Start Investing in People

Long gone is the era where businesses formed for providing goods and services that were missing and needed in a society. Nowadays businesses are categorized as successful based on their quarterly and annual revenues. Investors are also more willing to be associated with companies that have a much robust return on investment (ROI), though this trend is slowly changing.

ROI is needed; nobody can deny that. But completely foregoing the wellbeing of its employees and the community, is not sustainable anymore. Companies remain focused on capitalistic gains, but not at the expense of ecological degradation and employee burnouts.

In recent times, it had become an everyday trend where we heard of employees venting out their frustration about degrading corporate working conditions, with no work-life balance. This caught steam amid the pandemic, when most of the global workforce was pushed indoors, due to social distancing norms. More than three years of remote working has made employees value quality time with their family over and above corporate hustle.

The new generation of workforce entering the market are demanding better working conditions and employee benefits. One school of thought is pushing for putting more working hours in a week, while the new generation of workforce is terming it an outright “corporate slavery”. In a latest memo, Google has urged its employees to work for 60 hours a week to win the artificial general intelligence race. This has come at the heel of Elon Musk’s demand for X (formerly Twitter) employees to work for long hours at high intensity. This ultimatum led to “half of X’s 4,000 employees to accept three months of severance pay rather than comply”. 

Otherwise, businesses also have a bigger risk stemming from their consumer side. Consumers are now more informed than before to purchase or be associated with brands that have a better sustainability agenda. Take the case of a consumer study done by PwC that revealed that almost nine-in-ten consumers are feeling the disruptive impacts of climate change in their lives. And what are they doing about it? More than two-fifth (46%) are buying sustainable products, while 80% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for sustainably produced or sourced goods. Not just that, some are also willing to pay a premium on sustainably- and locally-sourced goods that are made using recycled or eco-friendly materials.

Investing in People is Key

A people-centric approach can either make or break a business. This is truer now than ever as employees have become more informed about their rights and so are the consumers. 

Even amid the Great Resignation, companies rushed to retain employees by giving bonuses and job perks. But employees now are being actively driven by the climate and social cause, demanding a sustainable approach from their employers. In 2019, more than 2,300 Google employees wrote an open letter demanding the company to setup a science-based, action-oriented list of climate actions as a part of its corporate strategy. A year before this letter, approximately 20,000 Google employees had staged a walkout, in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment. 

Companies are starting to heed their employees’ concerns. Unilever, a multinational consumer brand has announced targeted climate actions to achieve its net-zero ambitions. They plan to make deep cuts in absolute Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. About 290 suppliers have already onboarded Unilever’s Supplier Climate Programme as of 2024, to share their carbon footprint data on the raw materials being sourced. As of 2023, the company has already achieved complete deforestation in the supply chains for palm oil, tea, cocoa, and other agricultural raw materials.

Businesses have a crucial role to play when it comes to ensuring a just future for communities. This is particularly true in the case of vulnerable communities. Low-income and other disadvantaged people contribute the least to climate change, but are impacted the most from it. An analysis from World Resources Institute (WRI) states that, “if designed with equity concerns in mind, major investments and innovative solutions to help mitigate and build resilience to climate change could bring the greatest gains to communities that are most impacted by disasters and pollution.”

Looking Forward

As companies look forward to an uncertain  future, filled with geoeconomic shifts and rising climate threats, business leaders have an important task at hand – to implement a people-centric approach to their future corporate strategies.

Also, any future investments need to imbibe the people factor and not only the environmental criteria. Action plans to a net-zero climate transition need to be well-planned and also have a structured common framework, with targets that are both transparent and measurable.

However, this transition cannot happen in silos. Businesses need to come together and join forces with local communities and employees, and with the support from governments chart a collective future that is both sustainable and resilient for all.

Horasis vouches for this collaborative approach. Under the theme of “Harnessing the Power of Cooperation”, it is organizing its 10th Horasis Global Meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, between 7 to 10 October 2025. The meeting will bring together leaders from business, civil society, academia, and the government to help build collective frameworks to address the most pressing challenges of our times.

Photo Caption: The corporate world will need to walk the talk with respect to the climate crisis.