For several years now, VO has been resolutely committed to a sustainable transition process in order to meet the challenges facing our society and the climate crisis. We have invested heavily in research and development, with the aim of drastically reducing our footprint and lessening our impact. Beyond the search for solutions and the training of our staff, it became clear and crucial for us to centralise all this expertise, and to have a tool that allows us to objectively measure our impact and our progress.
More than just reporting
This is where My Impact Tool comes in – a platform dedicated to improving the environmental and societal performance of event projects and communication campaigns. Specifically, it is a tailor-made tool that allows us to meet multiple objectives/needs:
Centralising good practice
The project is really the culmination of years of research and development in sustainable transition and allows us to concentrate all the expertise we have developed over the years in one place. We have developed a number of innovative tools, including the Circular Event Toolkit, aimed at integrating the notion of the circular economy into the design of our events, and our three carbon footprint calculators that allow us to measure the footprint of face-to-face and virtual events and communication campaigns.
We then turned our attention to the subject of biodiversity, for which we again developed indicators with our partners to measure, reduce or reverse the impact we might be having on our ecosystem.
Each of these calculators was created with experts, by forming project teams made up of people within and outside of VO. This dynamic enabled us to merge two world views, and to find the solutions best suited to the business, and those most likely to have a positive impact.
Empowering stakeholders
Although this tool concerns numerous stakeholders and actors in the production chain of campaigns and events, the main ones are our customers. My Impact Tool offers solutions, assessments and answers to a sector that is not yet fully aware of, or concerned by, the climate crisis. Customers receive detailed reports on their footprint, which they can use in their own business and communication. More than that, they can also shape the actions we take to contribute to their company’s overall sustainability strategy and objectives.
Increasing the sustainable expertise of project managers
Clearly, the aim is also to strengthen sustainable expertise internally, to create automatic responses among all our employees, encouraging them to think about eco-designing each project from the outset. In addition, starting this year, environmental performance criteria have been integrated into the individual evaluation criteria, so it is essential to be able to base ourselves on objective data.
Measuring and valuing impact – the real added value
Our teams have been implementing actions to reduce impact for a number of years, and we can now cast light on these efforts and their direct impact.
The tool also allows us to measure our progress over the long term, to monitor our environmental KPIs more professionally, and to set them better for the following year by easily identifying areas for improvement.
In this way, we can widely promote and encourage a continuous improvement process.
Setting benchmarks
The quantity and precision of the data collected (more than 200 data points cross-referenced per project) provide an unprecedented source of information for establishing benchmarks in the sector. These benchmarks serve as a basis for comparing projects as well as for setting improvement targets. They will also enable us to develop a predictive model. The aim of this model will be to enable us to put a price on what is avoided (CO2, waste, pollution, etc.) thanks to the actions being implemented, before delivering a project. It will help project managers and customers make informed choices (balance between investment, results and impact), with the aim of radically increasing the positive impact of projects and the proportion of projects tending towards CO2 neutrality, zero waste, zero food wastage, the use of sustainable and local products and services, a reasonable use of media, inclusive projects, clean IT, etc.
Conclusion and results
The tool has been widely used for event projects since February and will very soon be used for communication campaigns. Every event organised by VO has to be put through it. This has already enabled us to analyse the data and set improvement targets for 2023 based on real data.
As an example, we can already say that we have managed to reduce the CO2 per participant in face-to-face events by 15% compared to 2021.
