- Article
- Growing a business
- The Future of Work
Investing in ESG & Sustainability for Business Growth
Singapore firms are gearing up for a post-pandemic workplace with investment earmarked for developing more collaborative workspaces, building employees’ skills, and enhancing the firm’s ESG credentials, a global HSBC survey has revealed.
The findings come from HSBC’s Navigator: Future of Work report, a survey of 2,130 business leaders globally1, including over 200 respondents in Singapore.
Navigator provides the inside track into what business decision-makers around the world are thinking, feeling and planning, and is designed to help you identify fresh opportunities for growth.
Whilst Singapore firms have historically been behind the curve in identifying a social purpose, they are now accelerating their plans in order to attract talent. According to the report, 39% of firms have established a social purpose in the last year and a further 20% of firms plan to do so.
Does your company have a social purpose? | Global | Singapore |
|---|---|---|
Yes, it has been in place for more than 12 months | 45% | 33% |
Yes, it was established within the past 12 months | 32% | 39% |
No, but we are taking steps to establish it | 16% | 20% |
No, but we recognise the need to establish it | 5% | 5% |
No, we don’t believe it is necessary to have it | 2% | 3% |
What is stark is businesses’ intent to focus on CSR in order to stay relevant to all stakeholders - including employees - despite the tough operating environment. ESG is moving from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘commercial must have’. Firms are becoming more aware of the correlation between sustainability and profitability, but they must be cognizant of the need to do so holistically. The task now is to implement CSR policies that are meaningful and holistic; businesses must look to how it forms part of a wider plan to engage with operational, employee, financing and community needs.
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Business Perspectives
As social purpose moves up the corporate agenda, hear from businesses in Singapore about how they are investing in ESG, talent and their firm’s social purpose.
GUAVA Amenities specializes in holistic guest amenities and helps leading hospitality chains, airlines and cruise liners improve Brand compliance, increase profits and impact lives.
We are passionate about driving sustainability in every aspect of our business. We do this through empowering our employees, upskilling, job redesign, as well as proactively sourcing feedback from all internal and external stakeholders.
With the evolving landscape, one of the key challenges we faced is about people because travel restrictions make it harder to connect with, find, and deploy talents. As such, we recognized the increased challenges in influencing and inculcating the GUAVA purpose and values.
It is only by cultivating a purpose-driven workforce encompassing ESG, we are able to attract the right talents and thrive in the world post-pandemic. Moving forward, we are also in the midst of motivating and incentivizing our employees towards sustainability, to create greater meaning and productivity at work.
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Sylink Vehicle Rental is a Singapore-based commercial vehicle rental business.
With the financial support of HSBC, we have been able to invest extensively to buy back from the market most of the old aging diesel commercial vehicles, and help our customers during this transition process to replace them with greener energy fuel vehicles. We are also investing to replace our own rental fleet of old vehicles with newer vehicles.
This is part of corporate goal of doing good and doing well, to participate in government green plan of Early Turnover Scheme, and hence improve social impact of reducing harmful emission to the climate.
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Next Gen Foods is a Singapore headquartered global food manufacturer of plant based foods.
Our mission and purpose is clear, to remove animals from the food system and provide everyone with delicious and nutritious alternatives that have a significantly lower carbon footprint, land and water usage. When people join us, they can see how their contribution is having a direct impact. This is an important pull factor. We are a truly post national food tech company that is embracing diversity and inclusion in all its forms. Today we have a team of 30 people, representing 10 nationalities, across 6 countries and all working remotely.
This is incredible and you can feel the energy when we get together to exchange ideas. Building the team and defining new ways of working is the best investment we can make at this stage.
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1 Across 10 markets: UK, USA, UAE, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Mexico, Australia, Germany
