Find the starting point for your corporate ESG journey

Changing perspective is a prerequisite

In February 2022, when the Board of Directors of Phu Nhuan Jewelry Joint Stock Company (PNJ) held a meeting to assign personnel to assign responsibility for establishing an ESG subcommittee, Ms. Tran Phuong Ngoc Thao, who was responsible for PNJ’s digital transformation at that time, was trusted and appointed to be the head of the subcommittee.

Is a young, dynamic leader, proactively searches for international documents, has early awareness of ESG and actively participates in related conferences but with Mrs. Thao, everything seems to be only on the surface. No one has talked about how to build a subcommittee, which is also the new task that she must perform, and no one has talked about how to attach ESG to the business story.

“The biggest difficulty is in thinking. When I accepted the assignment, I was very confused because I was afraid of having to do an area that had nothing to do with the company’s activities. I feel lonely and don’t know who to ask for experience,” Ms. Thao shared in the seminar “ESG – Small steps, big results” organized by YBA Ho Chi Minh City.

Reading a lot and learning a lot, Ms. Thao gradually understood what ESG is and its importance to the sustainable development of the company.< /p>

According to PwC, if sustainable development is a term that covers all efforts of the entire society, for example national, local… aims to minimize negative impacts on the world around us and can mean different things to different people, ESG (sustainable governance) emphasizes the factors that matter most to business operations. Business today includes: environment, society and governance.

ESG has also become an increasingly important metric for the market thanks to the measurable and datafied nature that companies can rely on to measure measurement and reporting.

Ms. Thao realized that the mindset of sustainable development has in fact existed in PNJ’s nearly 35-year history with the philosophy of “putting the interests of society first.” society and customers into corporate benefits”. ESG is very closely linked to the development of businesses, not separated as previously thought.

For example, from a very early age, PNJ paid attention to the “body – mind – mind” health of workers, which was later strategized and strongly committed to in social pillar with a comprehensive health strategy for employees. Thanks to that, both partners and foreign investors highly appreciate the enterprise’s human resource management.

With a solid cultural foundation and the value of “caring for and developing together”, PNJ has placed people at the center to promptly care for them right in life. during the epidemic season, ensuring health and income as well as organizing a vacation to a 5-star hotel in Phu Quoc for 6,000 employees as soon as the quarantine ends in mid-2020.

Thanks to that, the “fighting” spirit of PNJ people was strongly aroused, morale rose and together they achieved business results that far exceeded expectations. wait. This company’s 2020 net revenue reached more than 17,510 billion VND and net profit reached more than 1,069 billion VND, exceeding 20.9% and 28.5% respectively compared to the plan. In particular, revenue in the first quarter of 2021 increased by 43% over the same period, reaching about 7,150 billion VND – the highest revenue in a quarter in PNJ history up to that time.

With that change in thinking, Ms. Thao became more confident to take small, steady steps from the first days. Realizing that ESG is the future, a new horizon to enhance the company and create more value, she determined to take ESG as a guideline when devising strategies within the company.

Ms. Tran Phuong Ngoc Thao, member of the Board of Directors of PNJ

In fact, the difficulty in thinking when starting Ms. Thao’s ESG journey is also something that many businesses are facing today.

Citing PwC survey data, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nam, Deputy General Director of this consulting unit, said that most private enterprises in Vietnam are only Start your ESG journey. The main barriers for them in committing to and implementing ESG are the perception that the organization is not equipped with enough knowledge, not enough financial resources and limited business scale.

The special thing that made PNJ successful is that the leaders were soon aware of the ESG trend and promoted its implementation, but in Vietnam, according to PwC, Many businesses have not yet fully utilized the capacity of their senior leadership team to promote the implementation of ESG commitments.

“Lack of consistent and consistent direction from the Board of Directors and executive board is also a challenge in implementing ESG policies because they play an important role in Ensuring ESG commitment practices are prioritized through targeting management in allocating resources and focusing on appropriate issues,” Mr. Nam said.

After the “leader” has the right perspective on ESG, the staff at all levels also need to understand it because they are the ones who directly implement and are responsible for it. influence from policies. Therefore, starting with updating employees’ understanding of ESG through communication and training programs is a suggestion of PwC’s Deputy General Director.

A stick or a carrot

After understanding ESG, the next step on the company’s ESG journey, according to Mr. Nam, is to develop an ESG strategy with setting ambitions/goals and integrated into business strategy; review what businesses have been doing within the ESG framework; analyze risks and opportunities when implementing ESG; Determine the mission, key topics and appropriate indicators for the business.

For example, according to Ms. Nguyen Tran Van Quynh, National ESG Manager of AIA Vietnam, this group’s ESG strategy is built on 5 pillars including living health, sustainable operations, sustainable investment, people and culture, effective governance.

Ms. Thao said that businesses may start out of fear of the “stick” that is regulations or expectations of investors; or because we want the “carrot” to be the sentiment of stakeholders such as customers, investors… The carrot is a bit difficult to quantify while the stick is “astringent”. In general, it is necessary to calculate cost effectiveness as a measure instead of following emotions.

Mr. Nam also noted that in the ESG journey, especially the stage of developing an ESG strategy, businesses need to use a comprehensive approach along with considering other factors. appropriate capital and stakeholders to optimize value creation.

“A company’s goals and strategy should reflect the importance of ESG for short- and long-term growth, for the organization it operates, for investors and stakeholders,” PwC leaders noted.

If you want to do ESG, you must first understand ESG

The next step on the journey to creating value from ESG is practicing ESG. Specifically, awareness raising activities; capacity building; promote ESG initiatives; building structures, processes, culture and infrastructure; ESG measurement; report. The operation and implementation process needs to be monitored regularly.

Sharing about the measurement, Ms. Thao said she used to think that PNJ was not in the heavy industry group, so she thought the volume of carbon emissions would not be high, but with specialized units, When we go into detail, we see that the indexes combined will create a “surprisingly” high number. Carbon emissions are not only calculated directly but also must be converted from electricity consumption, the sum of other partners in the supply chain, daily movements of employees…

For that reason, Mr. Nguyen Dinh Cuong – CEO of Clavis Aurea believes that businesses, especially startups, can use ESG as a new door to “take shortcuts”. , serving the special needs of governments and large businesses to gradually grow stronger and match the trend. Stories like “pigs eat bananas”, electronic vouchers or asset management software with additional carbon index measurement functions are typical examples.

Mr. Nam also noted that ESG aspects need to be implemented into daily operations and included in all operational transformations, e.g. supply chain, cost transformation, information technology transformation…

For a successful reporting transformation, companies need to define the right metrics (financial and non-financial) along with reliable data. Businesses should plan to prepare ESG reports from the beginning of the year to collect timely information as well as present the most effective inspirational reporting structure.

Experts also note that depending on the stage of development and specific internal conditions, businesses should focus on a few aspects more than the others. . Because choosing new solutions is the first thing that brings efficiency, not the amount of investment.

“ESG covers many fields, each field has its own criteria. PNJ is committed to acting responsibly to honor the beauty of people and life in a sustainable way. Accordingly, we have clearly defined the most important strategies that need to be done for each ESG pillar to truly achieve and fulfill our commitments,” a PNJ representative shared.

In addition, ESG implementation also needs to be monitored and evaluated so that strategic updates and modifications can be made to suit the context.