid solution. So it requires a CSR professional who has gained an expertise after years of relevant experience. Like sustainable finance where optimised advice can be seen in knowledge gained over the years and both in the field of ESG methodologies/analysis drawing the sustainablility choices of asset management, the field of regulations mainly targeting asset managers and the field of asset management being itself at the heart of sustainable finance and its regulations. With this three kinds of experiences, consulting in sustainable finance is optimal through the understanding of all the challenges of sustainable finance. As such, my work approach is based on years with direct experience in these three fields having confronted me with CSR research and issues of all kinds, combined with complex ESG reasoning and methodologies that today feed my advice.
In this context, ETHIKUS was able to work for clients from various sectors, having given me the opportunity to develop holistic knowledge in CSR and sustainable finance. Each need being specific, ETHIKUS approachs it by making connections with the myriad of ESG topics that ETHIKUS has addressed in multicultural contexts. Indeed, to meet a CSR need, ETHIKUS's work approach goes beyond traditional sources, standards and guidelines accessible to the general public. ETHIKUS relies on methodologies, the team's backgrounds in culturally different countries in their CSR views, as well as ETHIKUS's multicultural and direct experiences within the UN system, driving global regulatory trends on CSR through consensus between most different countries in the world. This path has allowed ETHIKUS to build over the years a CSR expertise adaptable to clients and sectors around the world, having built itself with different actors as much in their cultures as in their activities. However, they are complementary in the contributions made to the field of CSR in terms of world-class methodologies, regulatory frameworks and business issues.
For example, when a client expresses the need to build a CSR strategy, ETHIKUS supports him with an approach fed with ESG methodologies that ETHIKUS helped to develop, being the fruit of years of research carried out by pioneering players in the CSR field. In the same way as when a financial client wishes to define an ESG approach or to comply with an European text, ETHIKUS takes inspiration from the multilateral mechanism of the UN that it knows from the inside that carries European views and draws global regulatory framework on sustainable development. Like CSR risks/opportunities for a client that ETHIKUS approachs with extra-financial indicators that ETHIKUS helped to develop. ETHIKUS is committed to providing the most objective advice possible by applying know-how and methodological tools acquired over the years, with recognized stakeholders, and enriched with complex CSR requests, testifying to the need for a scientific approach to the subject. In this sense, the ESG sources and CSR benchmarks help ETHIKUS align the approaches. However, in order to optimize social license to operate, ETHIKUS consulting offer is based on a scientific approach and knowledge gained over the years at positions involved in different CSR angles (methodological, regulatory, operational, political).
5. CONTACT DETAILS
ETHIKUS Consulting is a registered company in France, under the number 907716732.
If you are interested to get more information or a project to develop, please contact us through CONTACT in the menu bar or send an email francioli.bo@gmail.com
ETHIKUS Consulting thanks you for your visit!