5th ESG Advisory Board (2023)
Date: August 23, 2023
Participants:
- [Experts]
- Takeshi Kamigochi
Member of the Board, Executive Officer, Senior Vice President & COO, J-OIL MILLS, INC. - Mari Kogiso
Co-CEO, SDG Impact Japan - Peter David Pedersen
Representative Director, Next Leaders' Initiative for Sustainability (NELIS)
Independent Outside Member of the Board, Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd.
- [Internal Members]
- Kazuo Kawamura
Chief Executive Officer, President and Representative Director - Jun Furuta
Chief Sustainability Officer, Member of the Board and Senior Managing Executive Officer - Shinji Matsuoka
Executive Officer, Sustainability Management Dept. - Yuhei Matsumoto
Chief Human Resource Officer, Executive Officer, Group HR Strategy Dept. - Youichirou Yamagata
General Manager, Corporate Development Dept.
- Themes:
- Topic Identifying materialities for our next vision
Topic Identifying materialities for our next vision
What materialities are we uniquely suited to answer as a united Meiji Group? Looking beyond the identification of materialities to strategic planning.
Expert opinions
- Identified materialities should be presented in a creative way. One example would be to classify materialities into three categories: (1) Positive contributions through businesses; (2) Responses to negatives associated with businesses; and (3) Fundamental activities. Or the group could organize materialities into items specific to each business area and items common across all businesses.
- Meiji has included many challenging materialities. I believe the company should organize these materialities by strengths and weaknesses, maintaining the ideal while considering relevance to Meiji Group businesses and time frames, etc.
- I think the Meiji Group should consider materialities to be business activities that solve social issues in ways unique to the Meiji Group. The group should express these materialities in a way that is easily understood and sympathetic to both customers and employees.
- Beyond identifying materialities, the Meiji Group should develop a winning sustainability strategy. It is important to communicate a Meiji-like trade-on strategy to improve corporate value.
Once we have created a materiality matrix based on the advice we received, we will consider the uniqueness of the Meiji character and the resonance among employees and customers as we proceed to identify our final selection of materialities. We will then use these materialities to build a winning sustainability strategy, define specific actions, and set KPIs.