In 2024, CEJ Property Management got an ESG ambassador who works purposefully to support CEJ’s responsibility towards the environment, social aspects within the company, its value chain and management of the company, among other things.
From picoline to ESG ambassador
Louise Yndal Mikkelsen started at CEJ Property Management as a picoline back in 2020 during the corona pandemic, after which she worked as a student employee in several of the company’s departments in the following years. At the beginning of 2024, the title of student employee was supplemented with the title of ESG ambassador – a job that involves collaboration with many different colleagues across the company.
“Being an ESG ambassador means taking this ESG agenda to all branches of the company. I do this through communication and initiatives. CEJ has worked with ESG for a long time, but it has mainly been from an external perspective in connection with our customers,” says Louise Yndal Mikkelsen and elaborates:
“My role was therefore to help support that CEJ, to a greater extent, also works with ESG internally in the company and to engage employees and introduce some initiatives that direct the employees’ attention to this agenda.”
ESG stands for ‘Environment’, ‘Social’ and ‘Governance’
Louise Yndal Mikkelsen says that the area of ESG has been known for a number of years, but that it has become very widespread after the EU implemented reporting in the areas of ESG as a legal requirement. As it is today, CEJ is not required to the reporting requirements of the EU for 2024, but the company still prepares a similar annual responsibility report that focuses on the elements of ESG.
“When it comes to ‘Environment’, companies are assessed on their sustainability practices and how the company affects and protects the environment, for example by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving water and energy, recycling and managing waste in appropriate ways,” she explains and continues:
“Under ‘Social’, you look at how companies handle social aspects. This is, for example, in relation to the working environment, i.e. how to treat your employees or promote diversity and inclusion. In addition, it is also about the company’s impact on the local community and how the company engages with customers and suppliers, for example by ensuring fair wages and working conditions and respecting human rights.”
Regarding the G, ‘Governance’, Louise Yndal Mikkelsen says that it is about how the company is managed, for example by having a clear and ethical vision and mission, policies on ethics and corruption, and by ensuring good and transparent reporting and auditing, and thereby complying with legislation and regulations.
“My goal is for all employees at CEJ to become the company’s ESG ambassadors”
About her work as an ESG ambassador, she says that it is both exciting and meaningful, and that it comes from a lifelong interest in taking responsibility for nature and each other. And she is pleased that ESG is an area that is gaining more ground in the way companies are run.
“As an ESG ambassador, I have the opportunity to expand my knowledge in the area, inform others about the agenda – and why it is important – and contribute to not only the property management industry, but also Danish companies in general moving forward on this agenda, by demanding solutions that to a greater extent take the environment into account and, among other things, strengthen responsibility within working conditions in the value chain, the local community and ethical corporate governance,” she says.
As an ESG ambassador at CEJ, Louise Yndal Mikkelsen has, among other things, worked to reduce the consumption of printer paper and implemented new schemes to reduce food waste, just as she has engaged employees to come up with ideas to optimize the way CEJ works with the green agenda. At the moment, she is looking into a project to set up a new waste sorting system, which will get the company to sort the waste as accurately as possible. In addition, she is involved in preparing CEJ’s responsibility report for 2024.
ESG work involves a lot of communication with colleagues from different departments in the company to find out what the status of the ESG agenda is now, what is realistic to work on, and what direction it makes sense to go in – even if it is not the easiest path.
Important to create a causal link in the event of changes
“Some of the things I work with can partly involve changing some things that some employees may like. There is a lot that humans today are used to, and we are creatures of habit, and it can therefore be frustrating for some that some things are changed, which the time we are in now just requires us to do,” she says and explains that it is important to also create a causal relationship, when something needs to be changed.
“As an ESG ambassador, it is therefore important that I do not just change and implement new things and then say “that’s just what we do”, but explain why we want to introduce changes or new initiatives. It helps to create a causal link and tie the changes together with our overall strategy of reducing while at the same time making us competitive on our sustainability profile, which secures our jobs.”
Proper communication plays an important role in making changes.
“Otherwise, we risk that the new implementations will not be well received, and then it will not be a success, and then we will not get the employees on the agenda. My goal is for all employees at CEJ to become the company’s ESG ambassadors.”
Facts about Louise Yndal Mikkelsen
- 24 years old
- Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration
- Starting Master’s degree in General Management and Analytics. The programme is about learning how to use data to conduct decision-driven analyses to develop solutions in dialogue with stakeholders. These are skills that she will use in her work with ESG in the future.