ESG For Profitability – Jasmeet Singh, Infosys

This is texturong TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider for Tech strong TV while joining me now is jasmeet Singh jasmeet is the Executive Vice President and Global head of manufacturing at emphasis. Thank you so much as we for joining us.

One is such a pleasure to be here with you today. Well, can you tell us a little bit about your experience in driving digital transformation initiatives in the manufacturing sector? Sure, thank you.

So Bonnie first, let me just introduce the company. So emphasis Global Next Generation digital and Consulting Services Company. Our purpose is to amplify human potential and create the next opportunity for people businesses and communities.

We over 350,000 people strong and for in manufacturing, we do a whole lot of stuff services for our clients specifically around sustainability. And it for me it's every part of the business that we do with our clients in the sector. It is really in terms of three spaces that I would say one is in the measurement and compliance area.

The other is in terms of running processes more efficiently and in a more cleaner way and the third is in terms of just the product the circle economy the transformation that we can bring about in the product space. That's a really interesting. Especially the move towards sustainability.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the acquisition of fluido and how it's influenced the approach to sustainability specifically in ESG and in the tech industry. Well, it's not naturally only about fluido fluidos a Salesforce base competency that we as a phenomenal phenomenal company with a great amount great culture is not accept quartered and they provide like I said Salesforce services to our clients, but overall right these services that we provide like I said cover the three towers in terms of the measurement and compliance and what that means is is the carbon footprint, you know reporting analytics around those areas in the efficient operations is really the green it that we run and this is where somebody like a floodable also come in in terms of just looking at the processes and how they can be run more efficiently particularly if they have Salesforce as a as a, you know product environment and the third like I said is really in terms of the product, right so material substitution, how can you extend the life of the product? How can you remanufacture stuff?

Those other things that we do in the product footprint and this is really across the board. It's not necessarily only fluido. I see the es recent ESG radar report.

I'd like to kind of dive into that if you can explain what it is. And what are they see some of the key findings with that? Oh, yeah, I absolutely bunny.

So we are incredibly excited about the report that we took out on ESG radar. We surveyed about 2,500 plus Executives senior Executives people who are involved in the sustainability space and this was a global survey that we come we did across Industries and some great insights that came out. And by the way, it was on ESG and we have an ESG 2030 Vision in the company itself, but let me talk specifically around the the survey the things that I would say or the key takeaways were one ESG is actually a money maker.

So it's not necessarily a cost. Right and they were actually data points that prove that from the survey. We had a very very strong core relation out there.

So nine out of the ten survey respondents actually said that they get you know, they're there is profitability behind their ESG initiatives, right 10% The remaining 10% actually said that Initiators broke even and actually nobody said that look it wasn't something that was profitable. The second thing was that overlooking the social and the governance aspects really hurts profits. Right?

So this was the other key finding that we had and the third thing was that companies are focusing on possibly the most obvious ESG efforts, but not always on what's best for them financially. So these were the three kind of takeaways and we can talk more about it. But like I said, it was a global survey.

It has some key key findings and really we were very very pleased about, you know, the reception that it got and really further ESG overall Beyond sustainability as well. Was there anything in the report that surprised you? Yeah, I mean, you know one one aspect that I would say is.

You know in the supply chain area, for example, you know, everybody knows that in terms of scope 3 and really going after the supply chain is is important everybody recognizes that two things that jumped out one was people were not necessarily sharing the data across their entire supply chain really actually having the conversation and measuring the supply chain to deliver to the goals that they had set out itself. So that was another thing that kind of surprise of the other thing I would say is and this is more in terms of a game that governance aspect of it. One of the things that came across was if you if companies had a CSO the chief sustainability officer achieve diversity officer if they had an ESG committee that reported into the board and they had actually achieved sustainability officer that actually was responsible for and had the power to actually do Capital expenditures.

If all those four things were there it actually drove profit growth right if you take One of those things for example, it meant that you would actually fall to that. Right? So we did not find that correlation.

So if very very interesting insights and I would strongly urge the readers to really take a look at that. That that does sound very insightful. You know, most of our audience a lot of them are people that work in the devops field devsecops as well.

I was wondering if you could share regarding this report how the findings might help the decision-making process for these teams. Well, two things that actually came out in the report one was the focus on employees overall when you're looking at ESG efforts so that for me it's across the entire organization. That was a very very strong recommendation that we have that will further various aspects whether it is the retention of talent whether it is actually You know attracting talent talent as well.

So that was one of the things that kind of got across the entire organization that was there from a from an employee perspective. The other thing was just in terms of the while we are making progress in terms of actually leadership cxos in the companies having actually metrics and goals and compensation tied to ESG efforts as well. And that's something that again is working progress.

We see a lot of ESG committees at the board now more so which is a great step in the right direction. It still has to permeate the entire ecosystem of the organization and particularly the sea Suite That's interesting. Can you speak a little bit about the role of cybersecurity at Infosys approach to ESG?

Where does cybersecurity fit into this and what what have initiatives are you have underway right now? Well, that's that's extremely important particularly for a company which is in our business we service, you know, the who's who are for clients across sectors. And so cyber security is really Central to what we do.

We want to be able to understand this kind of ties into our governance Tower but we have secure by Design. So everything that we build it needs to be kind of permeating in terms of having security completely overlay all activities. We have privacy bad design as well.

So again all these practices and we have been recognized for this. Should be embedded into everything that we do and every enforcement as we like to call ourselves every enforcement does and then we also actually consult with our clients. We take these practices and of course because clients need to trust what we do need to be comfortable in terms of the security the security of their data the security of the infrastructure that we support for them.

All of these things go a long way in terms of being able to service our clients better. That that is true practicing what you do is very important and on that note what are emphasis doing right now to ensure that it's own operations are sustainable and have a minimal impact on the environment. Now Bonnie, this is something actually you know, what people may not know is we actually made a commitment in 2011 to become copy in neutral and actually 2020.

We are carbon neutral and I talked about our ESG Vision the 2013 and we're making great progress around that, you know, the areas that we've been focusing particularly from a sustainability standpoint are around climate change around waste around water. Right? So 100% of the water is recycled within emphasis, right?

We have renewable energy. We have 60 megawatt what our front as well within emphasis. So we have been making these we have grown very very well, but we want to actually lower the footprint that we made great strides around this area as well and and you know, including and talent for example in the social aspect.

We have made a commitment on terms of digital talent rescaling talent providing education and we made a commitment about you're not to train digitally students teachers our clients our personal more than 10 million, right? 8. So we are well on our way to actually make this a reality.

So they are certain practices that we have got we have our own Lakes where you know water is for example retained in waste I've talked about we are Focus has been on mixed weights and so 78% we have been able to actually divert from landfills. So extremely proud of our sustainability practices. We are on the Dow Jones sustainability index.

We are on the REI 100 your signatories through the and we have one, you know, what from the United Nations on climate change as well in 2019. Thank you. Those are really a good examples that to kind of visualize where emphasis sits in in that space.

I want to talk about software Engineers. For example, what kind of training and support does emphasis provide to help people in that field incorporate sustainability into their work. Yeah, so I mean Talent and learnabilities of quality that actually in emphasis we talk about a lot and you know a few years ago fortuous for us actually prior to the pandemic we made a significant push to have a digital First Learning platform ourselves, right?

So, you know, we believe that any platform should have five elements or any learning that we impart to our our employees and similarly for clients as well should have five elements. It needs to be immersive. It needs to be adaptive.

That means personalized. Right and it's in the age of you know in the age of tiktoks and it's right needs to be Nano size. Right?

So bite-sized learning when you want to do it. We all know you learn better when you have coaches so it needs to be augmented even if it is virtual augmentation, right so and the content the collaboration those are the five elements that we drive when we look at learning overall and sustainability practices. I think actually are embedded into everything that we do.

Our our employees as well. And when we train them first of all, it is actually making it transparent in terms of their footprint. What can they do themselves?

Right? And so there's a lot of hackathons that we run around this. How can we make and what they see themselves in our campuses in the work that they do in the work that they do with their clients.

The ideas should bubble up and say, okay. Look, how can we actually do this better? And we extend that to our clients as well, including our learning platforms as well as the sustainability practices that we have.

That's interesting. Do you find it throughout your career? You're seeing a more a stronger interest in the sustainability practices and being more transparent as to how you can use them how people can use them using Infosys.

It seems to me that there is just a growing interest in this area. Yeah, I mean, I I think I would call it this a journey but you know as part of our years you commitment we have also made a commitment that we will actually take our practices and help clients. Not only our own Services Etc and everything that we do but also actually help our clients and yes numerous examples, so I'll give you just a couple I mean if I were to take just Aerospace the Aerospace sector which is, you know part of my portfolio, I mean, even if it is the engine and the turbine efficiency the movement to you know, actually enabling hydrogen for example usage in as a fuel all these things.

We are driving for example for some of our clients. We also work with aerostructures the people who make actually the frames themselves and you know that you know, if we actually make the frames lighter everything that we do there makes a significant difference not only to the profitability of the companies but also is a much more sustainable for them the extension of the life of the products. Example, so that's another area where we can help them and then just from a practices perspective.

I mean, you know. Smart spaces as an example. We actually came it came out with an offering just because of the practices that we have even I talked about the digital learning we came out as an offering so that we can take it to clients because when clients see what we have done internally, they they want more of that Kool-Aid, right?

So and you know, you already have something so we've been actually taking that across our clients across sectors taking some of these practices and it's very very meaningful for us and you know, it's embedded in our purpose. Right? So, like I said, it's to amplify human potential and create the next opportunity for people businesses and communities and we want to actually struggle all those three areas.

Just meet Singh Executive Vice President and Global head of manufacturing at emphasis. Thank you so much for joining me and I appreciate the examples and the Insight that you've provided in this interview. My pleasure.

Thank you for having me Bonnie. Great. Well, that was a jazz meet Singh.

We're going to be right back with tech strong TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider and we'll have more after this.