Sustainable RSM is pleased with the attendance and early reviews of the RSM Sustainability Forum. Below is a comprehensive report of the Forum proceedings:

The Social Face of Sustainable Business

Investing in the social aspect of sustainability is less about philanthropy than it is a solid business case for companies. “Consumers are demanding sustainable products,” said Truus Huisman, vice-president of sustainable business and communications for Unilever Europe. “But for a company to achieve its sustainability goals it needs all three pillars in place: the economic, the environmental, and the social.” Huisman's comments were part of her keynote address at the RSM Sustainability Forum 2016 hosted by Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) and presented by sustainable RSM and MSC GBS STAR on 15 April 2016.

The event theme, 'The Social Face of Sustainability', attracted around 200 executives and students to the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship in the Rotterdam Science Tower, and took a closer look at the social aspect of sustainable business, one of the three factors that define sustainability. Participants explored what constitutes the social face of sustainable business and the business case for endorsing it during presentations led by practitioners from a variety of international organisations including Samsung, Enviu, Except, ABN AMRO, Ahold, EY (Ernst & Young), Delta Lloyd and Robeco. The event was moderated by Muriel Arts, co-founder and director of the Flow Foundation.

In his opening remarks, RSM Dean Steef van de Velde explained how companies in Europe were making the shift from paying lip-service to sustainability to embedding it in their operations. “I have the impression that in the USA, sustainability is still something that is done just to ease people’s minds,” he said. “Here I see companies working very hard to integrate all three pillars of sustainability into their organisations as opposed to having it as one corner of the business.”

Unilever: a leader in social sustainability

During her keynote presentation, Huisman, who has been instrumental in developing Unilever's sustainability strategy over the past 13 years, described how Unilever has its roots in social sustainability. “Improving nutrition and hygiene were the driving forces behind the company’s first products,” she said. “Today we continue to be motivated by social challenges – a billion people are suffering malnutrition: we want to help change that.”

Unilever recently topped an annual ranking of food companies by Oxfam for human rights. For Unilever, the ‘social’ aspect of sustainability is a fundamental part of their strategy. “The social part of sustainability is one of the three pillars of sustainability,” said Huisman. Describing why the company places such an onus on sustainability she said: “It is not because we want to be a 'good' company but because we see that consumers want this from us. For us, the business case is clear: sustainable brands are more popular, greater efficiencies reduce costs, long-term sustainable relationships with our suppliers reduce risks, and sustainability improves our reputation – we have been named the third most favourable company to work for after Apple and Google. This is our business case for our ‘sustainable living initiative’.”

Huisman mapped out the company's extensive list of sustainability initiatives, including its ‘sustainable living brands’, which now constitute 50 per cent of the company's growth globally, and its goal to improve the lives of a billion people and develop relationships with more smallholders. “So far we have reached 400 million people in regards to hand washing,” she commented. The company was the first to publish a human rights report last year and is now sourcing all raw materials from sustainable agriculture.

A member of the audience asked about the company's most ‘uncomfortable changes’ for meeting its sustainability goals. Huisman described a recent decision to phase out Unilever’s relationship with the biggest supplier in the world of palm oil as a ‘very uncomfortable decision’. “When you put into practice responsible sourcing it has huge knock-on effects, and may mean not meeting targets,” she said. “But we have done it.” Huisman also said that the company were interested in employees educated in sustainability issues. “We are increasingly looking for employees who can work with complex situations beyond just economics,” she said.

KPMG awards top master's thesis

This year's RSM Sustainability Forum marked the tenth anniversary of the KPMG-RSM Sustainability Master Thesis Award. Jan van den Herik, director of strategy and innovation at KPMG, announced it would be his last year presenting the awards, which aim to honour research that combines academic excellence and business relevance on a topic related to the management of sustainability.

Van den Herik said he was pleased to see the number of academic theses dealing with sustainability-related topics had increased dramatically in the last ten years: “We need every smart and innovative brain around to engage with these challenges and come up with solutions,” he said. Van den Herik presented the top award of €1,000 to Tirza Voss, with the runner-up award of €500 to Nadine Kooiker.

Breakout sessions

Following the award ceremony, six parallel breakout sessions were facilitated by leading business partners in sustainable business. Participants engaged in solving a variety of case studies relating to a range of issues including how organisation's fostered employee well-being, procured socially-responsible products, financed social-welfare projects, strategised for socially-driven competitive advantage, and innovated for humane working practices.

Samsung

Michiel Dijkman from Samsung’s corporate affairs team explored ways the company can include CSR within its business processes and products. The most common drawback emerging from the session seemed to be convincing top management and implementing overarching ideas. Participants at the session were impressed by the ideas of powering small businesses with microcredit, including investing in start-ups and small businesses by providing them with IT, and by giving shares to employees to increase their commitment and involvement with corporate social responsibility.

Enviu

Enviu starts world-changing companies using the ‘lean social business’ development method. Speaker Prasanna Colluru, business developer, presented the ideas the company is developing with local people to build a robust future-proof infrastructure by which such new businesses can achieve as much impact as possible. These ideas include 3D-printed jewellery, as well as 3D-printed smoke detectors that can help to save lives in cramped slums where fires can spread fast and where cheap smoke detectors would save lives.

Except Integrated Sustainability

Chantal Klaver, new learning and leisure expert at Except Integrated Sustainability, described how the company takes into account other stakeholders in creative ways, using the Symbiosis in Development (SiD) method. Even such inventive ideas such as developing roof gardens to raise property values have their difficulties, and participants in the session discovered the importance of levelling with stakeholders, sometimes also to convince them of the necessity, of the development.

ABN AMRO

Sylvia Nieuwenburg, ABN AMRO Foundation’s regional co-ordinator, and Geert-Jan Kleijweg, ABN AMRO office director, explained to the audience how the bank is committed to working towards a better society to influence its Net Promoter Score (NPS). The bank is installing bicycles supplied by its foundation outside branches, and is supporting local talent by bringing individuals into higher performance teams.

EY, Delta Lloyd, Robeco

Three organisations collaborated to guide participants through approaches to integrated reporting. Hanna Wintzen-Kernkamp, senior programme manager at Delta Lloyd; Masja Zandbergen, head analyst global equity teams at Robeco; and Guido Moret from Ernst & Young facilitated the conversation. Participants were interested to see that a company like Delta Lloyd is so passionate about sustainability, which they normally see from manufacturers. Participants were inspired to see Delta Lloyd use its huge knowledge base to make an effort. For Robeco, it appears the biggest dilemma is how to measure, report and create value for corporations. For Ernst & Young, the issue is the broad focus of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) that takes everything into account, reported participants.

Ahold

Laura Jungmann, Ahold’s specialist for product sustainability and product integrity explained that the oil palm tree is a high yielding plant; switching to other oil-bearing crops for Ahold to use in its products would result in more land being used and the problem is the use of unsustainable palm oil. Steps the company could take to avoid unsustainable farming of oil palms include co-operations with big traders, group certification, working with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and where possible, working with smallholders. It could also join efforts with other retailers to educate consumers.

Pub quiz: innovative information sharing

A pub quiz provided a collegial and thought-provoking wrap-up to the event. Hosted by Siri Lijfering and Shahrzad Nourozi from IDleaks, the quiz was an innovative concept for information sharing that aims to challenge how we ‘frame’ international development and sustainable business. Participants competed in teams of 10 to answer a series of questions ranging from the global average life expectancy to the country with the most corruption. The event sparked debate around the room that continued long after the quiz had ended. “Business people make a lot of choices based on perceptions and framing,” said Siri Lijfering. “People here still think of Africa as a continent of corruption, poverty, and disease while Asians think of it is a continent of hope and opportunities. We want to reframe this message of international development. Pub quizzes are a great way to do this, to really engage people in an entertaining way.” The event concluded on a jovial note with networking drinks and the event’s planning committee conversing over the 5th anniversary RSM Sustainability Forum in spring 2017.

Click here to see the event photos and video (coming soon).

Type
Sustainability