NextGen Nordics: KPIs key to achieving elusive ESG profitability

Angela Hultberg, global director of sustainability, Kearney, during the ESG panel session at NextGen Nordics conference in  Stockholm highlighted that: “Sustainability should be a business initiative. Costs [need to be] assigned to actions. Assign responsibility, and quickly get a handle on your supply chain. You can easily reduce scope 1 and 2 emissions, and find a way to commercialise. You will never get to net zero by doing projects.”

Philip Haglund, founder and CEO, Gimi, agreed. “Set a target, and then define ‘What?’ and ‘How?’. Profitability is a natural aspiration. 80% of university graduates’ most important objective is to be very well off financially. But we have to find purpose in what we do,” he added.

Haglund is a firm proponent of education as being the seeds of change – school and college are where ambitions and values are forged. He explained even hugely successful start-ups that grow, often having started ‘with purpose’, get caught up in turning profit because most of them are borne from consumerism.

Defining a comprehensive approach to ESG, Asa Nilsson Billme, head of diversity and inclusion, Nordea, said: “Inclusion is the tool to leverage diversity”, utilising the different experiences to inform and effect change- in product teams, in customer feedback teams, in teams organisation-wide.

“We need the diversity to contribute to any change. If you don’t have a buy-in you will not be a part of change,” she added.

While interest is growing and these topics have gained huge momentum and exposure in the last few years, Hultberg says it is absolutely still a box ticking exercise.

“Many still do come at it from compliance point of view, which is purely hygiene factor, thinking they need it to attract investors. There’s a vague sense of circularity that money can be made,” she said.

The panel agreed the current prevalent project-by-project approach will come back to bite in the future, when further regulation is ushered in. And regulation will help simplify the metrics to standardise sustainability reports.