Continuing the journey of “Making It Easy”
Looking back at how I started this sustainability journey, it began as a corporate activity or rather, part of my evolved job scope as an Investor Relations officer, which transpired into a personal journey to do good in the society by my own efforts through founding a volunteer group, but still intertwined with my career objectives. With passion, that was how my personal and professional life became one with sustainability, further strengthened by my MSt candidature at CISL.
Now that we are nearing the end of our studies, I must say that I have found a teammate in CISL, my peers, tutors, supervisor and all. We are a team. When I started this sustainability journey, I was alone. It was difficult, especially working in the private section in Singapore — people around still thought of sustainability as a buzzword then.
I recently came across a Ted talk “Why I’m a Weekday Vegetarian” (https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_why_i_m_a_weekday_vegetarian/transcript?utm_medium=social&utm_content=2021-5-26&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=social&fbclid=IwAR2XyN10pbvz6jUbJt5CUZHEJKf0rY9Duu0fSnQfztvOpSi-obVJHNF54A4). Quite close to my heart — I’m a breakfast vegetarian! HAHA. But why.
It was the easy way out for me. I wanted to incorporate this personal action of having one vegetarian meal a day, for environmental purpose rather than religious (I’m a Buddhist), reducing the carbon footprint. Starting off with breakfast, it meant that if I missed this target in the morning, I could do it at lunch or dinner instead.
Linking back to corporate sustainability journey, such impacts which are not easily quantifiable (eg. Influencing personal actions) are things that we are less likely to embark on within the planning of CSR activities. Here, we are still pretty much rooted in the beliefs that we need to do something that shows results quickly, in order to “tell this glorious achievement” in the Annual Report. Planting a thousand trees may be a good example. Quantifiable, looks impressive (???), quick results (plant and tadaaa!), or I could even be featuring photos of my staff in action planting the trees and ‘benefitting the community’. BUT we should be moving on!
While “Making It Easy” remains my ethos in pushing sustainability here, it is also important to progress onto the next step, to increase its depth and to increase its quality.
Today, being an Investor Relations officer is no longer 1 part Investor Relations responsibilities with an additional but negligible scope of sustainability. It is now 0.5 part Investor Relations with 0.5 part sustainability; and I think the companies here, or rather the people driving the Investor Relations and sustainability functions here, are starting to come to terms with this evolution, finally.
Sustainability is never a comfortable journey, we all know! That explains the resilience and leadership trainings in school isn’t it 😉 At the end of the day, continue to do good and you will not steer off course.
All hands on board. Go do great things.
