Ethic Charter

Guiding each person to conduct their mission in the same spirit, the ESI’s Ethics Charter sets out the fundamental principles and the rules of conduct to be adopted by every one of us to ensure compliance with the law and delivery on our commitments.
This Charter also sets out the kind of relationships that we wish to maintain within the company to ensure a strong internal teamwork, and constructive collaboration and cooperation with our stakeholders (clients, suppliers, shareholders, partners…).

Download the 2023 Ethics Charter here.

Furthermore, our employees received a mandatory training to ensure a better understating of this Charter and be aware of our engagements.

Ethic committee

The Ethics Committee is responsible for creating conditions to help our employees embrace the principles of our Ethics Charter and making sure its principles are applied by everyone in their day-to-day work.
The Committee listens and helps individual employees to discuss any topic related to implementing or complying with the Ethics Charter and makes sure that all our subsidiaries implement the principles set out in the Charter.
The Ethics Committee is composed of the following members:

• Olfa Zorgati, EVP Operations & Chief Financial Officer
• Corinne Romefort-Régnier, SVP General Secretary & Governance
• Joaquin Castano Teso, Group Quality Director
• Yannick Charron, VP Human Resources

The Ethics Committee can be reached at ethics [at] esi-group.com

Gender equality

For several years, ESI Group has been implementing a CSR approach into all its actions and strategies. In fact, the Group has formalized a strategy organized around 4 pillars: Employees, Customers, Civil Society and the Planet.

To strengthen this initiative, ESI joined the UN Global Compact in 2018. Thus, the Group has strengthened and reorganized its CSR strategy by integrating 10 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations. One of these Goals is gender equality.

Commit to disclose their efforts to support gender equality through policy development, advocacy, and transparency.

"Gender equality" is fully integrated into the Group's strategy.

In France, "Equal pay for equal work" has been a principle of labor law for several decades. Nevertheless, gaps persist. In this respect, the Avenir law aims to eliminate the pay gap between men and women.

In this perspective, each year, companies with 50 employees or more must calculate the gender equality index and publish the obtained score.

This index is calculated on the basis of various indicators:

• the gender pay gap;
• the difference in individual salary increase rates;
• the difference in promotion rates between women and men;
• the rate of female employees who received a salary increase in the year following their return from maternity leave;
• the number of employees of the under-represented gender among the 10 highest paid employees.

The goal is for each company to reach a minimum score of 75/100. If a company does not exceed this threshold, it has three years to comply, failing which it may be sanctioned up to 1% of its payroll.

In accordance with this regulation, the ESI Group UES (ESI Group, ESI France & Civitec) in France has calculated its Gender Equality Index.

Below are the results:

• The gender pay gap: 35/40;
• The gap in individual rates of pay increase: 20/20;
• The gap in promotion rates between women and men: 15/15;
• The rate of employees having benefited from a salary increase in the year following their return from maternity leave: 15/15;
• The number of employees of the under-represented sex among the 10 highest paid employees: 5/10.

TOTAL: 90/100.

ESI Group has calculated this result considering the following principles:

• The reference period used is the calendar year: from January 1 to December 31, 2022;
• The scope of the analysis is 259 employees;
• The calculations of the various indicators, in particular salary raises and return from maternity leave, are made at the level of socio-professional categories.

Anti-corruption

Every ESI employee must show integrity and to honor the commitments undertaken in their dealings with other employees, clients, suppliers, and other partners of our Company. All decisions must be made based on objective and transparent criteria. Any illegal and/or morally unacceptable action or practice is strictly prohibited.
Among the Actions taken to prevent corruption:

• prohibition of any form of corruption in its relations with its business and institutional partners and with the administration,
• no financial or in-kind gratuities may be given with a view to obtaining an advantage, nor may such gratification be received to benefit a company or person,
• if an employee makes facilitation payments or influence-peddling in the course of their professional activities, he is likely to be subject to criminal penalties and its contract of employment will be terminated,
• prohibition to receive, give, promise or solicitate facilitation payments or influence-peddling undue benefits with a view to granting, obtaining or maintaining a contract or any other advantage.

Non-discrimination policy

The Group's highly innovative solutions enable ESI to successfully develop its business throughout the world. As an international company, ESI Group is proud to be able to have a multicultural and diversified workforce. The Group has always valued differences and encouraged its employees to share their ideas across borders in order to create a modern and efficient work environment, able to better support its international customers. ESI Group strives to daily develop its know-how and expertise in recruiting the best talent from around the world.

In order to promote diversity and reduce inequalities within the Group, ESI is committed to:

• promote diversity and multicultural exchanges;
• increase the proportion of female employees with permanent contracts;
• comply with laws and regulations prohibiting any discrimination based on age, race, sex, ethnic origin, nationality, religion, health, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, political or philosophical opinions, union membership or other characteristics protected by locally applicable law;
• not tolerate any form of sexual, physical or moral harassment, coercion or persecution.

Responsible Purchase

ESI Group desires to work in an ecosystem and an environment that shares its values. The purpose of the Responsible Purchasing Charter is to clarify our expectations from our Suppliers (current or future) in terms of human rights and working conditions, ethical business conduct and governance, and environmental responsibility.  The capacity of suppliers to engage and translate these commitments into appropriate practices is part of the evaluation criteria retained by the Group throughout the relationship with the eligible suppliers.

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