SES Sustainability Team
SES, the world’s leading content connectivity provider, established an ESG team
Initiative phase: Well established and running
While SES has always provided critical content and connectivity services around the globe that contribute to advancing society, in 2020 an ESG team has been created and started working on aligning our business to the Sustainable Development Goals, and drive the strategy of the business to consider our social and environmental impact more fully. After having embarked on intense stakeholder outreach, we developed a comprehensive ESG strategy built from materiality that can drive the success of our business, and where sustainable space meets sustainable earth, using the power of Space to address the sustainable development challenges on earth. We are currently working on executing this strategy and making SES a reference and role model for sustainability in our industry.
Stakeholder outreach and strategy development were our first steps. Internally, we created an ESG working group, under the supervision and guidance of our Senior Leadership. The external stakeholders involved in this process were customers with a robust ESG team, suppliers, peer organizations, associations with focuses on impact areas, government representatives from Luxembourg and several NGOs .
Once defined our materiality matrix we identified our four main pillars: Space Sustainability, Climate Action, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Critical Human Needs. In each pillar, we have identified our responsibility and how to translate it in our operations and impact. We have also identified the areas we feel we can scale our impact and where we need to work in partnership for the greatest impact. we are working on concretely defining the environmental impact of our products, throughout the entire life cycle, in order to be able to identify actions aimed at reducing the negative impact. At the same time, we are making a great effort to improve our reporting and be aligned with international standards and transparent in our operations. Finally, we are creating a corporate culture of sustainability by educating our colleagues and involving them in our sustainability journey.
We are providing connectivity to remote areas, we support:
- reduction of digital divide
- access to medical care
- access to information and career opportunities
- access of education
We also collaborate closely with other international and local actors creating a collaborative net aimed at creating a more inclusive and sustainable society.
At SES we also promote gender equality in the industry by supporting STEM initiative and through an human resources management that provides equal opportunities and support the career development of our female workforce.
Name of Organization
Address & geo
- SES - Headquarters
- Château de Betzdorf
- L-6815 BETZDORF
Contact person
- Amber Ledgerwood and Lorenza Scarinci
- lorenza.scarinci@ses.com
- +352661317602
Participation opportunities
Objectives
- Develop an ESG strategy based on stakeholder input that can serve as a strong foundation for a growing, impactful and industry leading ESG program.
- Align and focus the SES impact projects and our ambition to "make a difference" directly to the business strategy and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
- Begin to shift from a shareholder only view of a company's value to a stakeholder value perspective.
- Drive purpose within the organization and inspire future and current employee engagment.
- Inspire innovation within the company and across the industry to deliver impact against the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Impact
Global impact
Target audience
Project participants:
ESG Team, supported by several internal stakeholders from other departments
Action recipients:
All our stakeholders, both internal and external
Challenges and learning successes
Due to the complexity of the space industry and the multitude of players in each segment (ground segment, manufacturing and assembly, space segment, etc.) SES has understood the relevance of partnership and close collaboration with other players. It should be noted that in the space industry there are a large number of challenges that require the combination of safety requirements, security priorities, financial constraints with environmental management systems. The lack of a global environmental management framework specific to the industry has been overcome by the ESG team's inclusive and transparent approach. The matching of economic, social and environmental issues facilitated the identification of the fields of action and the definition of the priority axes of interventions and the associated management system. This justifies exemplarity and is associated with a large number of lessons learned and best practice sharing. Today SES business has a greater social impact, global coverage and allows the present generation to satisfy their needs for connectivity, internet access, communication and access to space in general without compromising the need of future generations to satisfy theirs.
While this approach to developing an ESG strategy is considered best practice across industries, it was not widely accepted in our industry and with SES's adoption of this process, we have asserted ourselves as a sustainability leader in our industry and pushed others to consider this approach.