This year, corporate, finance and investment leaders have rediscovered the importance of their people. The tumult of Covid-19 has made it all clearer and nowhere more so than in the US.
Social issues have coloured the US presidential election, with president-elect Joe Biden pledging to unite the country and work to improve the lives of all Americans. Whether from politicians or corporate bosses, those pledges only count if the actions that they generate can be measured.
Calpers’ Anne Simpson, the US largest public pension fund’s managing investment director of board governance and sustainability, has raised the issue of evaluating human capital with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as she told us during the FT Investing for Good conference, earlier in November. (Excerpts from that conversation are this month’s ‘on the spot’ interview.)
Meanwhile, Harvard Business School has created a methodology to quantify employment impact, which it ran on a number of US companies (see ‘data box’.) And Harvard’s Charles M. William professor of business administration George Serafeim has distilled a to-do list for corporate America (in our ‘ideas exchange’ opinion piece).
Let us know your thoughts on any of the subjects addressed this month and we could publish your feedback in the next edition. Email your own sustainable views to silvia.pavoni@ft.com or the team at sustainable.views@ft.com
