Environmental impact: concrete, measurable and fully owned commitments
Faced with environmental and societal challenges, companies today have a clear responsibility: moving from intentions to actions.
In the employee benefits industry, expectations are evolving rapidly. Clients, employees and partners alike expect responsible, visible and consistent choices.
At Swibeco, we fully embrace our role. Our commitment translates into concrete decisions: a rigorous selection of partner brands, the creation of our own responsible label and collaborations with actors recognised for their ESG commitments.
Because every benefit offered must have a positive impact; for employees, for companies and for the environment.
The materiality analysis as a starting point
Before defining our priorities and actions, we wanted to ground our approach in a rigorous and recognised methodology.
In 2024, we conducted an impact materiality analysis in partnership with dss+, an international consulting firm specialising in sustainability. This approach is based on the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) standards; the most widely used non-financial reporting framework in the world. It is compatible with the European CSRD directive (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), which governs companies’ environmental and social transparency obligations.
In practice, 16 themes were assessed according to their importance for our employees, clients and partners, as well as their potential impact on the economy, the environment and society. The results highlighted four key priorities: transparency in our commercial practices and the labelling of our offers, the promotion of benefits with a sustainable dimension, cybersecurity and data protection and business ethics and responsible procurement.
It is on the basis of these findings that we have structured our strategy and the actions presented below.
Transparency in our business practices and the labelling of our offers
Promotion of benefits with a sustainable dimension
Cybersecurity and data protection
Business ethics and responsible purchasing
From words to action: daily commitments at Swibeco
Within Swibeco, we have brought together a team specifically dedicated to improving our environmental impacts. Their mission is to analyse opportunities and implement sustainability-related actions.
Our commitments translate into tangible operational choices, fully integrated into our operations, our solutions and the company’s strategic objectives.
Contracts, payslips and internal or external documents are fully digitalised. By deliberately limiting printing, we reduce our paper consumption and the associated resources.
We incentivise our employees to commute more sustainably by crediting a Sustainable Mobility allocation to their Swibeco Card each month, to encourage more responsible modes of transport in their daily lives.
The Swibeco Card was designed to be used entirely in digital form. For users who still prefer a physical card, these are manufactured from recycled plastic in order to limit their environmental impact.
Our platform offers numerous deals without pushing users towards consumption. On the contrary, our objective is to help users save money every day and increase their purchasing power through discounts with partners already embedded in their daily habits.
In order to enable more informed choices for users of the Swibeco Perks and Discounts Platform, we have created the Smart Impact label. It highlights brands that integrate responsible practices into their business model.
Smart Impact: a label to guide our users
One of the actions carried out in 2025 by our sustainability team was the creation of the Smart Impact label.
Annika, project manager, explains how this project came about.
The idea grew out of a desire to highlight our partners who have a positive impact and are genuinely committed to sustainability. We chose to recognise existing, well-established certifications and approaches, objectively analysing the efforts and commitments of our partners.
dss+ is an international consulting firm specialising in sustainability and operational risk management, whose mission is to contribute to a more sustainable future for the organisations and communities they serve.
We began with a first broad discussion to identify what we could put in place in a concrete and realistic way for the company. Creating a label quickly emerged as an action that was both accessible and relevant.
dss+ then supported us throughout the process, structuring our thinking and helping us establish a clear and credible framework.
The label is based on a structured evaluation using only publicly available information. Three main criteria are examined:
- The integration of sustainability into the business model, through recognised certifications such as B-Corp, ISO 14001 or EcoEntreprise.
- The public communication of their sustainability actions and commitments through recognised frameworks such as GRI, ESRS or CDP, in order to ensure credible and verifiable practices.
- The presence of a clear climate commitment with measurable objectives, for example carbon neutrality or other science-based commitments.
Users of the Swibeco Perks and Discounts Platform can easily identify Smart Impact-labelled brands thanks to the logo displayed on the corresponding offers. It is also possible to filter results to display only these brands.
This allows everyone to make more informed and transparent choices, by favouring, if they wish, partners who are genuinely committed to sustainability.
The Smart Impact label was created to help users of the Swibeco Shop easily identify brands committed to responsible practices.
myclimate: a concrete ESG lever for companies
We collaborate with myclimate (via ecoLive), a public utility foundation that supports and develops climate protection projects according to high quality standards. This allows us to offer our clients a solution for managing their impact, integrated into our solutions.
In practice, when an employee uses their Gift budget provided by their employer on the Swibeco Shop, a percentage is automatically donated to myclimate to support environmental initiatives in Switzerland. This approach generates no additional cost for the company or the employee, while offering a simple and concrete way to contribute to certified projects.
At the end of the year, each company receives a myclimate certificate reflecting its concrete environmental contribution, calculated on the basis of spending made by its employees through their Gift budget. This certificate serves as a genuine ESG argument, enabling companies to highlight their efforts and demonstrate their commitment to sustainability in a tangible and recognised way.
The company purchases a Gift budget via the Benefits Manager and distributes it to your employees.
The employee makes purchases on the Swibeco Shop. A percentage of the total annual amount is donated to myclimate.
myclimate uses the donations collected to finance environmental and social projects in Switzerland.
Companies that have contributed to myclimate receive a certificate at the end of the year, which can be used in their activity report.
Assessing our CSR practices with EcoVadis
Since April 2026, Swibeco has been participating in the EcoVadis CSR assessment programme, the international reference platform used by more than 150,000 companies worldwide.
This first assessment has enabled us to obtain the Committed medal, which independently validates the approach we carry out on a daily basis. It is in line with our commitments: structuring our sustainability strategy around concrete, measurable and verifiable criteria.
