Find out about his approach to helping clients tackle ESG, changes in reporting regulations and balancing this with meaningful stakeholder engagement.
I help our ambitious clients strike that balance between telling their unique business story, conveying their ESG performance to investors, and raising the bar of what best practice reporting looks like.
Effectively, my job is to work with our clients to gain an in depth understanding of the diverse needs and expectations of their key stakeholders and then to help them articulate their value creation story in a way that will most resonate with these key stakeholders.
To quote Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “the knack [to flying] lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss” and this is how I feel about sparking positive change. Sparking change isn’t always easy, but it is really doable if you stop and think about it.
The world we are living in right now has so many major issues and challenges we need to face, not only as companies but as individuals. Despite this, I genuinely believe we have the power to make things better, both as Black Sun Global but also at an individual level.
And that’s why that this quote from Douglas Adams reminds me that change takes time and effort, but if you’re willing to give it a shot, if you’re willing to throw yourself at the ground and miss, we will eventually create that positive effect and spark that positive change.
Being part of this global team has encouraged me to take a step back and rethink how I look at ESG, it really has given me a fresh perspective. That’s down to the collective knowledge and experience that I am able to draw on from colleagues from all over the world, collaborating with them has really broadened my understanding of ESG issues and practices.
Being exposed to these new backgrounds and cultures, and the new perspectives they bring with them, has allowed me to adopt a much more nuanced and holistic view to the ESG issue which our clients are facing in Singapore.
Absolutely, it is an important aspect of our relationship with our clients that they know we are engaging with these issues in a global context and when we bring best practice to them, we are drawing from truly global expertise.
The elephant in the room, IFRS S1 and S2! For the first time we have a comprehensive global baseline of sustainability disclosures for the capital market. It’s no longer that we have a set of rules for the Singapore and Malaysia market, and a separate set for, say, the London market.
Here in Singapore, we are one of the first markets to require companies adopt the ISSB Standards by 2025, so we are really putting our money where our mouth is on this. With these new Standards, transparency and authenticity will become more crucial than ever and it is our job to help our clients increase the quality of their disclosures in line with these new pressures. Our aim is to help our clients tell their unique story whilst also ensuring their investors and other stakeholders have all the information they need to continue making informed decisions.
At Black Sun Global we truly believe that stakeholder engagement is that all important substantive step that should drive everything else your company does. Engaging with your stakeholders isn’t just a reporting exercise, it’s really about putting your heart into it and meaningfully doing it!
It’s our job to help our clients appreciate that stakeholder engagement, if done early and done right, is the foundation of everything else. It fosters trust, it fosters transparency, it fosters collaboration. All these things are essential for sustainable growth and for sparking a positive impact.
When companies actively engage with stakeholders, they gain valuable insights about their business that they simply would not be able to gain from anywhere else and they can then align their strategy against the evolving needs and expectations of their key stakeholders.
Because it’s no longer sustainable for a company to just satisfy the needs of their investors and pay a good dividend to shareholders! A proper stakeholder engagement process, that takes into consideration the unique needs and values of your key stakeholder groups, should be the basis of your purpose, your values, and your strategy.
How do you know what your material matters should be if you haven’t meaningfully engaged your stakeholders? How do you know what are the key areas you should be focusing on? It’s these sorts of questions that we can help our clients with, by providing the necessary methodologies and processes that underpin a meaningful stakeholder engagement exercise.
There are three points I’d like to convey to any company reporting their ESG story:
Want to discuss your ESG or communictaions challenges with Zi Wei?
Finding early reporters to follow will of course provide a clearer direction of travel for those who fall into scope for later disclosure obligations. For ISSB that may be in 2026 for general disclosures and for CSRD as late as 2029.
Black Sun is a global group of strategic advisors, consultants and stakeholder engagement specialists. We believe that brands and businesses can have a big impact on our society – they can shape more ethical practices, build more inclusive communities and deliver more sustainable performance. Ultimately, they can spark positive change in the world.
We partner with visionary companies to define and communicate their purpose, strategy and culture and bring to life their value creation story. Our services and solutions directly address the business-critical concerns of today; best-practice disclosure and accountability through reporting; protecting reputation and building trust with digital communications and helping businesses to effectively communicate their long-term responsibility and sustainability story.
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