Context
Founded in 2008, Mexens is a major player in the energy transition in France and internationally. The Group has around 310 employees (excluding interns and work-study students), spread across 12 sites in France (Poitiers, Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes, Limoges…) and internationally (India, Spain, and the Netherlands).
The diversity of profiles is a striking feature: 70% "office" functions (HR, legal, finance, business development, asset management), 20% field developers in contact with farmers and local authorities, and 10% purely field-based profiles (works supervisors, maintenance technicians, electricians). About a dozen employees work fully remotely, given the itinerant nature of their roles. All of this in a context of strong growth. Last year, the company hired 90 people on permanent and fixed-term contracts and welcomed 63 interns and work-study students — a total of 150 hires over the year.
Challenges
For Marine Le Toullec, HR Director of the Mexens Group, the central challenge is clear: how do you create and maintain a shared cultural foundation when you don't share the same buildings, the same jobs, or sometimes even the same countries? The challenges identified are many:
- Anchoring strong values in real behaviors: translating the company's values (including sustainability and safety) into concrete expected behaviors for every employee.
- Keeping the culture alive in a multi-site context: building authentic connections between geographically dispersed teams.
- Integrating a new team of employees from an administrative culture into a strong entrepreneurial culture.
Teamstarter is one of the levers helping to meet these challenges.
"To keep a culture alive, people need to meet."
Marine Le Toullec, HR Director, Mexens
The solution
For Marine, Teamstarter answers a fundamental need in a multi-site context: multiplying moments of togetherness and enabling everyone to get involved, within a framework aligned with the company's values. The platform lets anyone propose, fund, and lead concrete projects, organized around three objectives:
- Strengthen the company's social and environmental impact, in line with its mission and values.
- Improve quality of life across sites, by giving employees the means to act on their day-to-day.
- Build team cohesion, by creating opportunities to come together and do things as a group.
The projects reflect this diversity: inter-office cycling competitions, family days, initiatives with nonprofits, eco-friendly actions, and more.
The results
- More than 15 projects were launched between January and March, blending cohesion, sport, and social and environmental commitment.
- Last year, 37.5% of projects were cross-department and over 25% were cross-site — proof that Teamstarter creates connections between teams and roles that don't necessarily cross paths day to day.
- 50% of projects focus on team cohesion, revealing a strong need for reconnection expressed from the ground up.
Conclusion
The Mexens Group's experience shows that a strong culture in a multi-site environment can't be decreed from headquarters — it's built day by day, through actions, encounters, and initiatives led by employees themselves.
In a fast-growing company with such diverse roles, there's a real risk of seeing the culture erode as the organization grows. Teamstarter is one of the levers that helps avoid this trap, by giving everyone the ability to propose and fund concrete projects — turning values into actions and employees into participants in a shared adventure.
