QSE-meeting 17-18 april
Risks and opportunities in sustainability work
The focus at this spring’s QSE meeting (Quality, Safety & Environment) on 17-18 April was on “Risks and opportunities” where both parts need to be taken into account in order to make sustainability work even better
The meeting was held in Copenhagen in sunny spring weather. QSE meetings have been held for more than 15 years, but the meeting this spring must have beaten the record for the number of participants with more than 40 attending at the most. The participants came from both Stena AB and the Stena Metall group and what unites them is that they are all working with sustainability in one way or another. Either connected to safety, the environment or the social dimensions of sustainability.
On the first day, the meeting was held at Stena’s new office in Hellerup. There was time for both a tour of the office and a presentation by Lotta Lindström of Stena’s business activities in Denmark. Apart from this, the focus was on risks coupled to sustainability work. Mannheimer Swartling began by presenting examples and consequences involving companies that have not kept track of risks in their sustainability work with Stora Enso (child labour at their subcontractor) and Telia Sonera (corruption in Central Asia) being mentioned. Caroline Jakobsson, Head of Corporate Governance at Stena AB, talked about how they work on assessing the risks that are consolidated in the group. The participants got to put this into practice and in a workshop try to identify the most significant risks for Stena AB and the Stena Metall group, respectively. A more difficult task than one might at first think and it was not that easy to agree on how the risks identified should be rated.
On day two, the focus shifted to the opportunities for carrying out active sustainability work. Two employees from Sustainia inspired us to see the business opportunities associated with working with the UN’s 17 global goals. These 17 global goals were decided on by the member states of the United Nations in 2015 and can be seen as a global business plan or to-do list for what we jointly need to do to safeguard positive globally sustainable development, economically, socially and environmentally. Several of the companies at Stena already relate their sustainability work to one or more of these goals. Maybe we at Stena could contribute further solutions for how these goals can be met.
