Communication, transformation, inclusion and responsibility

The line is simple: simplifying must never lead to impoverishing reality. Our responsibility is to make a complex subject understandable without losing its substance. Electrical infrastructure, energy efficiency or the operation of a data centre are technically complex, but that does not mean they need to be explained through complex messages. We sometimes tend to reproduce the complexity of our activity in the way we talk about it. Yet the person we are speaking to does not necessarily need to master all the technology in order to understand its value, its uses and its consequences.

That is where our role becomes strategic: identifying what is essential so that everyone can understand, decide and act. And this applies to all our audiences. An electrician, a panel builder, a distributor or an investor obviously do not make the same decisions, but they have one thing in common: they are human beings. Even in a highly technical environment, decisions are never based solely on rational data. Good simplification, therefore, is not the kind that makes the subject easier. It is the kind that makes it clearer, without ever making it less true.

The role of a communications department cannot be limited to explaining a decision once it has been made. Communication must be able to bring a perspective on how a transformation will be understood, adopted and ultimately made successful. The launch of the iconic Céliane range in France in 2024 is a good illustration. We had strong commercial ambitions and significant volume targets. My role was to look at the entire journey, from awareness through to purchase, and to make sure that our communication strategy was genuinely contributing to those objectives. We then asked a very simple question: how could we make our distribution partners genuine participants in the launch?

I drew on a model that is well known in other industries: when Apple launches a new iPhone, its distributors take part in the commercial and marketing activation around the launch. We proposed adapting that logic to our own environment. Rexel France immediately saw the value of the approach and agreed to activate its 450 points of sale around the launch. For the first time, a distribution partner was committing alongside Legrand to a communication programme that was both co-branded and co-funded. What I take from that experience is that our role was not simply to tell the launch story better. We helped change the way the ecosystem took part in the launch. For me, that is the difference between executional communication and communication that creates value.

I would not try to oppose growth and restraint. The real issue is efficiency and impact. The growth of data centres reflects a profound transformation in our digital uses, now accelerated by the development of artificial intelligence. Global adoption of AI is also continuing to rise rapidly: according to Microsoft, it concerned 17.8% of the world’s working-age population in the first quarter of 2026, compared with 16.3% at the end of 2025. It would therefore be hardly credible to claim that this growth has no energy consequences. It does. The question is rather how to support that growth by consuming better, improving infrastructure efficiency and reducing its environmental intensity.

That is where the responsibility of an industrial company such as Legrand lies. In France, the energy context is also particular: electricity production was more than 95% low-carbon in 2025 according to RTE. That obviously does not make a data centre’s consumption neutral, but it does help explain why the issue cannot be reduced to “growth versus restraint”. Our responsibility is to look at the whole system: the amount of energy consumed, how that energy is produced, the efficiency of the equipment and the ability to do more with fewer resources. Environmental credibility therefore does not come from a narrative that denies growth. It comes from our ability to acknowledge tensions, measure impacts and demonstrate the progress being made.

Trust does not depend on every decision being easy to accept. It depends on the company’s ability to stand by its decisions, explain them and face their consequences. In this kind of situation, the first question that must be answered is therefore: why is this decision being made? But explaining the “why” is not enough. There also needs to be clarity about the “how”: how is the decision being implemented, how are the people concerned being supported, and how does the company assume its responsibility during this period of transformation?

It is precisely at moments like these that a company’s commitments are truly tested. A company cannot ask for trust when it communicates about its values and then expect that trust to be permanently secured. Trust is built through consistency between stated principles and the way difficult decisions are made and explained. Communication is not there to make a difficult decision acceptable at any cost. Its role is to make the decision understandable, factual and human.

I think a company must know how to create spaces in which it does not need to control everything that is said. Open-mindedness is a fundamental value at Legrand. It is also reflected in an entrepreneurial spirit that allows employees to bring forward initiatives based on realities experienced in the field. Employee Resource Groups, such as Elle Legrand or Legrand Rainbow, are an illustration of this. These networks emerged from employees’ observations and experiences. They create spaces for exchange that are different from institutional communication channels.

Their role is not to produce another layer of discourse on behalf of the company. It is also to bring forward experiences, expectations and sometimes difficulties that the company needs to hear. That obviously requires a framework: respect, listening and confidentiality. But authenticity cannot be fully scripted. If we want employees to speak, we have to accept that what they say may sometimes differ from the institutional voice. For me, that is precisely what it means to create an inclusive environment: not simply giving people the right to speak, but creating the conditions for what they say to be genuinely heard.

When I took over the presidency of Legrand Rainbow in 2025, I had two priorities: to continue the awareness-raising work that had been underway for several years and to bring new momentum to the network. We therefore structured a roadmap, renewed the committee and established several key moments, notably around May 17 and the Paris and Limoges Pride events. But visibility is not an end in itself. It must serve an objective: mobilising people and changing practices. We already track several indicators. First, the number of employees mobilised by our actions from one year to the next. That is a first signal of the network’s ability to generate engagement.

We also look at engagement around our internal communications, particularly reactions and comments. This allows us to measure the interest generated by the topics we address. Finally, we are in the process of building more qualitative indicators: the number of employees reached by future training modules and a satisfaction indicator among network members regarding the actions carried out. In the long term, I would like us to be able to distinguish three levels: how many people we reach, how many we mobilise and what our actions actually change. That last dimension is the most important. Because in inclusion, as in many other areas, success is not measured only by the number of people attending an event, but by what remains after the event.

I would distinguish between two things here: the company’s commitments and the reality experienced by employees. The role of a network such as Legrand Rainbow is notably to help connect the two, but it cannot, on its own, measure the entire employee experience. That is why broader listening mechanisms are essential. At Legrand, the engagement survey regularly asks all Group employees about many dimensions of their experience: strategy, management, career development, CSR commitments and pay policy, among others.

It is an important tool because it allows us to move beyond individual impressions and obtain a structured and representative view of employees’ experience. But numbers do not tell the whole story. The most interesting feedback is also what comes up from the field: a difficulty that is expressed, a management practice that works, a situation showing that a company commitment is genuinely understood or, on the contrary, that it remains theoretical. It is in that gap between what the company says and what employees experience that we need to look for areas of progress.

The main risk would be to confuse content production with communication responsibility. AI can produce a text quickly. It can even produce a very well-written text. But it does not bear responsibility for what is said, it does not know by itself all the human, political and cultural realities of an organisation, and it cannot replace the judgement needed to decide what is relevant to say, to whom and at what moment. I therefore consider the use of AI in communication to be unavoidable. The question is no longer whether we are going to use it, but how we are going to use it intelligently. I explain to my team in particular that our profession has always involved knowing how to write a good brief. With AI, that skill becomes even more important: we now need to be able to formulate a precise request, provide context, challenge the result and retain responsibility for the final decision.

I like this phrase: there is no such thing as bad creative work, only bad briefs. With AI, I would add a second rule: there is no good answer without good judgement. AI will probably automate part of production. So much the better. That should allow us to devote more time to what truly creates value in the communicator’s role: understanding the issues, listening to stakeholders, identifying tensions, bringing an idea to the surface, creating trust and taking a position when necessary. Because ultimately, the value of a communicator never lies solely in the ability to produce words. It lies in the ability to understand what is happening behind the words.