What is Corporate Sustainability?

In recent years, both small-and-medium-sized enterprises and large companies must have mentioned ESG. What exactly is ESG? Why is it so popular across different industries and sectors?

ESG is a non-financial indicator of corporate operations, which assesses a company's overall performance in terms of environmental protection (E, Environment), social responsibility (S, Social) and corporate governance (G, Governance). Each ESG area might involve multiple aspects. For example, under social responsibility, a company should not only consider its external relations with the community, but also taking employees’ rights, as well as health and safety into their business considerations.

In addition to companies’ internal assessment, ESG can also serve as a tool to evaluate business partners, including analysis of their potential growth and any long-term business opportunities arising from the collaboration. Nowadays, financial statements are no longer the only key to assess a company. It is also necessary to understand the company's ESG performance. If you are a corporate representative, it is even more important for you to perform well in various ESG aspects, otherwise you might miss out important business partnership!

For those of you who are ready to join the job market, having an early understanding of ESG concepts might help you better understand the business directions and latest development of the organisations which you are going to apply for, so as to increase your competiveness in job interviews and possibly in your future career too!

ESG Talent

Given the world's growing concern and rising demand on ESG, companies around the world are urging for ESG talents, with ESG consultant becoming one of the key experts in promoting corporate sustainability.

Being an ESG consultant is not just about collecting ESG data and writing reports but also requires a good understanding of the business nature and unique culture of the company.  The consultant might also need to analyse the company from a macro perspective, formulate a long-term ESG strategy plan, and at the same time raise the company's ESG rating as much as possible in order to ensure the sustainable development of the company. On the other hand, ESG consultants need to pay attention to the world’s fast-changing trends while deriving business plans which could also be beneficial to the world, with a view to leading the company to step forward and achieve new milestones. These are the important values that ESG consultants could bring to the companies.

Career Path Planning - ESG Consultant

If you want to become an ESG consultant or pursuing a career related to sustainable development, apart from environmental protection-related qualifications, having a background in arts, science or business could also be beneficial to your career in some sense.  Most importantly, you need to be willing to learn new things across various disciplines! As a newbie in the job market, if you are interested in ESG-related positions, you may wish to enroll in some relevant training courses to learn more about the related knowledge and give yourself another career option!

Courses from Talent.gov.hk related to Sustainable Development

*Source: Talent.gov.hk

Other Useful Links

• Talents.gov.hk Magazine: The Rise of ESG
• Related career information on Talents.gov.hk
• Related career information on the Life Planning Information website of the Education Bureau
• Sustainable Finance Internship Platform
• Pilot Green and Sustainable Finance Capacity Building Support Scheme
• ESG and Green Finance on Carbon Neutral @HK webpage of the Environment and Ecology Bureau