Asantewaa Brenya is the Executive Director of Governance, Risk and Performance at Ocean Housing. In this comment blog she discusses upcoming regulatory changes in the social housing sector, implications for governance professionals, and what they can do to stay ahead, informed and aligned.

In the last five years, environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing has gone mainstream, and it has never been more popular. .

In this podcast, James Beasley, Senior Director at Nasdaq Governance Solutions, discusses the concept of individual accountability, which was first developed in the financial services sector. James explains that to apply the concept an organisation will undergo a process of defining and communicating its senior individuals’ accountabilities. James considers whether the lessons learned in financial services from applying this regime could be extended to other sectors, arguing that outcomes such as a sense of responsibility coupled with a strong degree of clarity could be universally beneficial. James suggests practical steps that company secretaries or governance professionals and their boards can take to implement individual accountability at their organisation.

With a broad coalition of interests coalescing around the ESG banner, there are many reasons to support boards in developing their ESG understanding and decisions to improve relevant ESG-related activities.

The topic of modern slavery is key not only to businesses but also to governments, and its importance is increasing within large, multinational corporations.

In this podcast Susan Stenson, a partner at Independent Audit, discusses the impact that environment, social and governance (ESG) issues are having in the boardroom. She outlines the importance of linking these areas back to the overall purpose and strategy of the organisation to enable directors to understand which issues they should focus on and how they should communicate their approach to their stakeholders. Susan outlines how governance lays the foundations for a strong response to ESG issues from boards of directors. She also argues that if the board is honest about how it has decided its ESG priorities, its approach is much more likely to be successful.

In this podcast James Beasley, Senior Director at Nasdaq Governance Solutions, discusses stakeholder capitalism and its significance for businesses today. He argues that stakeholder engagement is the means by which to achieve stakeholder capitalism because it allows the business to understand different stakeholders and therefore act in their interests. James argues that the convergence of many monumental events over the last two years has brought stakeholder capitalism into the limelight and front and centre for boards. He outlines innovative methods for engaging with two important stakeholder groups: customers and employees. James argues that organisations need to develop more sophisticated data points for understanding stakeholders, focusing on qualitive rather than quantitative data to bring stakeholder experiences to life.

In this podcast, Ben Fielding, Head of Sales for Global Entity Management at TMF Group, talks about the challenges facing organisations in carve-out situations.

The next in our series focuses on Structural Changes, Talent Capacity and Development