• According to the study that preceded the workshop, all ESG blocks grew in importance, with the growth of the Corporate Governance aspect increasing by more than 9%. The Social block continues to be the most highly rated, with a score of 5 out of 7.

• For each dimension, the items of most concern to managers and HR managers are: Environment (Efficient use of resources and energy savings), Social (Health and safety) and Corporate Governance (Human Rights: work decent, due diligence in the value chain...).

• In the top 3 of the items with the highest growth compared to 2022, two are related to the Corporate Governance aspect and, in particular, to salary and ESG criteria.

Last Tuesday, March 14, the second edition of 'People4ESG: driving sustainability from the management of human capital' took place, a meeting promoted by DIRSE, with the partnership of Cuatrecasas, University of Navarra and the think tank enClave de Personas, which brought together more than three hundred professionals, both face-to-face and online.

goal The forum, created with the aim of sharing the latest trends in Human Resources and Sustainability subject , analyzed the keys to promote ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) criteria and policies from the HR department area .

The diary of the workshop was articulated according to the results of the public enquiry conducted among Sustainability and HR professionals, from which DIRSE's president, Alberto Andreu, highlighted the most valued issues for each axis(see study), stating that "it is impossible to build a sustainability program without focusing on people":

• All ESG dimensions increased in importance: compared to last year's results, the increase in the Governance block is particularly noteworthy, although the social block remains the most highly rated with 5 points out of 7.
• A (Environmental): the "promotion of the efficient use of resources, energy savings, promotion of recycling and intelligent mobility of employees" is the most valued item and has grown the most in 2023; while in 2022 the most relevant item was "presence, work remotely and transition to hybrid models".
• S (Social): as in the results of the last edition, the basic aspects in subject of human resources linked to "Health and Safety" have had the greatest impact on sustainability. The item with the highest growth, with 19.3 %, was "management and development of employee with ESG vision". The counterpoint was "Corporatevolunteer activities ", which fell by 3.3% compared to last year.
• G (Corporate Governance): in subject governance, the aspect that has grown the most (23.8%) is the one related to "remuneration with ESG criteria", while the most important aspect has been "Human Rights: work decent, due diligence in the value chain, child recruitment, outsourcing, offshoring and labor justice".
• Top 3 items with the highest growth: compared to 2022, two are related to Governance and, in particular, to salary, "remuneration with ESG criteria" (+23.8 %) and "transparency and non-financial salary information" (+18.7 %). The third relates to "management and development of employee with an ESG vision" (19.38%),

After the welcome by the hostess, Paloma Grau, Vice President of research and Sustainability of the University of Navarra, representatives of enClave de Personas (Luis Blas), Cuatrecasas(Guillermo Tena) and DIRSE(Alberto Andreu) spoke, highlighting the importance of focusing on the challenges facing organizations at subject sustainability through people, since it is people who have the greatest impact on organizations.

New people-centered European Union Sustainability Standards (ESRS)

Alberto Castilla, EMEIA ESG Solution Lead & Spanish Country Leader of EY's ESG and Sustainability internship , paved the way with his technical discussion paper , for the subsequent round table at discussion, making it clear that: "The new Directive on knowledge dissemination of non-financial information (CSRD) seeks to implement a common language for us to understand each other in the field of sustainability. This will require less disclosure of information than what is currently reported. Fortunately, Spanish companies are in a better position than any other EU country to report disclousers".

Marta Machicot, Global Director of People at Telefónica, and Alberto Andreu, President of DIRSE, discussed the challenges facing organizations at subject in terms of regulation, where they highlighted: the digitization of processes to facilitate the availability of sustainability data , the need to create a non-financial information system, as well as internal control systems for the risks associated with these data. They also commented on the importance of introducing non-financial criteria in decision-making processes.

Companies with purpose

Álvaro Lleó, director of the MDPO (Master's Degree in Personnel Management Service in Organizations) of the University of Navarra, stated during the contextualization of his table that "the great challenge of purpose is to transfer it to people's daily lives, manage it with the needs of the business and connect it with social priorities".

Remedios Orrantia, Director of Human Resources for Europe at Vodafone, and Mariví Sánchez Jiménez, Director of Sustainability and Communication at group Calvo, then spoke about the processes of defining their corporate purposes and the importance of not only defining the purpose, but also ensuring that, at all times, they are giving that extra to society.

New due diligence directive

Lara Vivas, partner at Cuatrecasas, focused her discussion paper on the proposal directive on Due Diligence and Human Rights, highlighting the special focus on the inclusion of small and medium-sized companies, as well as the expanded role of trade unions and other affected stakeholders. He also stated that one of the great organizational and business challenges presented by this Directive lies in the control of the supply chain.

Ana Valdivielso, HR Director for Spain, Portugal and Israel at GSK, and Ana López de San Román, Director of Ethics, Sustainability and Alliances at Ilunion, discussed due diligence, stressing in particular the importance of informing and raising awareness among employees in order to extend the corporate purpose to the entire organization and the analysis of the most relevant suppliers and their value chain in order to understand the risks involved. Ana López de San Román detailed in her speech a significant and at the same time normalized fact: in group Ilunion "more than 42% of the employees are people with disabilities", in addition to the strategic pillar of sustainability as part of the committee management.

Reporting Channels

Almudena Batista, partner at Cuatrecasas, contextualized the whistleblowing round table , and explained some details of the recently approved Law 2/2023 on whistleblowing channels, which regulates the protection of whistleblowers in the fight against regulatory violations and corruption. He highlighted confidentiality as an element core topic , emphasized the novel anonymity and the monitoring of non-compliance by an independent authority.

In relation to the above, Ana Benita, Director of Organization, Talent and Health at Acciona Energía, and Mónica Zuleta, Director of Sustainability at MAPFRE, addressed the difficulty of ensuring confidentiality in the age of technology, as well as the controversy over cases of whistleblowing without evidence and the consequences that this may entail for the group being denounced. Both agreed on the need to communicate internally the importance of these reporting channels and to make users understand the consequences of these reporting processes. They also clarified that these systems are an opportunity to interact and find improvements.

Incorporation of ESG criteria into remuneration policies

The last panel of the workshop was dedicated to the incorporation of ESG criteria into remuneration policies, introduced by Juan Guerrero, manager of Willis Towers Watson, who pointed out that 86% of IBEX companies include ESG metrics in their incentive plans, with S-Social being the most frequently used vector. Among them, those related to diversity and inclusion are the most frequent. For all this, it is vitally important that the metrics are quantifiable.

Luis Blas, director HR at Tabacalera and Ramón Ruiz, director global ESG at Consentino, then discussed the best indicator for incorporating sustainability into variable remuneration and the weight it should have in relation to the other criteria, which depends on the priorities of the company, the sector to which it belongs and the context in which it operates. In this regard, they agreed on two relevant issues when defining indicators: the quality of the data and the impact it generates on the business.

Alberto Andreu, ended the workshop with a summary of the ideas core topic:

1. Increased robustness and consistency of ESG aspects, since "a few years ago sustainability was a teddy bear and today it has become a grizzly bear".
2. The importance of data, of purposes, objectives and channels, but above all, of the value chain, which is the main concern.
3. All the most relevant aspects dealt with fall into the category of hard law, due to the new legislation coming from the European Union, thus going from simple recommendations (soft law) to an obligation that will entail sanctions if not complied with.

As a final reflection, he mentioned the importance of this subject of events to favor the transversality of the Sustainability function, a role in plenary session of the Executive Council boom that is requiring more specialized professionals, and therefore announced a next edition of People4ESG in 2024.

About DIRSE - association Spanish Sustainability Managers (ASG)

Born in 2013, DIRSE is the Spanish association of professionals in Sustainability and ESG aspects, which works for the promotion, defense and recognition of people who, from all subject of entities, develop this specific function, thus contributing to improve their ability to influence the creation of value in organizations.

With this goal to strengthen the function, the association focuses its activity on four axes of work: training / Best Practices, Advocacy / Awareness, Networking / visibility of partners, and research and Publications; with a special focus on the creation of tools to facilitate the work of the dirses.

In its 10 years of existence, DIRSE has brought together more than 600 members and has territorial delegates in 14 autonomous communities. It has also formed, together with its counterparts in Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany, the European Association of Sustainability Professionals (EASP), which brings together more than 2,000 dirses from 8 European countries.

To carry out its work, in addition to its membership dues, DIRSE relies on the support of the following protective partners:

• Premium Protector Partners: Abertis, Accenture, BBVA, Caixabank, Decathlon, DKV, EY, Garrigues, Iberdrola, Impact Hub Madrid, Leroy Merlin, Oracle, Reale Seguros, Roche, Santander, Suez, Sygris Telefónica.
• Protector Partners: Aplanet, Aquavall, ATADES, Bureau Veritas, Canon, Cepsa, CMI, CocaCola, COFAR, Connecting Visions, CQ, Red Cross, Fernández Zugazabeitia Abogados, Ferrovial, Fundación Ibercaja, GLS, GN Diario, Hidralia, Ibercaja, IFEMA, Ingeniería Social, KPMG, Lógica Ecommerce, L'Oréal, Manpower, Merco, Mutualidad Abogacía, Naturgy, Océano Atlántico, Orange, Orenes, PortAventura World, Sabadell, Sorigué, TOUS, UCI, Valora Consultores, Vegalsa-Eroski, Vodafone.       

For more information:

Aurora of the Tundra Revenga

comunicacion@dirse.es

639.403.162 

About Cuatrecasas

Cuatrecasas is an international law firm with a strong presence in Spain, Portugal and Latin America, signature . With a transversal and diverse team of more than 1,600 professionals and 24 nationalities, it covers all disciplines of law at business. It applies knowledge and experience from a sectorial vision and focused on each business subject . It has 27 offices in 13 countries and also maintains a close partnership with other leading firms to offer a team adapted to the client's needs.

For more information:

Silvia Lopez
average Relations

Tel. +34 91 524 71 00

M. +34 618 56 36 02

silvia.lopez@cuatrecasas.com

About People enclave

EnClave de Personas is a think tank on Talent and Leadership, which was created with the purpose to grow the Human Resources function and to be a place for meeting and dialogue on culture, talent and management of people within organizations.

From a approach of innovation and research that drives the development and evolution of talent in organizations and that has a social impact on the environment where they operate. With a constructive vision and a search for shared solutions to socioeconomic challenges, contributing to the continuous improvement of society.

The think tank is composed of a committee advisor composed of 23 members who are managers of recognized prestige in the function of management of people.

For more information:

group of Communication - EnClave de Personas

enclavedepersonas@gmail.com

TW: @eCdPersonas

LI: inPeople's Key

YT: enClave De Personas

About the University of Navarra

The University of Navarra has campus in Pamplona, Madrid, Barcelona, San Sebastian, New York and Munich. The institution has the mission statement to search for and transmit the truth, to contribute to the training of its students; promote the research scientific and welfare activity; to offer adequate possibilities of development to its professors and employees; and to carry out a broad work of cultural extension and social promotion.