Job Alert: Communication Professional (24-32 hours)

Finch & Beak is a leading European consulting firm in the field of strategy, ESG and sustainability. Our purpose is to accelerate sustainability. Over the past 25 years, we have worked with more than 150 corporate clients across Europe, trained over 5000 managers, and worked with top-level business schools from around the world. To further expand Finch & Beak’s positioning in this fast-growing market, we are looking for an ambitious hands-on Communication Professional.

ESG Acceleration Webinar: Organizational Development of ESG

We closed this version of the ESG Acceleration Webinar series with a view on the organizational development of ESG. As organizations that have a mature sustainability approach start to decentralize responsibility for ESG, this calls for a discussion on how to drive performance and accountability across departments. Guest speaker Ineke Rampart, Director Corporate Affairs at Telenet shared practical examples.

ESG Equity Stories: Be Good & Tell It

As investors increasingly integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in their decision making processes, companies need to cater to this information need. Developing and transmitting a clear ESG Equity Story is key in this: communicating about the firm’s ESG approach and performance in a coherent and transparent manner toward investor audiences. Finch & Beak has assembled a pilot benchmark as a probe for the current status quo, assessing 21 companies’ sustainability programs (‘Be Good’) and their ESG Equity Stories (‘Tell It’). A striking finding is that companies appear to engage in ESG ‘greywashing’ (antonym of greenwashing), by underleveraging their ESG performance in the communication towards investor audiences.

Sustainability Communication with Impact

Great sustainability communicators infuse their purpose into everything that they do, and they make it easy for everyone to understand what they stand for. As a result, they have more loyal customers, happy employees and trust from investors.

Are You Already Talking the Walk of Your Dow Jones Sustainability Index Results?

With the publication of Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) data in the Bloomberg terminal, companies can now better combine their perceived and actual sustainability performance, and compare it with their peers’ position. The outcome drives more efficient communication and helps sharpen the sustainability program; whether it is to accelerate actual performance on specific issues or to better to leverage sustainability leadership through alignment of communication.

Methodology Changes for the 2017 Dow Jones Sustainability Index

On March 30th, RobecoSAM will open its annual Corporate Sustainability Assessment: the base for selecting the best-performing companies for the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI). More than 3,200 eligible companies have received an invitation to participate in the 2017 DJSI assessment.To prevent surprises, participating companies are advised to take note of the announced changes for this year’s methodology, before deep-diving into the questionnaire.

Effective Partnering: Learning from the Past

As circularity is becoming a topic of interest with larger corporations around the globe, a question that emerges is how they can develop the necessary innovations to fuel the circular economy. With 68 percent of the top 100 companies from the Forbes Global 500 already engaging with start-ups in one form or another, fast-forwarding the development of dearly awaited innovations is definitely not a new challenge. INSEAD and 500 Startups conducted a research study based on the world's 500 biggest public companies that highlights what we can learn from past corporate experiences.

Customer Case: Improving Ratings Performance at Royal Ahold

AholdDelhaize (formerly Royal Ahold NV), is globally one of the largest retailing groups based in the Netherlands, Belgium and active in the United States and across Europe.

Customer Case: Spurring Innovation with Telenet Idealabs

Telenet launched its Telenet Idealabs accelerator and growth program in Antwerp in 2014 to facilitate startups getting a head start.

Put Your Mouth Where Your Shareholder’s Money Is

As a growing share of a company’s value is locked into intangible assets, investors are making more and more use of extra-financial indicators to determine a company’s health and investment potential. However, only few CEOs are being evaluated on this type of metrics when it comes to their annual performance reviews.