Real World Sustainable Values

Over the past 3 years, Justine Tabarin has seen her job expand from managing CSR at Criteo to also coordinating the fast-growing Criteo Cares community groups and today being responsible as well for sustainability strategy – growth that reflects the evolutions of a company determined to keep it real.

You’re just about to publish Criteo’s 2021 CSR Report. What’s in it?

We talk about it as “living proof” of Criteo’s culture. The CSR Report is about who we are, what we do and, importantly, how we do it. Within the framework of what is required reporting for all listed companies, we seek to share with our stakeholders how we are living up to our commitments toward the environment, people and society. And, we back this up with concrete data that is audited by an independent third party. The word “proof” is a deliberate choice.

How do you decide what goes into the report?

We recognize that CSR is increasingly important to stakeholders and the report is widely circulated by employees to customers, shareholders and others. Our ambition therefore is to go well beyond what’s legally required and to provide as complete an accounting as possible of everything Criteo does that relates to CSR, for example, what our community groups are doing.

And you do all that by yourself?

Hardly! CSR is nothing but teamwork. Everything in this report reflects the work of my expert colleagues, literally hundreds of people around the world working in a broad range of areas: from reducing the carbon footprint of our data centers to improving our capacity to welcome new talent living with a disability to directing our procurement to free and fair-trade sourcing…they’re the ones who are genuinely driving Criteo’s progress.

How has Criteo’s strategy evolved?

When we started reporting our CSR activities, we didn’t have a formal strategy. We began by gathering the information on what we were doing in different parts of the company and comparing them with external references like SASB* and the UNSDG** to help us set global performance targets. Under the leadership of SVP for Global Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Rachel Scheel, we have professionalized our approach and clearly defined our strategy so that everyone knows where we’re going.

How does CSR reporting influence the strategy?

The figures in the report are updated every year, which helps us in setting goals and taking actions to achieve them. The data can also point to gaps between where we say we want to be and the reality of where we are. In response to a question from the Women’s Community, our HR teams performed an analysis to measure whether we had a salary gap related to gender. After some complicated calculations, we determined that the gap was 2%, very good by industry standards but not good enough for a company committed to gender parity. Our CEO, Megan Clarken, has decided to reduce this gap to zero in March 2021. Since then, an executive task force has been working to keep that number at zero and prevent a gap from reappearing in the future.

What’s next for CSR reporting?

Well, a name change, for starters. In 2022, we’ll add a “D,” for Directive, making it the CSRD*** report, to reflect new reporting requirements for public companies mandated by the European Commission. We also will continue to work to improve both our performance and our reporting. For this year’s report, we added a new data table; in the 2022 report, we’ll report greenhouse gas emissions and also formally lay out our CSR strategy. And, we’ll continue to find ways to track and measure our performance and push for progress, even in areas where it’s complicated. It’s what we mean when we talk about remaining committed to living our values and keeping it real every day, not just the good days.

*SASB: Sustainability Accounting Standards Board

** UNSDG: United Nations Sustainability Development Guidelines

*** Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive

Check our 2021 CSR Report!