Read the first article in this series here: Interview: – Businesses play a crucial role in the world’s transition to become more sustainable.
We have talked to the Sustainability Manager in Visma, Robin Åkerberg, about sustainable businesses, and what initiatives the Visma Group carry out to make a positive change in society.
Interview: How the Visma Group work with sustainability
Q: What sustainability initiatives does the Visma Group carry out, and how does the organisation work with sustainability?
Answer: “As a company, Visma creates efficiencies for our customers through digitalisation and automation of processes.
Until now, there has not been a dedicated role in the broad sense of sustainability at the Visma Group level. However, we have internal guidelines in our Code of Conduct related to data privacy, work environment, how to avoid conflicts of interest, and guidelines on how to reduce environmental impacts generated from travel, commuting to work, and use of resources such as paper and food.
We also have teams who are continuously working to ensure high employee satisfaction rates, and to ensure that we are diverse and inclusive. For instance, Visma is a founding partner of Equality Check, a platform where employees can leave anonymous reviews about equal opportunity, workplace culture, work/life balance, and the management’s commitment to diversity.
In my role as Sustainability Manager, I am currently reviewing our policies and looking at ways for us to increase our efforts at the Group level, including setting internal goals and internal reporting requirements.
Furthermore, there are a lot of local sustainability-related initiatives across our business units. The initiatives include different recycling initiatives in our offices, reimbursing and providing subscriptions to public transport for employees, using sustainable conference locations, providing NGOs and schools with free access to products, and donating used furniture, computer screens, and computers to schools and kindergartens.”
Want to learn more about how we work with sustainability in Visma? Visit our sustainability page.
Q: What is the goal of sustainability work?
Answer: “Sustainability work has to do with making sure that we have a healthy planet and safe society, both for ourselves and for our future generations. We have already started to see the negative impacts of humans on the natural world, and we are still far from a world of equal opportunity and justice.
For businesses, sustainability work has to do with managing the entity’s impacts on society and on the environment, to ensure that we have the necessary processes in place and that we take the necessary steps to tackle global challenges, such as global warming, loss of nature’s biodiversity and discrimination.
I think an important role of sustainability work is also to increase awareness about the problems and provide ideas to what we as individuals and as businesses can do to be a part of the solution. Joining forces and working together on these global problems that we face is absolutely essential for our people, our planet, and our profits to thrive.
Q: In your view, what does an ideal future utopia look like and what would be Visma’s role in getting us there?
Answer: “In an ideal future utopia, sustainability would be at the heart of all of our decisions, on the individual level and across all levels of every organisation.
Welfare and economic activity would be decoupled from the consumption of finite resources and new virgin materials, and the material life-cycle of products, services, and solutions would be circular.
As humans, we would not see ourselves as being above or apart from nature, but instead, we would realise that we are completely dependent on the health of the natural world that we are a part of.
People would have an equal opportunity to education, health services, and career and salary advancements, without discrimination or abuse.
Sadly, in the world that we live in, the above is still a utopia, but I believe it is an achievable utopia that Visma can also contribute to if we just set our minds to it and work together, as individuals and as a company.”
Want to learn more about how we work with sustainability in Visma? Visit our sustainability page.
