How we worked with Epassi on ESG action planning

Founded in 2007, Epassi is a provider of employee benefit solutions, offering sports, culture, wellness, public transport and lunch benefits, primarily in Finland and Sweden.

Epassi is a pioneer in mobile payment systems, and has become one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, on which more than 1 million employees rely for employee benefits.

Key performance indicators

An in-depth ESG assessment has been conducted and detailed actions have been identified in areas of employee engagement, data privacy and security, and good governance. Management has committed to tracking numerous KPIs, including compliance training completion rate, employee NPS score and diversity & inclusion rate.

Highlights

Data privacy

A strong culture of compliance and business ethics are important to Bregal, and Epassi’s management team is making good progress in further formalising procedures. The company’s main focus has been to enhance GDPR-related documentation, with ongoing work to incorporate compliance and risk-related aspects into the business values, including embedding these policies as part of onboarding for new employees and in annual employee training. Epassi has taken the important step of hiring a Compliance Officer who will build on the current practices to further set up a robust and mature programme.

Employee engagement and performance management

Epassi has two HR managers who provide operational HR support across Finland, Sweden and Poland. The team has been working hard to standardise and formalise people management practices across all three countries, covering the full employee scope with a focus on the employee value proposition, engagement of the workforce and management of performance and talent. Formalised engagement measure toolsand KPI tracking is underway with the aim to further improve employee motivation and satisfaction.

Good governance

Epassi’s management team has taken significant steps to establish a regular and structured set of leadership meetings with documented agendas and minutes. The team has been diligent in establishing clear decision-making authority per role and function across Epassi, enabling decisions to be made more effectively and without direction from the top of the organisation.

The team is ensuring the necessary controls and checks are in place, with clear thresholds and requirements for spend decisions and commercial proposals.

Priorities going forward

• Enhance GDPR documentation and respective policies
• Finalise new Compliance Officer onboarding
• Create a standardised employee engagement, incentivisation and management policy handbook