Aon Launches 2022 China Best ESG Employers Award

SHANGHAI (1 August 2022) – Aon plc (NYSE: AON), a leading global professional services firm, today launched the 2022 China Best ESG Employers Award.

The award aims to recognise businesses accelerating environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices while striving to enhance their employee value proposition beyond employee experience and engagement. It will evaluate organisations against objective dimensions and indicators that take ESG attributes into account.

Aon is the one who introduced the concept of "Best Employers" in the Chinese market and has held a "Best Employers" recognition program in China since 2001. Through proven scientific evaluations, Aon has recognised hundreds of excellent employer brands and built a comprehensive and authoritative employer recognition programme.

However, evolving employee expectations driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions demands an enhanced framework for evaluating Best Employer organisations. Employees increasingly want to work with companies that strive for sustainability by tackling environmental impact, social issues, and governance structures while balancing employee experience.

In addition, with China formally proposing the goals of achieving “peak carbon emissions” in 2030 and “carbon neutrality” in 2060, ESG attributes are increasingly integrated into China's policies. Whether it is to "enhance the modern environmental governance system" proposed by the 2022 National Working Conference on Ecological and Environmental Protection or the new requirements from the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) for ESG report disclosures of state-owned listed companies, organisations will also benefit in attracting and retaining critical talent.

Peter Zhang, Aon’s head of human capital solutions for Asia and co-head of Aon China, said, "A rapidly evolving business environment has increased the need for organisations to make better decisions and create a more flexible, engaged and resilient workforce. To enhance their employee value proposition, employers must accelerate and communicate their ESG practices as a workforce strategy to attract and retain talent. As such, the 2022 China Best ESG Employers recognition will help future and current talent to identify organisations that align with their personal values while delivering an exceptional employee experience. For HR leaders, however, integrating ESG attributes together with an employer brand strategy would be a key milestone as they transform their roles into drivers of business strategy.”

The 2022 China Best ESG Employers Award accepts applications from businesses from all industries across China. A committee comprising entrepreneurs, chief people officers, and global ESG and HR consultants will evaluate employers on four dimensions - responsibility, resilience, acumen and performance. In addition, there will be a special focus on businesses that adopt ESG practices and possess a sound and resilient organization ecosystem, efficient governance structure and growth potential.

The China Best ESG Employers list will be announced in the fourth quarter this year.

More information is available here.

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