Social Cohesion in the Workplace: An Overview for Taking Action

Produced by RÉUNIS in partnership with HEC Paris’s Sustainability & Organizations (S&O) Center, a new overview highlights the practices that strengthen social cohesion in the workplace. The result of six months of work, it presents 50 initiatives selected from more than 165 practices identified in France. A tool to help business leaders and managers build stronger work teams.

How can we keep the collective alive in an era of hybrid work, artificial intelligence, and societal transformation? As the spaces where people from different backgrounds meet are becoming more fragile, the company remains a place where individuals of varied careers, professions, and generations work toward common goals. But this diversity alone is not enough to create cohesion.

To better understand how to build and sustain these bonds, RÉUNIS, an endowment fund dedicated to social cohesion in the workplace, is publishing an overview produced with HEC Paris’s Sustainability & Organizations (S&O) Center. Aline Gatignon, Professor of Strategy at HEC Paris, and Mathieu Noguès presented its main findings on 14 October at the Galerie du 19M, during the launch of the fund, led by its Chairman Arnaud Gangloff, Senior Partner and Chairman of Kéa, and its Managing Director Florence Casalis.

The presentation was followed by a roundtable on the experiences of the founding partners. Emmanuelle Greth, Chief Human Resources and CSR Officer at Groupe Galeries Lafayette; Sébastien Lebreton, Human Resources Director of CHANEL’s Fashion activities; Frédéric Levacher, CEO of Quick; and Sabrina Herlory Rouget, CEO of Aroma-Zone, shared their vision and the practices implemented in their companies to strengthen the collective.

Understanding the Mechanisms Behind the Practices

Six months of work, around fifteen companies interviewed across France, and some forty interviews, from executives to operational teams: the overview draws on an exploration of practices in the field. Of the 165 good practices and social innovations identified, 50 are presented in this 96-page publication.

The goal goes beyond sharing inspiring examples. It is about understanding the mechanisms that make these initiatives useful, in order to help other organizations adapt them to their own context.

For each practice, the challenge is to understand “under what conditions and why it works,” explains Aline Gatignon. Trust, relationships between colleagues, and a sense of belonging to the organization play a central role here. Building them requires particular attention when employees have different experiences and perspectives: cohesion practices must make it possible to “turn this diversity into a strength,” she stresses.

Three Levels of Action: Leadership, Management, and Individuals

The overview approaches social cohesion at three complementary levels.

For business leaders, it is about making trade-offs and leading by example. Social cohesion is reflected in decisions, priorities, and the way economic and social objectives are taken into account. Leadership commitment thus gives weight to the initiatives rolled out across the organization.

For managers, the challenge is to organize genuine collective work. The overview encourages thinking about hybrid work, team dynamics, and workspaces together. Being in the office is not enough: opportunities for cooperation, knowledge transfer, and informal exchanges must also be created. These moments matter particularly for newcomers and for collaboration across functions.

At the individual level, supporting life transitions is a decisive moment. During these periods, the support provided by the company can strengthen the bond of trust or, conversely, reveal a gap between the values it advertises and the experience people actually have. Its effects extend beyond the direct beneficiaries: colleagues also observe how the organization takes care of its employees.

Connecting Research and Experimentation

For the S&O Center, this partnership illustrates an approach that combines knowledge production, dissemination, and action. At the launch, Aline Gatignon emphasized the importance of working with organizations in the field to apply research-based knowledge, evaluate solutions, and bring new questions to light.

The overview is a first step in this dynamic. RÉUNIS intends to continue the work through experiments with companies and the dissemination of practices, notably via a future open-access platform. The ambition: to give leaders and teams concrete means to strengthen social cohesion within their organizations.

Fifteen companies from across France were interviewed, at every level of the hierarchy, from senior management to operational teams, in order to understand, based on the solutions and innovations implemented, how a social cohesion policy is driven from the top of the organization, then spread and sustained at every level.

This review of social cohesion in the workplace, conducted by HEC Institute and its Social Cohesion & Trust Lab, allowed us to substantiate what we sensed: the general interest is at stake at the very heart of the company. Of the 165 good practices and social innovations identified, 50 were highlighted in this overview. They show very concretely the impact of social cohesion on a company’s sustainable performance.

This overview was written by:

• Florence Casalis, Managing Director of RÉUNIS, Endowment Fund for Social Cohesion in the Workplace;
• Marieke Huysentruyt, Professor of Strategy, Academic Director of the Sustainability & Organizations (S&O) Institute, HEC Paris;
• Mathieu Noguès, Director of the Kéa Institute;
• Quitterie D’Everlange, Research Assistant, HEC Paris.

We also thank the executives and managers of the companies that opened their doors to us and chose to enrich shared knowledge of their inspiring practices:

AROMA-ZONE, CHANEL MODE, DANONE, EMEIS, GROUP BEL, KÉA, KOMEET, LACTALIS, L’ENTREPOT DU BRICOLAGE, L’ORÉAL, QUICK, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC, SYNDICAT NATIONAL DE LA RESTAURATION COLLECTIVE VEOLIA