2024 Annual Summit Full Agenda

 

Time Format Agenda
09:15-10:00 Registration
10:00-10:25 Keynote Welcome Speeches
10:25-11:15 Panel Reimagining Supply Chains to Leave No One Behind 
How can businesses and suppliers strengthen their relationship to ensure mutual business success and advance sustainability strategies?
As supply chains face mounting disruptions from natural disasters, climate change, conflict, and social inequalities, businesses throughout the entire value chain need to build stronger relationships and effectively collaborate to tackle such challenges.

Existing and incoming sustainability legislation is putting companies under increasing pressure to ensure awareness and compliance throughout their supply chains. Failure to get suppliers on board, can lead to scrutiny from customers, employees, and investors, damaging brand reputation.

Equally, this increase in stakeholder burden is felt by suppliers who are being inundated with inconsistent reporting requirements, and requests to level up in alignment with corporate sustainability demands. Despite strained resources and supplier fatigue, those who do not meet demands risk being left behind.

By providing an opportunity to voice challenges and identify solutions, this panel will emphasise the need for collaborative relationships between businesses and suppliers to ensure mutual business success.
11:15-11:40 Fireside Chat Sustainability & Supply Chains: An SME Perspective
How are SMEs approaching increasing demands from their customers, while ensuring their own supply chains support their sustainability goals?

SMEs are increasingly asked for information on their climate targets, emissions, reduction activities, and more from a multitude of sources. Consequently, these requests for information necessitate SMEs securing the same information from their own suppliers, further increasing the workload. However, with limited time, resources, and influence to facilitate these processes or push back against customer demands, this can be an immense challenge for SMEs that are more susceptible to impacts from wider economic conditions.

To assist SMEs that are currently feeling the burden of this, the session will explore how leading SMEs are approaching these difficult and repetitive asks, particularly in the context of conflicting priorities. The panellists will share insight into how they are balancing supply chain requests, sustainability initiatives, and reporting, alongside the everyday challenges of doing business.
11:40-12:00   Coffee Break
12:00-12:15 Fireside Chat Building Climate Resilience & Adaptation
How business can align finance with SDGs and build resilience?
Aligning business products, services and finance to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an opportunity. Adaptation and resilience to climate change is severely underfunded and impacts a range of SDG metrics. This is fast becoming an area for increased business action as supply chains become affected, products and services change due to climate change and jobs of today are altered or become obsolete. This presents an opportunity for corporates to adapt supply chains and generate value by building resilience in their own business, workers and the local communities in which they operate in.

We are beginning to see more investor action that abides by sustainability regulations and frameworks. To secure the finance businesses need for growth going forward, companies will increasingly need to demonstrate that their activities meet these sustainability guidelines.  This fireside chat will explore the ways in which businesses can build the SDGs into their practice, with a particular focus on building resilience to the effects of climate change.
12:15–12:55 Panel Unlocking Value with a Bolder Approach to Sustainability Reporting
How can companies leverage the new reporting standards to create business value? 
The past few years have seen increased integration of ESG-related information into mainstream financial reporting. The mandatory European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the upcoming UK Sustainability Disclosure Standards will accelerate this trend as they require organisations to report their risks and opportunities relating to their climate and social impacts alongside their financial disclosures. New research shows that businesses must rethink their current systems and take a bolder approach to their sustainability reporting to drive transformation and unlock long-term value.

In this session, we will explore how integrated reporting is an opportunity for businesses to bring climate ambition into action, reduce the risks of greenwashing, get access to investment, and ultimately drive long-term value.  Leading companies, investors, and policy experts will discuss how sustainability disclosures are key to driving the just transition and creating business value.
12:55-13:55   Lunch
13:55-14:35 Panel Advancing Decent Work through Worker Engagement and Representation
How can effective worker voice initiatives help business drive decent work across their supply chains?
Worker engagement and representation are essential strategies for building a competitive, sustainable business that adapts quickly to changing social and legal environments. Worker engagement and participation in social dialogue with employers on workplace issues is integral to robust human rights due diligence and directly supports business efforts to uphold decent work across their value chains. Even in countries where freedom of association is restricted or poorly enforced by governments, companies still need to ensure workers in their supply chain have access to effective grievance mechanisms and systems that ensure their voices are heard.

This panel discussion will explore strategies and actions businesses can take to engage with workers in their supply chains on decent work issues to ensure concerns are heard and workers are empowered to advocate for their rights and negotiate improved working conditions.
14:35- 15:15 Panel Unlocking Value Chain Collaboration – A Circular Initiative Case Study
How can companies build effective relationships across their value chain to further circularity?
This session will focus in on a project case study featuring companies already in the process of collaborating with each other across their respective value chain to drive circularity. Insights will be shared into how initial bridges were built, what the framework for collaboration has looked like, how targets for collaboration were defined, and how success has been achieved.
15:15-15:35   Coffee Break
15:35-16:05 Fireside Chat Responding to Investors and Regulatory Pressure – Human Rights Disclosures 
How can businesses meet growing regulatory and investor social sustainability disclosure expectations?
It has been long acknowledged that businesses wield significant influence over human rights conditions in their operations and value chains. Human rights in this context is attracting increased interest due to its emphasis in emerging legislation such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Consequently, businesses must be able to show investors and other stakeholders that they are responding to the most pressing social sustainability issues. This session will convene experts to discuss the key social sustainability actions that businesses should prioritise, and the disclosures required to ensure they are meeting expectations and emerging legislation.
16:05-16:55 Debate Regulatory Momentum versus Voluntary Action: Accelerating Progress Towards Change
Motion: This house believes that voluntary commitments are more efficient in propelling sustainability and prosperity than regulatory frameworks.
Are voluntary commitments more effective than regulatory frameworks in driving sustainability and prosperity? Are regulations the key to unlocking success or do they create unnecessary economic burdens? Do voluntary frameworks enable flexibility and innovation, or allow for complacency and inaction? Is it the responsibility of the private sector to lead the way in shaping regulations? Do evolving regulatory requirements represent a shift towards a more sustainable and responsible business ethos?

In this formal debate, two teams of experts will square off to answer these questions.
16:55-17:00   Closing Remarks
17:00-18:30   Networking Drinks