ESVAGT strengthens its CSR work

ESVAGT can see itself in a new light thanks to the latest GRESB evaluation, leading to more awareness.

Is ESVAGT burdening its environment with light pollution?

Does the shipping company contribute positively to its neighbourhood?

Do the employees have access to a whistleblowing system?

These are some of the areas in ESVAGT that are analysed in GRESB; a standard used to assess a company’s sustainability.

GRESB was originally designed for the real estate industry as an objective score regarding sustainability. GRESB offers the possibility to show investors and the broader community how a company is performing on parameters other than just the bottom line.

“The GRESB score assesses the company’s attention to several factors such as leadership systems, communication, politics and risks”, says Lissi Franzen, QA Manager and CSR Compliance Officer at ESVAGT:

“Simply put, the GRESB score tells you something about ESVAGT’s CSR just like EBIT tells you something about ESVAGT’s result”, she adds.

Valuable awareness

GRESB ensures a professional, objective and factual assessment of how ESVAGT performs in several areas which they usually aren’t evaluated on.

“GRESB nudges us to be more aware of the value of the activities, which we already do. When ’Esvagt Alpha’ helps launch a lot of messages in bottles, when students from MARTEC or training ships come to visit, or when we sponsor local sports teams, this all adds value to our community and makes a positive difference. GRESB turns these efforts into measurable areas, which we can learn from. The value of our CSR efforts becomes much clearer”, says Lissi Franzen.

GRESB enables an evaluation which looks at the company based on a number of determined parameters. Last year, ESVAGT scored 73 out of 100; this year, the score reached 79 out of 100. According to ESVAGT’s Project Coordinator Jakob Lønborg Rasmussen, ESVAGT’s score is the highest among all evaluated ESG performances across companies from the same category.

“We are very aware that our work with GRESB is to add value. Our efforts are not “for the sake of GRESB” if you’d like; we don’t analyse specific things to get a checkmark and thereby a higher GRESB score unless we feel the need to know more about the subject”, emphasizes Jakob Lønborg Rasmussen:

“But we have noticed that by measuring the various factors, we are more aware of the specific area, and this is valuable. The score is hereby a positive bi-product of the fact that we are devoted”, he says.

CSR has its own place

Seen with ESVAGT eyes, GRESB conveys absolute relevant input. Focus on CSR is much more present today than previously, and both customers, consumers and employees expect an ethical behaviour.

“We demand from our workplace, bank, municipality, supermarket and many others that they be aware of the ethical part – we should also apply these demands to ourselves! We use GRESB to highlight and gauge ESVAGT in a much broader way than we otherwise do, and also to look at ESVAGT with an external point of view”, says Lissi Franzen.

“By going back and forth with GRESB regarding suggestions and recommendations, we can concentrate on the areas which create value, just like we are more aware of all the things which – also – make us proud to be part of ESVAGT”, she adds.

About GRESB

GRESB assesses the sustainability performance of real estate and infrastructure portfolios and assets worldwide.

The Assessments are guided by what investors and the industry consider to be material issues in the sustainability performance of real asset investments and are aligned with international reporting frameworks such as GRI and PRI.

Assessment participants receive comparative business intelligence on where they stand against their peers, a roadmap with the actions they can take to improve their ESG performance and a communication platform to engage with investors.

More on GRESB here.