VEDOHERA

2018 sustainability report: focus on shared value, area by area

The new sustainability report approved on 27 March by the Board of Directors of Hera Spa has been published. The Group centres the report on the creation of shared value and the 2030 UN Agenda goals. There are also new pages dedicated to the representation of the results of each individual area served.

The Hera 2018 sustainability report consolidates the innovative representation of the contents introduced in 2017 and focused on the creation of shared value (CSV, creating shared value). The positive results reported also this year and the new targets for the future therefore represent Hera’s responses to the major environmental and socioeconomic challenges that the communities served have to face. With a view to improving the Group’s accountability profile yet further, this report also has a new section representing the results by the individual area served.

A new aim: the strength of business to regenerate the ecosystem and the environment

The economic, social and environmental changes that are taking place do not allow companies to limit their action to reducing their negative impacts. Furthermore, in a setting in which institutions have trouble finding effective shared solutions, the communities expectations of the business world, called increasingly to face social and environmental challenges, increase. For Hera, the answer lies in the approach to creating shared value, which imposes a re-elaboration of the links between the company’s social responsibility and its strategy, moving the former into the heart of the latter. While the social responsibility known up to now had concerned the “what” and “how” of the company, shared value puts the “why” at the centre, thus affecting the reason why the company exists, its mission and its strategy. All this is to allow the company to use the strength of its business to contribute to regenerating the ecosystem and the environment.

Reporting: from a focus on “what” and “how” to the evolution guiding the “why”

The sustainability report therefore evolves in such a way as to establish a direct and inevitable link between company’s social responsibility and strategy to induce reflection on the “why” of the company, to guide the innovation and enable business to be elaborated in support of the company. All this does not simply require an in-depth knowledge of the company’s activities and their impacts on the various stakeholders, it also requires a detailed analysis of the external setting, through which to identify the points of intersection between the company’s business and the ecosystem that may represent the opportunities for creating shared value and ensuring sustainable development for the company. For Hera, the opportunities identified through an analysis of the 2030 UN Agenda and more than 60 sustainable policies on a worldwide, European, national and local level are based on three areas: smart use of energy, efficient use of resources and innovation and contribution to development. These three areas affect the “why” of Hera, having a positive influence on current and, above all, future competitiveness.