Through the eyes of LuxSE’s CSR Specialist
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a central pillar of companies’ business models in recent years, and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) - with its deep-rooted commitment to creating a more sustainable world – is no different.
To help our readers learn more about our CSR activities and to celebrate the launch of our Sustainability Report 2023, we sat down with our CSR Specialist Elodie Van de Woestyne to find out more about her role and ambitions as the driving force behind CSR at LuxSE.
Diving straight in
Since joining LuxSE’s sustainable finance team back in December 2023, our CSR Specialist Elodie Van de Woestyne has spent most of her days meeting our teams, adapting our CSR strategy, setting up new initiatives and preparing our Sustainability Report 2023 for its public debut.
“When it comes to CSR at LuxSE, we see it as an integral part of our business strategy and our everyday operations. In today’s world, business and sustainability need to be interlinked. CSR has evolved from its past philanthropic connotation to become an indispensable component and contributor towards our global goals,” said Elodie.
Coming from a background in sustainable finance, Elodie is all too familiar with what it takes for companies to rise to the challenge. In the months since joining our exchange, Elodie has been dedicated to leading the next step in our CSR journey – quickly becoming a familiar face for her colleagues thanks to her CSR coffee chats.
“The goal of organising these chats was to get a chance to meet all the teams to hear their thoughts on what the future of CSR at LuxSE could look like. This needs to be a collaborative exercise and it provided a great opportunity to get to know everyone in a relatively short period of time,” said Elodie.
Green resolutions
One of the first initiatives that Elodie implemented together with the help of quite literally every team at LuxSE was our Green Resolutions Challenge which ran for just over 6 weeks at the beginning of the year.
“Setting New Year’s resolutions are all you seem to hear about at the beginning of each year so we thought: Why not give this a fun, sustainable spin?” said Elodie on what would turn out to be a roaring success within our exchange.
For this challenge, each team was tasked with setting a green resolution that contributes to a sustainability objective. Paired with a bit of healthy competition between teams, the challenge saw a new corporate garden being launched by our Facility Management team, had our Communication & Marketing team taking to the stairs and saving 1,000+ elevator trips, and our first-ever Green Friday Exchange, organised by our Sales & Relationship Management team where colleagues brought in old clothes, toys and nicknacks to be exchanged for free to promote a circulate economy – and that’s only giving 3 examples!
Getting to the core
Asked what her main goal as LuxSE's CSR Specialist is, Elodie is eager to build initiatives that are tailored to employees' needs - especially those that focus on making a difference at a local level.
It’s all about being a voice for the people of LuxSE when it comes to how we can help create a more low-carbon and inclusive tomorrow. It’s about aligning our Sustainability Strategy with our Business Strategy, and for Elodie, it’s important that everyone is heard and involved in the CSR activities we have planned over the coming months.
“The great thing about CSR at LuxSE is that most activities we decide to take part in have been proposed by a colleague, and it makes my job very people oriented. We’ve also taken this opportunity to rethink the way that we organise the work of our CSR Committee and how we communicate about our activities internally. Each team has a CSR Ambassador who joins our monthly meetings and makes sure to talk about our initiatives and create engagement within their respective teams,” said Elodie.
Climate transition, education and gender equality
On top of all the work that has gone into our exchange’s Green Resolutions Challenge, our sponsorship of IMS Luxembourg and 1Ocean Foundation’s “The Ocean is Coming to Luxembourg” event among other projects, Elodie has dedicated a lot of her time to drafting, reviewing and bringing our Sustainability Report 2023 to life with the help of the sustainable finance, finance and communication and marketing teams.
Officially released on 14 June, the report highlights the progress we made last year towards the three pillars of our Sustainability Strategy – climate transition, education and gender equality. It provides a good overview and specific examples of how we implement our sustainability objectives into our operations and overall business strategy.
When asked what her key highlights are from the report, Elodie doesn’t hesitate to name a few:
“If I had to pick one highlight from each of our pillars – which I must say is hard – I would say that decreasing our carbon footprint by 15% when it comes to our climate transition pillar is definitely at the top. The fact that nearly 100% of our colleagues have been trained in Climate Fresk also shows our commitment to strengthening awareness internally so that we can educate externally. And of course, becoming a founding member of the Luxembourg Women in Finance Charter was a big moment when it comes to our work in gender equality,” said Elodie.
Working towards net zero GHG emissions at LuxSE
As a member of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) through the Net Zero Financial Service Providers Alliance (NZFSPA), we are committed to increasing awareness, inspiring action, and accelerating the climate transition.
On top of releasing our Sustainability Report 2023 in June, we also unveiled our first Target Setting Progress Report as part of our GFANZ commitments this summer.
Elodie also played a big role in creating this report, which outlines how we work towards setting targets aimed at transforming our services and products to support the transition to a net zero global economy. As a market operator it is essential that we set the example, first by achieving net zero GHG emissions ourselves and then by helping our issuers accelerate their net zero transition.
Looking towards a more sustainable future
Thinking ahead to how we can continue to help shape a low-carbon and just transition in the months and years to come, and how her role fits into this, Elodie has this to say:
“Our commitment to GFANZ goes beyond how we, as an exchange, will work towards net zero. We have also made a commitment to help our issuers to decarbonise along with us. In terms of gender equality, we’ve already started to plan our annual Dress for Success event which will take place later this year and when it comes to education, it’s going to be all about linking digitalisation and sustainability –so watch this space!”
If you’d like to learn more about our CSR activities, reports and pillars, visit our CSR webpage.
