Month: May 2023

The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

GDP is, at once, a broad and narrow lens. It is a powerful indicator of the strength of the economy at large, but offers little insight into the day-to-day conditions of the tens of thousands of communities that power it.

“There is a sense of places being left behind,” says Arturo Franco, a development economist and senior vice president at the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. In 2018, the Center developed a data tool called the Inclusive Growth Score to help local leaders in the U.S. measure those conditions and make smarter decisions to ensure equitable distribution of resources and opportunity, boosting the potential for all citizens to reach their economic potential.

The Inclusive Growth Score is now available for all census tracts in the U.S. and has expanded to the U.K. A finalist for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas award, the score blends open-source data with proprietary insights based on Mastercard’s aggregated and anonymized transaction data.

Now a new report from the Center that measured changes in the scores in the U.S. between 2017 and 2022 found that lower-income areas are seeing more inclusive growth than higher-income areas. It suggests those areas are more focused on measures leading to shared prosperity, Franco says, and it also challenges the notion that big cities are faring better in terms of economic and social health — levels of urbanization had no clear relationship to inclusive growth.

The Mastercard Newsroom spoke to Franco to learn how the Inclusive Growth Score has evolved, how the new report can help leaders better understand the factors that drive equity and what’s next.

What propelled the Center for Inclusive Growth to develop the tool initially?

Franco: The Center has always thought of place as one of the ways in which we can approach economic inclusion. When Opportunity Zones were created in 2017, we were really interested in understanding how our data could help tell the story of which underserved places needed the most investment. Literally we had a room in our New York City Tech Hub with a big map of the U.S. with our aggregated and anonymized data, and we started questioning how much we could say with spending data about economic development. That led to the need to contextualize spending in a much bigger conversation about what a thriving neighborhood looks like.

What do you miss when you just look at spending data?

Franco: When we look at spending even at a very granular level, we are averaging the richest and the poorest households that live in that place. What we want to do is to also show how well or badly resources, quality jobs, capital for small businesses, and economic opportunity are distributed in that place. And so we decided to include a whole set of metrics meant to give color to the differences that averages can mask.

To measure inclusion, we weigh indicators such as early education enrollment, health coverage and affordable housing, and to measure growth, we look at economic development conditions like small business loans, business openings and consumer spending pattern.

How has thinking about inclusive growth evolved since the score was first developed?

Franco: Between the time when we started doing this work, in 2018, and today, two things have happened. One is that the pandemic really showed the bare bones of our economy, and where the places that need the most support are. And two, there were the powerful conversations we had around racial equity following the murder of George Floyd. It added a new objective to public policy. It used to be about growth, and now it’s really about growth with equity. It used to be about productivity. Now it’s really about the quality of jobs, inclusion and opportunity. We know that’s happening because we see all of these new citywide equity plans coming out. We see these new positions of chief equity officer, which didn’t exist in 2018. So these kinds of tools that we have been investing in since 2018 have finally found their purpose.

What are some tangible ways that communities have been using the Inclusive Growth Score?

Franco: We’ve seen cities and local communities use the score for diagnosing their challenges. We’ve seen cities use it to benchmark other census tracts that are similar to theirs that have seen inclusive growth and look at those for best practices. During the pandemic, we saw cities using it to target programs, and we’ve seen it used for other kinds of public investment. And we’re starting to see it as a measure of progress.

In downtown Erie, Pennsylvania, it’s been used to show the economic potential of a place that hadn’t seen any investment in decades – driving new funds into the poorest zip code in the country. We’ve also seen it used to address concerns by residents of rapidly gentrifying areas. We got an email from someone from California asking to help him interpret some of the metrics, because he was literally about to go to city hall to say, “There is this thing happening to my community and I’m afraid we’re going to be displaced.”

The report that’s coming out this week is a first attempt to use the score to look back at six years of data and actually ask ourselves, “Is the U.S. growing inclusively or not?”

What’s next for the Inclusive Growth Score? Where do you take it from here?

Franco: After a very successful launch in the U.K. in 2021, the Inclusive Growth Score will be coming to Australia next, where we are also adding a climate change lens, because a lot of places there are prone to climate-related natural disasters. Some of Mastercard’s consulting practices doing work on the fringes of financial services, including working with NGOs, are finding the Inclusive Growth Score useful in their own projects. So it’s becoming not just a Center tool but a Mastercard tool.

The data is available, but one challenge is helping local leaders better understand how to use these new tools. New equity objectives require new management skills, and that part is hard to scale. We recently partnered with the Centre for Public Impact to launch Data for Equity, a 10-week program that brought together equity, technology and data officers from seven cities to teach them how to harness these data tools to propel economic inclusion. We can train seven equity officers, but now we need to train 700 — or 7,000.

We want to make sure we are bringing this tool to as many places as we can. We’re talking to community organizations, economic development agencies and others that are doing work on the ground to ask what is useful to them, what kind of data they need, and how do they use it to achieve their objectives. We have data, and we can make observations with this data, but we need local communities to help us bring that data to life.

Originally published by The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

Check out more content from The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

Originally published on Essity.com

Employee relations

Essity has a positive and constructive dialogue with employee representatives. As a global company, we experience many changes that require information and consultation with employee representatives at all levels of the company. Essity recognizes the right of every employee to be a trade union member and to participate in union activities. The company meets with employee organizations at various levels on a regular basis to inform them of and discuss issues such as the company’s results, any organizational changes, health and safety and employment terms and conditions. Essity has an agreement with the industry organization IndustriAll. When there is no union representation, Essity establishes other channels where possible, such as an employee council. We also support the global partnership Global Deal, which has members from the private and public sectors. The purpose is to improve dialogue between parties in the labor market and national governments.

Product safety and transparency

We never compromise on the safety or quality of our products. To ensure this throughout a product’s life cycle, we have extensive requirements and procedures in place, which our internal experts continuously improve in accordance with rules and regulations. We also have a certified quality system.

Essity collaborates with external experts in toxicology and life science to guarantee independent reviews. Every product and product component Essity receives from third parties must comply with Essity’s product safety and chemicals criteria, according to the specifications in our Global Supplier Standard. Internal business practices ensure that information that may be relevant for product safety, including complaints and feedback from customers and consumers as well as quality incidents, are part of the product safety concept. Essity also actively participates in contributing to public policy developments and discussions on improving product safety and transparency. We communicate with customers and consumers to raise awareness and understanding about our product content.

Answers to frequently asked questions regarding product safety are published on www.essity.com and each brand’s local website, together with detailed information about product contents. To further strengthen the availability of product information, we support the development of the EDANA Stewardship program on substances of concern, to drive transparency and align approaches to product assessments for absorbing hygiene products. We also launched the “Product Safety, For Us It’s Personal” and “Our 5 Pillars of Protection” campaigns during 2021.

Occupational health and safety
Health and safety also has the highest priority. Everyone working at our production facilities and offices, or visiting Essity, should be safe and secure. The safety, health and well-being of our employees is crucial to the success of our operations. It is also aligned with our Beliefs & Behaviors and the ethical standards and requirements expressed in our Code of Conduct.

Essity regularly monitors employee perception of health and well-being and the evolution of our safety culture. We offer clear plans and programs to lead in this field. We strive to promote physical and mental health and well-being. By developing new digital ways of working and training courses, we offer a more effective and systematic manner with which to assess, analyze and work with continuous improvements in employee health, well-being and engagement.

Essity is committed to offering a work environment that contributes to a long-term sustainable working life. We encourage an open culture, and all employees are encouraged to be aware of and take immediate action against conditions, acts and behavior that increase the risk of accidents. In April 2022, the “I Care” initiative was launched, which is our cultural journey toward a safe and healthy work environment. It brings essential tools that will empower Essity to be a safety leader. The I Care leadership training course provides various elements of safety awareness, helping us to recognize and work with safety using our hearts and minds. In 2022, we trained more than 1,000 managers and our target is to train all 16,000 employees and contractors in our production facilities by 2024. Rewards are also part of I Care and this year we recognized great achievements with our first edition of the Essity Global Health and Safety Award, delivered by Essity’s CEO. The award was followed by
a month during which there was a particular focus on health and safety, aligned with guidelines from the United Nations and International Labor Organization.

As a complement to our safety leadership program, Essity has put in place an ambitious roadmap for technical safety and safety framework to be best-in- class and reduce the occurrence of events that could result in fatalities. Key elements that have taken effect in 2022 are upgrades to the following frameworks: Machine Safety Risk Assessment (MSRA), Isolation of Hazardous Energies (IoHE), and Traffic Management. The upgrades to our safety processes are aligned with the ISO 45001 and 14001 principles and allow us to work systematically to achieve continuous improvements.

Read more about Essity’s strategic priorities, earnings and leading sustainability work in the Annual and Sustainability Report 2022, which can be downloaded at www.essity.com.

To access the digital short version, please click here.

Originally published in GoDaddy’s 2022 Sustainability Report

About Us

We’re a trusted growth partner for millions of entrepreneurs globally.

GoDaddy helps millions of entrepreneurs globally start, grow, and scale their businesses. People come to GoDaddy to name their idea, build a professional website, attract customers, sell their products and services, and accept payments online and in person. GoDaddy’s easy-to-use tools help business owners manage everything in one place, and our expert GoDaddy Guides are available to provide assistance 24/7.

OUR VISION

To radically shift the global economy toward life-fulfilling entrepreneurial ventures.

OUR MISSION

To empower entrepreneurs everywhere, making opportunity more inclusive for all.

OUR STRATEGY

To help entrepreneurs thrive by empowering them with expert guidance presented through seamlessly intuitive experiences to securely name, create and grow their businesses in select markets; leveraging the exponential power of community at a global scale to deliver profitable revenue growth.

Our Products and Services

We know that the needs of everyday entrepreneurs are constantly evolving, which is why we’re always striving to make sure our products and services evolve, too. We bring the latest innovations, traditionally available only to larger enterprises, to small businesses. To see this in action, just look at our rapid growth in website building, content creation, and WordPress, as well as our increasing focus on commerce solutions that empower our customers to sell anything, anywhere.

These evolutions complement our customers’ need for digital identity, ubiquitous presence and connected commerce — needs that we know will continue to grow. That’s why we focus on commerce as a key enabler of success for our customers. Our products and services enable us to serve our customers through every stage of the entrepreneurial journey — with human- centered support available at every step.

We continue to leverage our competitive advantages and sustainable growth that serve our key stakeholders — and to champion entrepreneurs as they pursue their dreams.

Our 2022 Sustainability Highlights

We focus on what matters.

In 2022, in line with our commitment to continuous improvement, we drove forward progress on our priority topics across the strategic customers, employees and operations pillars we identified in our 2020 materiality analysis.

CUSTOMERS

Empower by GoDaddy

We provided more than 9,700 learning engagements for entrepreneurs around the world.

Customer Satisfaction

We increased our Trustpilot score from 4.4 to 4.7 out of 5.0.

Venture Forward

We launched the Microbusiness Data Hub to provide unprecedented access to free data on more than 20 million microbusinesses.

EMPLOYEES

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB)

We hired our dedicated Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

Pay Parity

We achieved gender (global) pay parity for the eighth consecutive year.1

Employee Engagement

We achieved 86% employee participation in GoDaddy Voice, our annual employee engagement survey.

OPERATIONS

Sustainability Governance

We assigned oversight of our sustainability initiatives to the Nominating and Governance Committee.

Climate Change Commitment

We issued our position statement on climate change, highlighting the urgent need for climate action.

Emissions Reduction

We reduced our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 35% from our 2019 baseline.

Our Corporate Sustainability Priorities

We aim to be a positive force for those we serve.

At GoDaddy, empowering entrepreneurs isn’t just about providing tools and resources to help them succeed — it’s also about hearing, understanding and supporting them with their dreams, needs and challenges. That’s why we prioritize engaging with our communities and industry.

In support of our sustainability strategy, we completed a thorough materiality analysis in 2022. The analysis involved surveys of internal subject-matter experts; interviews with our executive team, employees and stakeholders; and a review of industry trends, research and risk factors.

Based on the materiality analysis, we identified 10 priorities to guide our sustainability strategy:

Content SafetyCorporate GovernanceCustomer ExperienceDiversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB)Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) EmissionsInclusive EntrepreneurshipInnovationTalent Management and EngagementUser PrivacyWeb Security

Our Strategic Pillars

To ensure our priorities guide our daily work, we aligned each priority to our three strategic sustainability pillars:

CUSTOMERS

We empower entrepreneurs everywhere and make opportunity more inclusive for all.

EMPLOYEES

We build a culture that values diversity and prioritizes the importance of making opportunity inclusive for all.

OPERATIONS

We reduce our environmental impact, operate our business ethically and manage risk appropriately.

United Nations SDGs

We recognize that organizations play an important role in making a global impact on sustainability. GoDaddy examined how our business activities and strategy align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and from their list of 17 goals, we identified six SDGs where we believe we have the greatest opportunity to impact:

GENDER EQUALITYAFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGYDECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTHINDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTUREREDUCED INEQUALITIESPEACE, JUSTICE AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS

In 2022, we furthered our commitment to the SDGs by joining the United Nations Global Compact. Through this membership, we commit to support the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact and to disclose our progress toward the SDGs annually.

Additional details on our 2022 progress can be found in the Appendix.

Sustainability Governance

We integrate sustainability into everything we do.

At GoDaddy, we take concrete action to implement and reinforce our sustainability priorities. We designed our approach for managing sustainability topics and actions in a way that robustly emphasizes transparency and oversight, and these processes help us continue to embed sustainability into our overall strategy and operations.

Board and Executive-Level Oversight

In 2021, our Board of Directors assigned oversight of our sustainability initiatives to the Nominating and Governance Committee. Under the Nominating and Governance Committee Charter, the committee oversees and reviews our sustainability strategies, practices and programs, and any public disclosures on such matters, including those in our Proxy Statement and our annual Sustainability Report.

In addition to the Nominating and Governance Committee providing regular reports to the Board on sustainability topics such as risk mitigation and reporting, members of the executive team oversee the progress of their respective ESG programs and practices as they relate to various areas of our business. Our Chief Legal Officer reports at least quarterly to the Nominating and Governance Committee on our sustainability programs and practices, including progress on goals such as our emissions reductions. Members of our Sustainability Steering Committee report directly to members of senior management, giving them direct insights into key parts of the business and how sustainability aspects flow into various areas within GoDaddy.

Sustainability Steering Committee

Composed of leaders from across the company, our Sustainability Steering Committee oversees key sustainability priorities and reviews 
all sustainability programs and practices across GoDaddy. Sustainability Steering Committee members discuss such matters with management to inform and guide the business. The Sustainability Steering Committee supports our ongoing commitment to our sustainability practices and disclosures, the development of our sustainability programs and our goal-setting efforts.

SUSTAINABILITY GOVERNANCE IN ACTION

GoDaddy assembled a climate change task force to proactively evolve our climate- related strategies and disclosures.

About This Report 
Unless otherwise noted, the GoDaddy 2022 Sustainability Report outlines our environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies, activities, progress, metrics and performance for the fiscal year that ended on December 31, 2022. This report references the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards and includes select Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Standards metrics for the Internet Media and Services sector.

GoDaddy is committed to regular, transparent communication about our sustainability progress, and to that end, we will share updates on an ongoing basis through our website and will continue to publish an annual Sustainability Report.

To learn more, please read our 2022 Sustainability Report.

1We define achievement of pay parity as pay that is equal to, or a few cents on either side of, a dollar. Please read our 2022 Diversity and Pay Parity Annual Report for more information.

Sustainability continues to be a business imperative and pressure to change business processes is increasing. Recent data reveals that executives rank environmental sustainability as their top priority, up from fourth place in 2021.

While many organizations have established environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals and made ESG commitments, driven by purpose and emerging regulatory requirements, they face a number of challenges when making the transition from ambition to action. In fact, a recent IBM study found that global executives cite inadequate data (41%) as the biggest obstacle to their ESG progress, followed by regulatory barriers (39%), inconsistent standards (37%), and inadequate skills (36%). The impacts of data challenges are becoming visible to company stakeholders, with consumers making purchasing and, even employment, decisions based on a company’s progress toward their ESG goals.

Those who have committed to closing the green gap have embraced sustainability-focused processes and are reaping the benefits. If data is a key barrier to success, companies should consider implementing an environmental strategy that encompasses an all-in organizational commitment to specific targeted outcomes and leverages technology to accelerate and track progress.

A recent study from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) and SAP surveyed 2,125 senior executives involved in their organizations’ environmental sustainability strategies. The study yielded a surprising result: organizations that outperform their competition in both environmental and financial outcomes also boast the most deeply engaged enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

ERP is the technology of record, touching virtually every organizational business process. It can connect financial and environmental goals, keeping metrics accountable and accessible. When implemented in conjunction with other systems, ERP enables cost transparency and visibility — allowing environmental, regulatory, and business-critical decisions to be made with improved consistency and reliability.

Uncovering Hidden Possibilities with ERP

An organization’s sustainability data can be difficult to attain due to siloed business processes, unreliable data, and misaligned business priorities. ERP uncovers real-time material information across business functions and gets necessary data into the hands of corporate decision-makers and operators for a streamlined user experience. This newfound access to data gives businesses the capability to record, report, and act on enterprise-wide ESG commitments and help resolve many of the complex challenges and demands of sustainability. With this visibility, people can see the impact of their decisions and trust the results being reported. This trust can accelerate the culture change needed to support and accelerate overall sustainable business transformation.

While moving the needle on making progress toward ESG goals can seem nearly impossible for some, there are organizations that have managed to crack the code to greener success. The recent IBM and SAP study found a group of high-achieving business leaders (15%) — the Environmental Sustainability Enabled (Enabled) — that actively prioritize environmental sustainability and implement concrete, well publicized plans to achieve goals at a far higher rate than their peers. The study found that Enabled organizations place environmental sustainability on par with financial performance because they see sustainability fueling financial results.

The recent study also found that the Enabled rely on ERP data structures to address sustainability goals, among other standout findings, including:

The Enabled report 47% of sustainability performance data is collected in their ERP, but they expect that to increase to 55% by 2025, a 17% increase.94% more of the Enabled believe ERPs are helping manage manufacturing sustainability goals. And 31% more believe the same as relates to labor management.The Enabled report accumulating almost 70% of their carbon capture and energy use metrics in their ERP.Enabled organizations use ERP to establish standard environmental measures across ecosystems 39% more often than the Reluctant, organizations that do not view environmental sustainability as important to their success.43% more Enabled versus Reluctant organizations use ERP to established shared environmental targets.

All organizations should take note: in an interwoven economy, ERP can help populate and standardize shared sustainability initiatives.

The Time to Act Is Now

Sustainability and ERP are team sports acting on actuals, and no one team can achieve success on its own. As strategic partners for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Sustainability solutions, IBM and SAP bring together technologies and services with enterprise-scale platforms to help companies break down silos and embed solutions across critical business functions and operations.

Learn more about the recent IBM Institute for Business Value study and how we are helping clients leverage ERP to operationalize sustainability here.

SAP and IBM understand how to help companies move the needle on their ESG commitments, without sacrificing their business needs or profitability. Learn more at ibm.com and sap.com.

Daniel Schmid is chief sustainability officer of SAP. 
Jonathan Wright is global managing partner, Sustainability Services and Business Transformation Lines, IBM Consulting.