Delos | Health Promotion and Financial Investment: Jeannie Renne-Malone From Prologis
“We encourage an active dialogue with investors around the hard health and well-being questions, so that we can better communicate with them on the subject.” – Jeannie Renne-Malone
Environmental, Social, and Governance reporting has become a hot topic for publicly traded companies around the world. We sat down with Jeannie Renne-Malone, Vice President of Sustainability at Prologis, a logistics real estate firm, to discuss her views on ESG reporting and how integration of new health and well-being questions are helping push their sustainability program to new heights.
Delos: Why is Prologis implementing health and well-being as part of their overall sustainability program?
JRM: Prologis understands the complex nature of sustainability. It’s not just environmental. We have a comprehensive social, environmental, governance, and ethics perspective when we think about the people that are impacted or benefited from our strategies. So, the goal at Prologis is to continue that multi-disciplinary perspective and approach.
I work with many people who understand that the more productive and healthy our employees are, the better we are going to perform as a company. It’s intuitive and well-known here. I think that’s why we have such a prominent health and well-being program, and why we offer so many benefits (such as access to fitness centers and global health challenges). It’s really part of our culture. And whether it’s direct or indirect, health and well-being should be part of any sustainability program, because health is tied to environmental initiatives.
Delos: What are your views on ESG reporting?
(and in particular, what are your thoughts on GRESB’s new Health and Well-being module?)
JRM: We play close attention to all these different frameworks, knowing that our investors and other stakeholders are also taking a close look at them. They’re helping get more information out to our peers and to the industry overall. We encourage an active dialogue with investors around the hard health and well-being questions so that we can better communicate with them on this subject. I think that’s one thing that GRESB does very well – getting investors interested in a broad array of ESG survey questions.
It is a gap analysis opportunity when those reporting entities ask questions about our ESG initiatives and progress towards goals. The health and well-being module that GRESB put together was such an important catalyst to increase the conversation across the company about health and wellness, both in terms of the internal programs we already have in place, and what the sustainable attributes of our buildings mean to our customers from a health perspective. So, although the surveys are time consuming, they serve a purpose in helping advance the industry overall toward a more sustainable and healthy future.
To learn more about the connection between ESG and health and well-being, read Delos’ latest industry brief Health, Well-being, and the Evolution of ESG.
