ESG and Culture: Can One Exist Without the Other?

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ESG, first of all, let me tell you what that stands for. It stands for environmental, social, and governance. It simply measures a company's sustainability, ethical impact, and long-term resilience. Now, this has become one of the most talked about themes in organizations today.

We all know that companies are setting ambitious commitments and sharing detailed reports. But increasingly, the conversation is shifting to become more deeper. How much of ESG is actually reflected in the everyday culture of the workplace is a question that we all are trying to understand in depth now. Because ultimately, the real impact of ESG isn't just in policies or disclosures, but in how leaders make decisions and how employees experience everyday organization. To explore this further, I'm delighted to welcome Megha Goel, CHRO at Godrej Properties Limited.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Megha, it's wonderful to have you with us today. Thank you so much for joining.

Megha Goel: Thank you for having me here.

Sanjeevani Saikia: So before we begin today's conversation on the topic, could you kindly walk us through your corporate journey so far?

Megha Goel: Thank you so much for having me again, and it's a complete pleasure to be here with your audience. So I have approximately 18 years of experience in the field of human resources. I did my MBA after completing my engineering, and since then I have worked for organizations like Britannia, J.P. Morgan, and Godrej. I've been with the group for 12 years now and have worked across different group companies as well. In all through these 18 years, I have worked across organizations in various sectors like FMCG, banking, conglomerates, real estate, and agriculture. I think that's a bit about me. On the personal side, I'm someone who's passionate about health, nutrition, and fitness. I have a young son who is 11 years old and I love spending time with him. So I think that's about me.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Megha, for sharing your journey with us. It was wonderful to hear it. With your permission, shall we dive straight into the topic?

Megha Goel: Definitely, let's do that.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Great. So ESG has become such a prominent conversation in the business world today. But very interestingly, most of the time we hear about it in the context of reports, targets, or regulatory commitments. What we don't talk about enough is the cultural side of it, which makes me really wonder how closely ESG is actually connected to an organization's culture.

Megha Goel: Great question. So actually, for real, honest work to happen, and for it to happen on a year-on-year basis, it has to be part of the culture. Let me be a little more specific. Today, Godrej Properties is actually at the helm of ESG across the multiple enterprises we operate in, and we have continued to be among the top two or top three in India, and globally as well. Now, you can only be there in that top one, two, or three position when you are genuinely ensuring that sustainability is becoming a mindset across your units of impact.

One of the ways we have done this is that all our key roles and role holders who can impact sustainability actually carry one of their key result areas, or goals as we call it in common language, on sustainability. In fact, even HR professionals and many other functions that are not directly involved in business operations also carry a goal on sustainability. Over the years, as we have done this, people have automatically reached a place where everyone sees their role as a role plus a responsibility toward ensuring this happens sustainably. So this whole cultural mindset, ensuring that each one of us has a role to play in making our organization environmentally friendly and more sustainable, has become very important for us.

We also run a lot of learning programs to that effect. For the last three to four years, we have run multiple programs where our employees go through the different frameworks of ESG, how they apply to the real estate sector, and what roles and responsibilities each of us in our departments and functions play toward it. I think that has also helped us build, first, teams that think long-term about the work they do, and second, prioritize life cycle value over short-term decisions. So while we talk about sustainable design and various certifications, those happen at a very strategic level. But on an everyday basis, how does every single person think from a long-term perspective, and how does this ownership of impact come across all the functions? It doesn't only sit with operations. How does design impact it? How does procurement impact it? When you bring it into the goal sheets of every single person and also support them in understanding what their role is, it automatically becomes a space where they own that impact.

We also have awards where we recognize our best sustainability champions. There, we encourage people to think innovatively and create impact, and these awards even go up to the Godrej Group level. So we have awards for the most impactful sites, for the most impactful teams at an organizational level, and for the most impactful teams at a group level. Across the value system of the organization, this is not just something Godrej Properties in the real estate sector is driving, but also how the Godrej Group as a whole is driving it, which is again integrated into the messaging we give our employees, teams, and leaders about what gets rewarded. When sustainable practices get rewarded, it becomes part of the culture, because in culture we always say that culture is what we reward, what we encourage, and what we pay attention to. Our overall ethos as a group is extremely integrated with these things. It's almost a value for us.

We are all aware of how the Godrej Group is the custodian of the mangroves in the city of Mumbai, held under the Godrej trust, and how we are committed to safeguarding them against any kind of harm or risk. This is a big commitment the group has made toward sustainability, goodness, and long-term value. We also keep encouraging all our team members and leaders to imbibe this as a value, not something limited to submitting documents for certifications, but something you bring into your day-to-day activities. As the conversation continues, I'll be happy to share more examples of how we are ensuring, in every space of environment, social, or governance, that we are building an ownership mindset that comes from impact and long-term thinking.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Wonderful. It's really amazing to see, beyond what Godrej has been doing, that you're also rewarding your champions with sustainability awards, which will really encourage people to continue that practice. So yes, all the initiatives you've mentioned are really amazing. Building on that, ESG conversations often seem to sit at the leadership or board level, where strategies are defined. But the real impact probably depends on whether those commitments actually trickle down into everyday actions across teams and departments. So to translate intention into daily behavior, it's important to first understand how organizations can ensure ESG commitments actually show up in the everyday behaviors of the workplace. And you've rightly mentioned in your previous response how you're trying to do this at a micro level in your organization. So yeah, if you could elaborate further.

Megha Goel: Yeah, thank you so much, Sanjeevani, and you're absolutely right. I think it's extremely important to establish the vision and the group's expectation on this. I'm extremely fortunate to say that we are part of a group that authentically believes in this. We have very directly stated, even in our integrated reports, that the Godrej Group believes in profits alongside the planet and its people. So we are extremely conscious and committed to taking all three of these aspects together. I think it's extremely important that we establish this right at the top, because if leadership isn't talking about it enough, if they're not role-modeling it enough, it's extremely difficult to ensure that it strategically trickles down in the organization.

In my previous response, I also shared a few examples of how we've ensured that it doesn't just remain at the board and senior leadership level, but actually trickles down across the organization. I think it happens through goals, and it also happens through the everyday work we do. For example, when we're creating a new office, we've put in place a design framework for how our offices can be the best from a sustainability perspective and also from an accessibility perspective. In fact, in our new offices, we ensure we bring in the best spaces from an energy efficiency, water conservation, and waste reduction perspective. These are standardized frameworks so that our leaders know every new office has to be constructed keeping these ten parameters in mind.

Going forward from there, we also create our offices to be completely inclusive and accessible. Our offices have presence of men, women, the LGBTQIA community, and employees from the PWD cohort. Our offices are accessible, providing gender-neutral washrooms and accessibility touchpoints for individuals from various cohorts. Our technology has become extremely conscious of including every single employee in the organization.

Also, in the way we look at conduct and governance, we're assessing the human rights space. We recently launched something called Sehyog, which is a mental wellness initiative at our labor level. We have approximately 35,000 laborers who work with us day in and day out on our sites, through contractors. Sehyog ensures that, in addition to the physical wellbeing of our laborers, their mental wellbeing is also taken care of. We're also working to ensure that not only our offices but also the labor camps our laborers live in are conducive from a living standards perspective, sustainable, and provide an accessible, safe working environment. So we're ensuring that every single person feels how sustainability is embedded in how it impacts them as an employee and how it impacts our decision-making across the organization, so that leaders making these decisions can see how the organization is encouraging decision-making and standards that have been set, not only for our own employees or senior employees, but even for the last mile, for a laborer contributing to the operations of Godrej Properties.

I'd like to emphasize again, Sanjeevani, that while there's a lot we do to get IGBC- and LEED-certified projects and to create sustainable construction practices, we're also extremely committed and conscious about ensuring it touches every touchpoint of the organization. Every single kind of human being connected with the organization, every space the organization works from or works with, every resource we utilize, is covered under the ambit of how we are impacting it.

Sanjeevani Saikia: That's really wonderful. Now, Megha, I'm curious, when ESG is genuinely embedded in a company's culture, what does that actually look like in practice? Are there specific leadership actions, employee initiatives, or everyday behaviors that clearly signal it's more than just a policy?

Megha Goel: Absolutely, and I shared a few aspects already. I think when you set up an annual priority every year saying this team is going to look at these sustainable practices, right at the beginning of the year, when you're setting up business outcomes, you're also setting up sustainability outcomes and expectations with your team members, and teams are actually planning toward that. What's getting focused on? For example, energy-saving initiatives: what kind of lighting are we using, is it the best from an energy-saving perspective, do we have optimized HVAC usage? Are we working toward water conservation across our various offices and sites? Are we looking at the best way to digitize our documentation systems? How paperless are we trying to go on an everyday basis? What kind of waste segregation policies and methods are we bringing in? Do we incorporate renewable energy solutions in our projects? How can we become carbon-neutral over a period of time? Do we look at climate and risk considerations when planning our projects from a construction perspective? How are we looking at vendor selection, are we choosing vendors who bring in a similar mindset from an ESG perspective? These are all decisions taken almost every single day in the organization, by team members and by leaders. And toward the end of it, like I said, we also reward them. We encourage teams and leaders who have taken the right decisions, rewarding whoever is more sustainable than others, which only increases the interest and awareness of the organization, its leaders, employees, and teams to become more and more sustainable compared to the previous year. I think that is something that's really helping us.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Shifting gears, there are organizations where ESG messaging is very strong externally, but internally, employees don't always experience those same values in their day-to-day work. And when that gap starts to appear, it can create some kind of skepticism and make ESG feel more like branding than something the company truly believes in. So in a situation like that, what are some of the signs that ESG and the actual culture of the organization may be misaligned?

Megha Goel: Sanjeevani, that's a very grounded question. I would never say the journey is ever over. At all points of time, the organization's leadership has to keep reinforcing this message, and that's where the importance comes in of actually including it in terms of values, sharing stories, and celebrating the value systems where some of these have been acknowledged and achieved. We also ensure that, because it's a value, we will not be okay with accepting people who are not living up to the values of the organization. I think that's also extremely important, where we call out behaviors and even take decisive action when we see that some of these aspects are probably not being lived in spirit the way we would have loved. So while rewarding is extremely important, ensuring we're always on this journey is extremely important, but it's equally important to call out behaviors that may be working against it, because it increases awareness among people and helps them understand that the organization is, at all points of time, extremely committed to this. So we do take calls around people or leaders who may not be bringing the values of respect, of wellbeing for team members, sensitivity around inclusion. If we find anywhere that there is discrimination coming in, or any team operating from a space of not providing equal opportunity across hiring practices, we actually take action around that.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Yeah, and one thing I found interesting in your response is what you said about vendor selection. You're not just partnering with Godrej Properties or the Godrej Group at large, you need people who have the same ethos and values that you do. So you're not partnering simply with people who have a different viewpoint, and I think that's something your employees will definitely notice, and that's going to help in the long term. So, moving on, we are almost at the end of today's conversation. But before we wrap up, I want to leave our listeners with one final thought. ESG expectations today are literally coming from everywhere, whether it's employees, investors, or customers. People are paying much closer attention to how organizations actually operate. And because of that, ESG can't really sit only in strategy documents anymore, it has to go beyond that, which makes me wonder whether organizations might actually need to rethink their culture first, in order to deliver truly meaningful ESG impact.

Megha Goel: Certainly, right, Sanjeevani. I would actually say, because a lot of our audience are team members of various organizations, when it comes to culture, if I'm looking out and planning to join an organization, an organization that treats sustainability as a culture, I can assure you, is definitely also going to be a great employer brand. That's a place where an employee should look forward to being a part of. I would actually encourage that as we look out for organizations to be part of our career journeys, we research around understanding whether sustainability is part of their culture, or it's just part of leadership speak. Progressive organizations like the Godrej Group actually include a substantial section around some of these practices in their annual reports, on a day-to-day and annual basis. In fact, we have third-party partners who go through some of these things and audit some of the practices we are bringing in. This shows, over a period of time, that we're not just doing it for the sake of filling in some pages. We are actually completely committed, we're ensuring we get ourselves audited around some of these things, and we are true and honest in how we're going about this journey. So I would actually encourage that the workforce of the future looks for organizations that are committed to building sustainable futures, for the country, for the sector, and for the world at large. Because I can assure you completely that such organizations are also going to be workplaces with an awesome culture, and no one would ever regret joining such a workplace.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Megha, you have responded to all our questions very beautifully, very lucidly. Thank you so much for that. Is there any final message for our listeners? Anything you'd like to say to all our listeners?

Megha Goel: I've been very fortunate that I've spent more than a decade with Godrej as a group, and I think what it did for me was really acknowledge and understand my own role when it comes to being a better citizen for the world. How do you give back to the community, how do you give back to the environment? That has been ingrained into me as I've been fortunate to be in a space where the culture has been like that. My message to all individuals out there listening to this would be: how can we inculcate some of this into our own lives, to leave this world a better place than we found it? How can we personally contribute toward making this world a more sustainable and better living space for the generations to come? If we look through that lens, we would be better citizens. We would look for workplaces that are better organizations. We would become part of teams that are more sustainable, and we would grow in a space where we are more inclusive, more respectful, more patient, and just make this world a much better place. The world doesn't need wars, it needs a lot more sustainable work practices to conserve what we have and give it to the generations we are answerable to. So I think that would be my message. We all have a role to play, each one of us has a role to play, and it's important that we find out what our role is, align ourselves to organizations that understand that role authentically, and just contribute toward making this world a better place.

Sanjeevani Saikia: "We all have a role to play" is something very beautiful that you've mentioned before wrapping up. So yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure having you on the show.

Megha Goel: Thanks a lot. Likewise, thank you so much. Take care.

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