Malena Gufflet: “Promoting the Pluxee brand is a long-term job” – Brand strategy > Brands

You joined Pluxee in July 2023 as General Manager. With what roadmap?

Malena Gufflet : Pluxee was created in June 2023 to embody the Benefits and Rewards Services branch of Sodexo. I therefore arrived to launch this new brand in France and to continue the digitalization of the company. Pluxee wants to be a resolutely digital company: it is more than 80% digital in France and my role is to accomplish the last mile. In particular by supporting our employees and stakeholders to adapt to a constantly changing world, in a positive way, and to gain agility. The well-known and historic meal voucher, formerly in paper, is for example already 80% digitalized and should be 100% by the end of 2025.

In February 2024, Pluxee finalized its autonomy from Sodexo and its listing on the Paris Stock Exchange. What is the genesis of this operation?

M. G. : In April 2023, Sodexo announced the creation of a spin-off, in order to separate its employee benefits business from its catering business and allow each to continue accelerating its growth in its own market. The ambition was therefore to launch a new brand, Pluxee, which acts as a company in its own right, in 31 countries. Since 1^is February 2024, Pluxee is listed on the SBF 120, the Paris Stock Exchange index, and retains as reference shareholder the Bellon family, founder of Sodexo. Pluxee is therefore part of the heritage of this Sodexo group, emblematic throughout the world of French service, particularly in the gastronomic activity, but now has the capacity to better address the specificities of its market. Its launch thus aims to support companies in the face of changes in the world of work, to help them better attract and retain talent. And therefore to strengthen their employer brand. Pluxee also wants to meet the strong expectations of employees in terms of purchasing power, in a context that remains tense despite the slowdown in inflation, and the search for well-being. Finally, it is about sharing with affiliated merchants the data useful for the development of their activity.

What does the name “Pluxee” mean?

M. G. : We chose a name that echoes the depth of the offering we provide. In Pluxee, there is “plus”, the commitment to always offer more solutions and value to businesses, merchants, consumers and employees. To have a positive impact on our stakeholders, in short. Then there is the “x” which is the symbol of the link between the experiences we offer and the proximity to the market of the “ee”, of “employee engagement”, our business and the last letters of the name Pluxee. This market is around 100 billion euros in France. This offer, in addition to the restaurant voucher, corresponds to a whole range of services that strengthen life balances, like the gift card, the well-being programs or the CESU check for private employers. As a female manager, I am very attached to it, particularly to help women, who often still bear the mental burden of the home, to access positions of responsibility. We also have a mobility “brick”, in particular to measure the impact of home-work and work-home travel, a corporate culture “brick” to assess employee engagement, or even a financial serenity “brick”, with an offer of advance payment on salary – and this, while 65% of French employees feel stress about their finances and 49% say they spend between 1 and 8 hours per month at their workplace managing their finances (Mercer study, 2019, Editor’s note).

How are you working on the branding of this new brand?

M. G. : Promoting the brand is a very long-term job. First, we had to bring it to life as such. We started by “pluxeefing”, to use the brand’s jargon, all of our assets, to put them in the Pluxee colors. We modernized our portal to improve the customer journeys of each stakeholder. To gain visibility, we also went to meet more than 1,000 merchants via a tour in several secondary cities in France, such as Caen, Nîmes, Clermont-Ferrand and Nancy. It was also a question of collecting suggestions for improvement. One year after the creation of Pluxee, all of our 50,000 client companies, our 260,000 partner merchants and the 5 million daily users in France know Pluxee and have already had contact with the brand. To communicate more widely, we deploy traditional advertising campaigns on displays, digitally, in the press and on social networks.

We have also developed innovative concepts, such as the podcast Late which invites you to disconnect from work during your lunch break by listening to anecdotes about personalities such as Simone Veil, Freddy Mercury, Neil Armstrong or Leonardo da Vinci. We also created the podcast Better for our corporate clients. The latter, which questions the challenges of the world of work and the employee experience, has exceeded one million listens. Finally, to bring our employees on board internally, we organized a major event in Paris in January, with our clients and personalities such as the psychiatrist and expert in corporate well-being Christophe André. In September, we are resuming a poster campaign throughout France and our tour to meet shopkeepers in Amiens, Poitiers and Valence. We will also celebrate the 10th anniversary of the restaurant voucher card.

In this highly competitive market, Pluxee’s ambition is to acquire new customers, with a particular focus on small and medium-sized businesses?

M. G. : The VSE-SME segment is one of those in which the offer of employee benefits is the least penetrated – around 12% when this rate is 25% for the rest of the companies. To make it easier for companies with fewer than 100 employees, we are simplifying their approach: they can now quickly offer, online, dedicated benefits such as restaurant vouchers for VSE-SMEs. We also take care of the advice to help them choose the benefits that best correspond to their number of employees and their growth in activities. With this support, the average length of the relationship that we establish with our VSE-SME customers is 12 years.

Pluxee invests 10% of its turnover in tech every year by 2025. With what ambitions?

M. G. : The challenge is to accelerate on the subject of platformization to allow stakeholders to access all services via a single platform, smoothly and without friction. Beneficiaries can, for example, find their mobility benefits and their meal vouchers on a single application. But also, check the merchants who accept payment by meal voucher, those who sell organic products, etc. This investment also aims to strengthen cybersecurity, to protect the sensitive information that we hold. We also believe in investing in data in order to feed the added value that we bring to client companies, beneficiaries and merchants. It is important to be able to provide affiliated merchants with information on their beneficiaries, such as the expenses made in their store, so that the latter can adjust their opening hours or their offers. Very soon, merchants will be able to push their promotions via the platform that the beneficiaries visit.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also part of Pluxee’s “tech” investments?

M. G. : We already use artificial intelligence in customer service, support, and our feedback management. (customer satisfaction assessment, editor’s note) to automate review collection. We believe in AI as a growth engine, but above all with a view to strengthening our humanity. AI must be put at the service of our stakeholders to help client companies focus on attracting, retaining and building loyalty of talent; merchants on improving their visibility and turnover and beneficiaries on their purchasing power and well-being.

You have set yourself the goal of achieving net zero carbon across your value chain by 2035. How are you progressing on this trajectory?

M. G. : We are making progress in four areas. We are finalizing the dematerialization of paper vouchers in favor of digital. When we dematerialize a meal voucher, we reduce our carbon footprint by 96%, which is why it is important to get started on it as soon as possible. The second area of ​​intervention, which is particularly important to us, is to work towards responsible digital technology. All of our servers operate using renewable energy and we should be certified on this subject by the end of the year. All of our digital services are also designed with CSR in mind. The third area is sustainable and responsible purchasing. We have existed for over 50 years and work with historical suppliers. There was no question of breaking contracts when Pluxee was created. We have chosen to work with them in a co-construction approach, by signing a responsible purchasing charter to achieve net zero carbon together. Finally, our challenge is to reduce the impact of mobility, by giving companies and employees a tool to measure their carbon footprint and easily adopt the sustainable mobility package. By 2025, all of our sites will have a renewable electricity supply.

Pluxee has also created its ethical charter, what does it contain?

M. G. : We have indeed implemented an ethics charter, which is based on four commitments: trust, respect for people, transparency and commercial integrity. At the global level, within our headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux, an ethics and compliance committee ensures that, in our corporate culture, in our programs, in our subsidiaries and for all 31 countries where Pluxee operates, the charter is known, implemented and respected. The committee studies any critical situation that would undermine these commitments. We raise awareness among all our teams through mandatory training programs on business ethics, the fight against corruption, the fight against sexual harassment, respect for human rights or the management of conflicts of interest. We also have a global tool available to our employees and all stakeholders, Speak Up, which is a channel on which it is possible to share, anonymously, any situation contrary to the principles mentioned in the charter.