How organizations are addressing the 'G' in ESG – striking the balance of maximizing long-term growth and value while safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders
Why do so many people work so hard just to build up the funds to quit?In 25 years of coaching, I have met thousands of people with the same dream: to have “enough” money to do what they really want to do. The dream outcome is different for each – but the impact on their life today is always the same. Like Didi and Gogo in Waiting for Godot, we sit, wait and put up with work we don’t want to do to save for the life we actually want. This is the lifeblood of capitalism, and of the entire savings and pensions industry – that we share a dream of a golden future that has to be paid for with savings from work.There is another version of the story. Find the “Work” that matters to you and do it now in a way that brings you to life.
The Obama administration has announced a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands, citing concerns regarding pricing and pollution. This followed on the heels of the president’s final State of the Union address, in which he said the United States must improve the way it manages its fossil fuel resources and move towards a clean energy economy.
Millennials are earning a reputation for doing things differently. They communicate intensively using social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest), are revolutionizing transportation (Uber, Lyft), and are now demanding corporate sustainability and accountability. Currently the largest living generation in the United States, Millennials have enough ‘buying power’ to throw their weight around.But this innovation doesn’t happen by chance or because Millennials passively expected it — they create it by advocating for themselves.
Four years after launching its corporate responsibility strategy, Travel with Purpose, Hilton Worldwide says its investments in global partnerships and sustainability programs is not only driving positive social impact, but also supporting long-term business success. Hilton discusses its strategy and provides updates on its global impact in its fourth annual corporate responsibility report.Travel with Purpose was designed to examine global issues where Hilton can make an impact while simultaneously contributing to its future success:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … the Spring of Hope, the Winter of Despair …”Charles Dickens’ words feel current and vivid as we think about our world today. We may at last have some energy towards a meaningful international agreement on climate action. We are seeing sustainability feature in the corporate and political mainstream like never before.
Heard of the Good Work movement yet? If you haven’t, it’s probably because companies such as Uber and Airbnb get more press. The Good Work movement, founded by the National Domestic Workers Alliance in October, is a gathering of companies pledging to deliver the protections and benefits that gig companies such as Uber notoriously fail to offer.There’s a lot going on here, and the movement’s model is extremely important for the future of work. Here’s why.
The White House on Tuesday announced a new public-private water innovation strategy aimed at addressing the impacts of climate change on the use and supply of the nation’s water resources.The strategy, known informally as the “moonshot for water” calls for an aggressive two-part approach led by federal agencies, and enlists the private sector and other stakeholder groups to help significantly scale up research and investment in water efficiency solutions.
Interim results from PwC’s Annual CEO Survey show that CEOs at major international businesses are coming to terms with the implications of the transition to a low-carbon economy, reinforced by the new global agreement on climate change reached last weekend at the conclusion of COP21 in Paris.
Over the weekend, 195 nations reached a landmark agreement at COP21 in Paris to fight climate change and unleash actions and investment towards a low carbon, resilient and sustainable future.The Paris Agreement, for the first time, brings all nations into a common cause based on their historic, current and future responsibilities. Its main aim is to keep a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The 1.5 degree Celsius limit is a significantly safer defense line against the worst impacts of a changing climate.
A sales manager recently told me about an embarrassing scene that unfolded before an important client meeting. “Two teams from our firm were waiting in the lobby when the client walked in, and the groups didn’t recognize each other,” she said. “What a contradiction of our promise to provide integrated solutions! We looked like the Keystone Kops.”
The Conference of the Parties … COP21 … the climate conference … or just “Paris,” as in “What’s going to happen in Paris?”
If cities around the world take aggressive climate change action, they can help cut global emissions by 3.7 billion tons a year by 2030 — helping to close the “emissions gap” between what countries have promised to do before the COP21 climate talks, and what is needed to avoid a rise in temperature above 2 degrees Celsius, according to a new report by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) on behalf of C40.The emissions gap amounts to around 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Corporate sustainability reporting desperately needs to up its game in order to align company-level sustainability performance with the broader systems-level ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and COP21, the United Nations climate change conference, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Businesses have a central role in addressing the forest issues that are in today’s headlines—including the Indonesian fires (which emitted more CO2 in three weeks than the entire German economy in a year), and the Amazon forests, which may be at a tipping point with serious
Around the world there is a growing consensus that a company’s social role goes beyond meeting legal requirements, complying with ethical standards, creating jobs and paying taxes. People everywhere now expect companies to act as social leaders, using their business expertise to lead social change.In response to people’s changing expectations, the world’s most innovative companies are building social value right into their core business strategies, not only to address poverty and other problems in their communities, but also to improve workplace relations, gain market advantages and grow profits faster.
Developing countries will need to pay an additional $270 billion more each year to adapt to the impacts of climate change if COP21 fails to elicit increased global pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report by Oxfam.Game-changers in the Paris climate deal warns that developing countries’ economies face being crushed under the double burden of climate change adaptation costs of almost $800 billion and more than twice that in economic losses every year by 2050 if pledges to cut emissions are not improved.
Despite the recent horrific acts in Paris, next week world leaders will converge on the city for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference — otherwise known as the Conference of the Parties (COP) 21 — to achieve what many hope will be the first legally binding and universal agreement on climate change.
There was a lot of discussion last week at SB’15 London around the so-called ‘aspirational generation’ - a rising generation of millennials with higher sustainability expectations of brands whose products they buy, as well as for those they work for. How to attract and retain a motivated workforce (younger and older, alike) with more stringent demands for positive purpose and impact was the core theme of Tuesday afternoon’s breakout session.
In the past few weeks we talked about what purpose is, how it’s affected the economy, and why it’s so important from a psychological perspective. We ended the last post by beginning to understand the differences between Humans and Econs [Humans being real people in the real world, and Econs being our theoretical version that economics is based upon] and the unfortunate truth that most companies are, unlike us, Econs.
In the midst (and potentially mist) of the recent Volkswagen emissions scandal, there was no better time to discuss the ESG (environmental, social and governance) regulation space than SB’15 London.