How to implement ESG culture in your business?

The acronym in English ESG (Environmental, social and governance). elevated to levels never seen before in all aspects of the business.

This article aims to present a simple path to implementing culture ESG in your business and add value to your business activities. Companies are living organisms that impact people's lives, positively or negatively.

If, on the one hand, they employ, generate income and wealth, produce better consumer goods and promote well-being, on the other they can degrade the environment, exclude social groups from this advancement and concentrate economic power in a few.

Therefore, returns to investors cannot happen at any cost and companies' financial performance must be based on responsible and ethical principles.

When we think about energy or energy revolution, it is interesting to keep in mind that several ideas are embedded in the term, such as 5Ds of sustainability, namely: decarbonization, debureaucratization, digitalization, democratization and energy decentralization. Going further, the energy revolution also encompasses mobility, innovation, management, security, in the continuous search for the long-awaited energy efficiency.

All those who have the promotion of clean energy in their scope of work are naturally inserted in the context of environmental sustainability, of the aforementioned energy revolution, which already directs, in a certain way, the ESG performance of your company.

The basis of ESG culture needs to be embedded in the most basic concepts, precepts and pillars of society, that is, in your company's mission, vision and values.

Furthermore, the code of Conduct, if it exists, which is strongly recommended, it should also reflect the company's concern with social, environmental and corporate governance issues.

In this sense, it is not enough to have just one area responsible for the work, no matter how qualified it may be, as we are talking about culture, prioritization of investments, strategic alignment of senior management, who must also strongly believe in the agenda, values of a corporation vis-à-vis society.

The process of understanding the material issues linked to your business undoubtedly involves knowing your organization's materiality matrix, its strengths, weaknesses and threats within the pillars of sustainability and corporate governance.

Dialogue, to prioritize the most relevant issues to be taken care of by your company, must involve internal stakeholders and also external actors, who are inherent parts of your production chain, such as suppliers, service providers, customers, business partners, community surroundings, government agents, among others, allowing everyone to participate in the movement in order to become triggers that induce good practices as well.

To find your material items, those that will be put to prioritization assessment, you must go through and reflect on the entire production chain and understand, in depth, where your company is located, in macro and micro geographic terms, in what and how its Economic activity impacts these regions socially and environmentally, expanding the analysis also to the production, itself, of photovoltaic equipment, for example, outside the national territory, inclusive.

Study your strategy and your short, medium and long-term planning, from an ESG perspective.

Go further, do benchmarking, see the positive and negative social media linked to your company's scope of work, recording the impacts, risks and opportunities involved. Look back at the internal actions you already take, those that have always made sense or added value to your team, to the team involved in your operation.

Typically, there is a lot of synergy between ESG issues and the good practices already in force in companies, whether in the areas of Human Resources, Occupational Safety, Compliance, finance, accounting, among others.

All these surveys will help you to have clarity in the selection of material items, and the involvement of internal and external stakeholders will bring security that the relevant issues are, in fact, prioritized and will serve as a guide for strategic actions, prioritization of investments, among others.

As a way of exemplifying the above, below I present the Genyx Solar Power Materiality Matrix, in which I lead, among others, the construction of the first Sustainability Report, after submitting the material items related to the business for analysis by internal and external stakeholders .

Genyx Solar Power: Materiality Matrix

With the Matrix designed, the managers of Genyx or any company will be able to define, in a more objective and transparent way, the actions, goals and result indicators aimed at each of the prioritized material items, reporting on the progress of work towards the society, in the foreground, for stakeholders and investors.