The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly referred to as COP26, greatly highlighted environmental issues affecting the world. One of the main concerns of the summit was the need of mitigating climate change through combined efforts of governments and corporations around the world. Using policies, actions, emission cuts among other solutions, governments and corporations are expected to reduce their impact on the environment. Socioeconomic transformation in addition to battling climate change is increasingly becoming a part of the culture of the modern world. As a part of organizational roadmaps, ESG is consistently gaining more momentum especially for socially conscious boards.
While the European Union has led multiple initiatives such as the Global Methane Pledge, the EU Catalyst Partnership among others, emerging economies are also beginning to follow the lead and come up with transformational policies that ensure minimum impact on the environment. With the proliferation of the internet and electronic media, the common consumer is becoming increasingly concerned about the source and impact of the products they consume. Accordingly, by pursuing solutions at the board level, Board of Directors, Executive Leadership, Management Teams and Corporate Governance professionals are proactively adopting enterprise wide ESG initiatives during board meetings and committee meetings to make their enterprise more sustainable.
Along with administrators, Board of Directors and Corporate Secretaries, ESG solutions are evaluated on the basis of a grade known as ‘the corporate social score’. The score helps determine how thoroughly a company’s Board of Directors takes into consideration the social responsibilities at the time of decision making and note taking during board and committee meetings. As an output of the collaboration between the Company Secretary, Management Teams and Board of Directors, ESG compliance can act as a board’s portal to better credibility and corporate governance standards for every responsible board. Using digital and paperless technologies, a complete solution which offers the best of technology as well as corporate governance is the need of the hour.
The European Commission has recently made a Corporate Sustainability proposal to encourage sustainable corporate actions. The primary purpose of this proposal is to prioritize environmental considerations in board meetings and corporate governance. The terms of the proposal include introducing new duties for board members, integrating corporate strategies with detailed processes and integrating with corporate strategy. Through board decisions captured in minutes of meetings and resolutions, the proposal encourages executive and administrative management apart from board of directors to act as assistants of resisting climate change and maintaining human rights as a part of their fiduciary roles,
Dess Digital Meetings is an industry-leading board portal providing a paperless board meetings solution. It leads to more efficient and effective board and committee meetings. The agenda management solution helps with better board collaboration thereby improving decision making. It also reduces the supplies and investments to conduct board meetings without printing, photocopying multiple agenda boardbooks, store records, shred redundant documents among other resource consuming activities.
The solution streamlines processes for Board of Directors and Company Secretaries which otherwise go into painstaking pre-meeting, during-meeting and post-meetings activities. Accommodating last minute changes and meeting updates becomes effortless for Company Secretaries and meeting administrators. The solution also facilitates generating all meeting documents including resolutions and voting, attendance and reports, corporate governance reports, among others.
Dess Digital also has an in-built video conferencing system, the Board of Directors and Management Teams can seamlessly and securely collaborate while working on the agenda simultaneously, at any time and with 24/7 support. Dess believes in innovation and it is built to solve real-world challenges and maximize ease-of-use to support boards and leadership teams analyze better, move quicker, and accomplish more.
Dess Board Portal helps optimize corporate governance practices with holistic maintenance of meeting records, calendar of meeting events, preparation and dispatch of meeting notice among other activities. Also, with features like confidential voting, the Board of Directors can perform more professionally while maintaining privacy and achieve better decision-making.
The world has changed for the better. As per a Harvard Business Review article, a sense of shared responsibility and holding our peers accountable has led to a lot of progress towards a green future. Hopefully we will see a future where sustainability and zero carbon impact are a reality. Although we have made great progress, the journey is still ahead of us.