ESG Acceleration Webinar: Materiality Activation

This new webinar deals with the challenge of generating real change while implementing sustainability. Together with guest speakers Rebecca Dunn, Head of Sustainability at Spectris, and Hendrik-Jan Martens, Co-Founder of De Koers, we'll explore how to transform the materiality assessment from a reporting tool to an accelerator for the activation of your sustainability program.

Evolving Materialities for the Construction Sector

The construction sector is a continuously growing industry led by rising urbanization and global population increase: In 2050, about 68% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. These trends will increase the pressure for construction companies to improve the durability and efficiency of their infrastructures. Incorporating new digital technologies will be key to face these challenges in the future.

European Real Estate’s Underleveraged ESG Opportunities

As sustainability-labelled financing is expected to surge in 2021, companies are gearing up to get their fair share of it. Real estate, an industry that is typically capital-intensive, has a particularly great opportunity to tap into this source of financing. European real estate companies, however, appear to be lagging behind on ESG performance compared to their global peers, and may risk losing out.

New Perspectives on Materiality: Double Materiality & Emerging ESG Risks

Today’s world is obviously dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but if we look at the landscape of materiality, new perspectives are arising as well. The EU Commission talks about the concept of “Double Materiality” in its Non-Financial Reporting Directive and companies are concerned with capturing emerging risks successfully in their ESG approach. One of the main questions that therefore arises is: how do you ensure your materiality assessment covers these new perspectives on materiality?

ESG Essentials: Focused and Lean Reporting

Spurred by regulation and investor interest, more companies than ever are reporting on core ESG topics by publishing integrated or separate corporate sustainability reports. Simultaneously, more than $1tn in total assets under management in funds are now abiding by ESG principles, and legislation is catching up. While investors and policy makers are becoming stronger advocates for ESG disclosure, companies struggle to strike the balance between efforts and results. Focused and lean reporting combined with efficient responding to relevant external ESG rating requests can help to resolve this dilemma.

ESG Acceleration Webinar: Forward-Looking Materiality

During this webinar, we'll explore how to apply the materiality assessment as a tool to capture (emerging) ESG risks and opportunities, as a driver for future strategy and risk mitigation, and how to align materiality with enterprise risk management. Special guest speaker is Suzanne Westlake, Head of Corporate Responsibility & Corporate Affairs at Ocado Group. Participation is free and capacity is limited, so sign up today to confirm your registration - if you haven't already.

Sign up for IMD’s Winning Sustainability Strategies online program

Designed to integrate ESG in your corporate strategy, the Winning Sustainability Strategies online program from IMD Business School in Lausanne teaches how to build a strong business case for sustainability and how to develop opportunities for innovation. Due to its practical approach, the program has proven to be highly appreciated by executive and senior management level participants. Moreover, it is suitable for larger groups of corporate participants to obtain a more thorough understanding of doing well by doing good.

Winning Sustainability Strategies Online Program: February-March 2021

The second edition of the IMD Winning Sustainability Strategies Online Program is a “how-to” guide that offers a very pragmatic take at how to integrate sustainability in your corporate strategy – while ensuring it has a strong business case. The program is aimed at business executives, strategy practitioners and sustainability professionals, who are looking to harness sustainability innovation and its strategic implications. Facilitated by the authors Jan van der Kaaij, Managing Partner of Finch & Beak, and IMD professor Benoit Leleux, this edition starts on 22 February 2021.

ESG Acceleration: How to Get More from Materiality

Last year’s results of the global risk report of the World Economic Forum revealed that the biggest risks are all environmentally oriented followed by technological risks such as data fraud. A risk that was not as prevalent was infectious diseases and we are all well-aware of how this has changed in has impacted society and business. With the recent developments around COVID-19, businesses are challenged to be even more agile and forward looking in order to cope with today’s fast-changing environment.

Updating Your Materiality Matrix Post Covid-19

As the world is in various stages of recovery from the impact of the corona virus, it becomes clear that while there is a ‘new normal’, companies are aiming to go back to business-as-usual as soon as possible. How does Covid-19 affect your company’s sustainability strategy and how should this be reflected in your materiality matrix? Should you discard your old matrix and rebuild from scratch? Should pandemics be featured in it? As is almost always the case in complex situations, the answer is: it depends.