o9 solutions makes waves with its Social Impact day, engages over 440 employees globally in multiple social and environmental activities
o9 Solutions, a leading enterprise AI software platform provider for transforming planning and decision-making, recently celebrated Social Impact Day on September 23, 2022, globally. At o9, over 440 employees engaged in various social and environmental activities across the global o9 offices to make a positive impact on our environment and communities. Christina Andreou, Head of Global Sustainability, o9 solutions and Anjali Jha, Social Impact Lead, o9 solutions India share more insights on the same.
- What are the various social and environmental activities across the global o9 offices through which the employees engaged in to make a positive impact on communities?
Social impact is one of the core values of the organization. o9 has pledged 1% under which it has committed to donate 1 percent of its resources and time in doing social good. As part of its commitment, it has launched a large-scale employee engagement program called WePledge 1%. Thanks to this program, all employees get 20 free volunteering hours to do social good. Additionally, o9 matches the donation of up to $500 a year for each employee that is made towards any social or environmental cause of their choice or rewards them with 15$ per hour volunteered on their personal time. o9 has additionally signed the pledge to become a net zero target with Science Based Targets initiative in 2021 and has recently joined the United Nations Global Compact and the Climate Pledge. At o9, we have three core impact pillars under which we organise initiatives: Engage, Educate and Transform.
There are a variety of global social & environmental employee engagement initiatives launched by o9. Some of them are:
o9 walks- For the month of May 2022, o9ers, clients, partners, families and friends came together & contributed a total of 3.16 million steps. For each 50k steps one tree was planted & a total of 6320 saplings were planted in Simlipal National Forest of Odisha.
o9 plants– On Earth Day, 22nd April. All o9ers across all global offices came together to plant saplings in their nearby communities.
o9 Social Impact Day: On September 23rd, o9 celebrated its first global Social Impact Day. With activities organized all over the world, o9ers had the opportunity to give back by taking time off work and joining a volunteering initiative. We organized virtual volunteering sessions to include as many employees as possible due to our flexible working policies at o9. The day was a great success as over 440 o9ers participated.
Mentorship Initiative with the Foundation of Excellence- Employees of o9 India have volunteered to mentor B.tech students on development of soft skills.
o9 Innovates – A ideathon style 2-day event to brainstorm ideas of participants from all over the world, where o9ers are mentors to participating teams. In 2022 we had 6 teams from India and we will continue the mentoring with the teams who would like to continue their entrepreneurial journey.
Besides, there have been several employees led volunteering initiatives and disaster relief campaigns where they have contributed their time and money.
- How is o9 solutions able to support sustainable supply chains?
o9 Solutions offers an AI-enabled platform to help our customers end-to-end supply chain management. We leverage data from our customers’ enterprise systems to create an accurate digital representation of their supply chains and constraints, optimizing it for cost, lead time, and service-level efficiencies.
We extended our modelling capabilities to support our customers’ sustainability requirements. Additionally, o9 launched a broad set of full-spectrum sustainability solutions, including product and enterprise environmental footprint measurement, full traceability, ESG risk management, ESG-enabled business planning, sustainable sourcing, and supply chain circularity.
o9’s extended model capability drives supply chain sustainability by introducing visibility of sustainability KPIs and decision-making levers into the operating models. For example, greater visibility into the supplier network’s environmental and social impact characteristics can allow companies to make more responsible decisions about how they source materials and productive capacities relative to their sustainability goals and objectives.
- What are some of o9’s initiatives to make them a greener organization?
o9 is very conscious and thoughtful about maintaining the ecological balance making the planet green. As a practice, o9 has tied its growth with planting trees, it plants a tree on the joining and work anniversary of each employee in its virtual forest & so far it has planted more than 19,000 trees. It also hosts o9 Plants each year on Earth Day as part of which all employees come together for tree plantation.
It also has a global initiative for managing E waste. Under this initiative it donates its aged IT assets to its partner which repurposes it and donates it to the philanthropy organisation. This helps in saving the IT wastes from getting into the landfills. If the devices are at it’s true end-of-life cycle, they are recycled following international standards.
Besides, it also promotes sustainable business travels and sustainable internal operations to reduce the carbon footprint. Currently, o9 is measuring its carbon footprint baseline to create emissions reduction targets according to the Science Based Targets initiative.
We regularly host educational talks on sustainability and climate change topics such as ESG reporting to create awareness about the importance of preserving the planet’s precious resources. In 2023 we are planning to do climate literacy training for all 2500 employees worldwide.
- What are o9’s predictions for 2023 in terms of green tech in India?
At the COP26 in Glasgow last year, India made two significant commitments: It promised to meet 50 per cent of its energy needs from renewable fuels by 2030 and transition to a net zero carbon economy by 2070. In the ongoing COP 27, India has released a report that lays down the country’s strategy to meet its 2070 goal. The document provides some insights into the government policies & pathways for becoming an Net Zero company, some of them are its clean energy plan, electric vehicle project, making India a green hydrogen hub. It talks of using methods such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) to remove GHGs before they enter the atmosphere.
o9 believes that with all these policies and strategies in place India will witness the increase in usage of green technology especially in transportation, power sector, packaging since a sustainable supply chain and infrastructure is being built by the government & public-private partnerships through promotion of EV vehicles, generation & usage of renewable energy, transforming airports towards net zero emission airports, promotion of sustainable packaging etc.
- How is India shaping in terms of sustainable technology and what is o9’s contribution for the same?
Given the recent commitment of the government on becoming a net zero country and laying out strategies to achieve the same, there has been a lot of impetus towards adherence to the sustainable technologies, usage of clean energy & reduction of carbon footprint. o9’s sustainable solutions spectrum focusses on ESG-enabled business planning, sustainable sourcing, and supply chain circularity which will provide visibility into the supplier network’s environmental and social impact characteristics that can allow companies to make more responsible decisions thereby contributing in realizing India’s goal for becoming a net zero country by facilitating sustainable technology.
