ESG may be on the agenda of almost every organisation in Asia but how many companies truly understand it and most importantly, how many truly care?
We have reached a point in society when the term ‘lip service’ is almost as commonplace as diversity within business and an ingrained mistrust in organisations is having a detrimental effect on their future talent pools with professionals questioning the legitimacy of public promises of gender, racial and intergenerational diversity.
I’m beginning to see the same pattern appear within the ESG marketplace too as organisations promise to care about building a sustainable and ethical organisation with a low carbon footprint but fail to deliver on any evidence and unsurprisingly, it’s leaving the top tier of ESG talent within the Asset Management space questioning their choices.
In the same way as we see organisations publicly championing gender diversity and publishing gender pay reports to match, organisations across the APAC region need to start proving they aren’t just talking about environmental change. They need to show the world that they are tirelessly trying to make ethical investments, avoid unconscious bias and make the move to sustainability.
Coca-Cola is a great example of an organisation pledging a focus on ESG to redeem their brand. With Ocean hoovers and promises to collect more bottles than they distribute, the FTSE 50 organisation are going above and beyond to show their customer and employee demographic that they have no room for lip service where ESG is concerned and it’s about time other companies follow suit.
We are producing a white paper focused on the importance of ESG within Asset Management, more specifically, tailored to the exceptional professionals looking for a role that really matters and the organisations trying to home them.
I would love to hear your views on the ESG marketplace in Asia – do you think it’s time for a change?
