About this ATALK
Welcome to Season 3 of ATALKS – Where Sustainability Has a Voice! ๐ฑ This season, we continue to explore groundbreaking sustainability initiatives by featuring industry leaders who are redefining what it means to be sustainable across various sectors.
In Episode 34, we are honored to have Aline Gomez-Acebo Finat, the Chief Sustainability Officer at Asisa, Spainโs largest healthcare group. Aline is also the founder of ENIAX, a digital health startup, and holds various leadership roles in education and investment. With her vast experience, Aline shares incredible insights into how the healthcare industry can become a leader in sustainability.
In this episode, we dive into:
- How Asisa integrates sustainability into its core strategy and operations.
- The impact of a cooperative model and long-term vision on driving change.
- The role of AI and technology in reducing emissions and optimizing healthcare processes.
- Specific initiatives Asisa is implementing to achieve carbon neutrality and promote circularity.
- Key strategies for engaging employees and stakeholders in sustainability efforts.
๐ก Interview Highlights:
- ยซThe first way to be sustainable is becoming financially sustainable. If you donโt have the finance, it makes no sense.ยป
- ยซWe want to reduce emissions because our plan is to be carbon neutral for next year… in a way that actually benefits us.ยป
- ยซChange management is key โ weโre speaking the language of people, asking for their ideas and collaboration.ยป
Tune in to learn how Aline is leading the sustainability transformation in healthcare and why long-term thinking is essential for a sustainable future.
๐ Subscribe to our channel for more exclusive interviews with global leaders driving sustainability across industries!
Transcript
You can find the full transcript of their conversation below.
ATALK 34 with Aline Gomez-Acebo Finat from Asisa and Andrรฉs Cardona from APLANET | Welcome to ATALKS, where sustainability has a voice as APLANET. We created this space to showcase the experience of people who are already running the walking path that you are beginning now. Today we have Aline Gomez-Acebo Finat from Asisa. You have an outstanding career, and I was reading everything that you have done from Universidad Autonoma to IE to all the things that you already have. But I want you to introduce yourself because I think I will make all of your experience. Okay, well, shall I look at you? Shall I look at the camera? Don’t worry. Don’t worry about it. Okay. So, yeah, I’m working at Asisa as the Chief Sustainability Officer of the whole group. As you said, many people from outside Spain don’t know it, but it’s Spain’s largest healthcare group, meaning that all together it’s number one largest employer by revenues. So we have insurance, we have hospitals, clinics, dental clinics, labs, everything. But apart from that, I am also running a company called Eniax, which is a digital health company. So also in the tech space like you and over there, what we do is we manage online, we manage appointments, medical appointments in eight countries and over around 6 million users per month. So it’s a big data center, I would say. And then I’m very much involved in education, as you were saying. So I am on the board of Autรณnoma University, which is one of the most prestigious universities in the country, where our king studied. And then also as a part time professor at IE Business school, which is part of IE University, and definitely very much engaging in a lot of women empowerment groups because, you know, I’m one of them and I’m an Alan. So that’s a little bit about me. Thank you so much for having me here in this talk. No, for me, it’s fantastic because as we were discussing before, we created this space because we knew that there’s still like these big space where people know that sustainability is something, they know that they might need to incorporate sustainability into their efforts or into their companies, but they don’t know where to start. So ATALKS was born because I wanted to open a space where people with your type of experience and with a lot of knowledge and with a lot of background from different sectors could tell them, hey, this is what I’ve done, this is what has worked, this hasn’t. These are my experiences. And people can learn from your own personal background. I wanted to start with Asisa, then I would also like to talk a bit about your startup, because I think that’s huge, it’s really good and I love getting to know different projects. But could you describe how Asisa integrates sustainability into the business strategies and discuss any significant challenges success you have encountered? Sure. So. Well, you know, leading the sustainability department of Asisa is of course a challenge, but I must say that it’s, I guess, easier than in other companies because Asisa is a comparative, so we don’t have, we don’t have to give out dividends at the end of the year. So basically all the benefits from the group are reinvested back into the whole group. So, you know, it already has a very long term perspective, which makes it easier because many of these sustainability efforts are not in the short term, which is what we’ve been used to, I guess, over the past years in business. Right. Growing a lot and looking at the short term. So as I said, long term and sustainability are kind of embedded already in the group. So there’s this very interesting phrase. A few weeks ago, I was in a committee with a group of executives and our chairman, and we were presented with this opportunity of buying out one of the companies of the group. It has more than 90 companies, and the offer was really good. So we were really happy, like, wow, this is great. It’s so good. And it’s not a core company, so it could be a nice opportunity. But our chairman wasn’t really excited about it. So I asked him, don’t you think it’s a good offer? And he was like, no, no. Yeah, I think the offer is great. It’s just that we’ve never done things in order to sell them. So this gives you the perspective of how Asisa works, right? It works to keep stuff, which is really interesting. So how we do it, we’ve done it. So before I came into this position and where I’ve been only for the past two years, it already had this very much social perspective in the sense that it would take care of its employees over its suppliers, providers, and the whole ecosystem in a very paternalistic way as a parent. And what we’ve done now is we’ve amplified the view of not only the social part, which is very much embedded, but also giving in also the environmental perspective, which wasn’t. It might have been, there might have been some efforts in that sense, but it wasn’t that much focus. And then, of course, the compliance and the governance, it was already very much in line. But now we want to be, we want to not become followers, but become, you know, experts and references for other companies alike. So they were also making a lot of effort in order to be, you know, one of the references of the country and have everything well organized and be kind of, you know, one of the leaders in that sense. That’s amazing. And you said something that really resonates with me. It’s since we’re cooperative, we have like, this long term perspective and like, long term view, which is pretty aligned with sustainability. This typically, it’s a big challenge for companies, especially for smaller companies. And given that you also have a startup, we’re doing that. How do you think that a company that doesn’t have the size or the financial structure of a company who can allow themselves to think long term, how could they incorporate sustainability into their operations if they don’t have this mentality, which is a big benefit? Yeah. So I think that unfortunately, the ecosystem nowadays doesn’t foster these things. Right. So I myself, we founded this Calafia, which is an angel investment group, or 20 women that are investing in startups that are being created in the iberian peninsula. And we, as investors, always look for quick growth or the potential exit, which is completely unaligned with sustainability. So, for example, at Eniax, we’ve never raised money. So we’ve always been bootstrapping from the first day. Of course, our growth pattern isn’t the same as maybe Uber, but we’ve been profitable from day one. And when you look at in the midterm, not even in the long term, we’re a very much more interesting company for any potential investors. Because why do you want to make quick money? Because then what are you going to do with that money? So I guess the whole ecosystem isn’t helping this. But if you’re a mid-sized company like we are at Eniax, it makes a lot of sense to do things in a sustainable way, because just having that perspective allows you to have employees. Since day one, we are seven years old, and most of the employees from day one are still there. Some may have left, but not because they didn’t like it, but because they had a new opportunity and they saw potential growth elsewhere. But the real, true employees have always stayed there, and that is the big value to the company because you waste a lot of time and that can apply to any of the sustainability perspectives within business. So even though, of course, if you just want to build something up to sell, then you’re not going to have that sustainable perspective. But if you actually want to make a long term profit, then it makes a lot of sense to do things not only from the growth perspective, but also from the whole view because it ends up impacting everywhere. Fantastic. Yeah. Coming back to Asisa, it’s a huge group. You are chief sustainability officer of Asisa, but there are also a lot of companies underneath, like the Asea umbrella. How is your day to day with them? Are there any other chief sustainability officers in the other structure or is just you trying to coordinate everything from a volume? Well, that’s an interesting question because actually when I was asked to assume this role, I wasn’t working as easily. I mean, I’ve been working there, but then I was completely focused on NX, but I had previously been the innovation director, so I had had to manage a lot of transformation and then went into operations within the group. So when they called me back and said, can you help us with this? I asked, why me? I’m not an expert in sustainability. But the answer was very clear. They were like, you were an expert in change management, and we know that here you’re going to have to manage a lot of people. You already know the people, you already know how everything works. So it makes a lot of sense that someone like you, you can learn about sustainability, but you can’t learn about these people that well. So I thought it made a lot of sense. And then now when I am being placed in this position where you have to change how people work, I see it’s a lot of value for a person that already knows the organization, knows the people, knows what they want, knows what they need, because then you can align objectives and goals. So to your question about whether there’s another chief sustainability officer. No, we’re a very small team, but I like to say that we’re a huge team of 7000 employees. Right. So what we’ve done, we focused, especially the first year in, you know, speaking the language and, you know, talking to the people, asking them for things, you know, for ideas for projects and like a kind of a catalyst. So most of the projects we’ve been doing haven’t even come from ideas that have been born in our department, but have been ideas that were born in different departments or companies. And we’ve just helped them show them to the rest of the company, you know, and push them to happen. That’s amazing. There’s. Now that you said this, I remember it wasn’t a previous, a talk. When I was talking, I don’t remember exactly who, but this person told me one of the biggest challenges that I had, assuming the sustainability role was aligning all of the teams and aligning all of the people. Because at the end of the day, you need to do several things, as you know, but you need to change the way the company thinks from a business perspective, but you also need to align everyone’s vision into the new way the company is operating. So this is a huge challenge that you said, and I think everyone who’s stepping into this role, it doesn’t matter if it’s a big or a small company, they need to do this. They need to make friends within the company and have this ability to align all of the interests of everyone and put them into the same, like, to the same goal, isn’t it? Yeah, I think that’s definitely true. Well, actually, everything we propose, or not that we propose, but that we outline or define that may be propositions from other areas are always within two variables. One would be optimization and the other one would be positioning. So maybe an initiative can have both, but at least it has to have one of those. Why? Because we have to sell them to all the different departments. So when we’re going to tell you, hey, you know what, you have to do things differently, you’re going to tell me, but why? I’ve been doing it the same way all my life, and it’s gone well. But if I tell you, look, if you do things differently, you are going to save so much money or you’re going to sell so much more, or you’re going to get more, you know, revenues, then that might help, you know, in order. Of course, it’s going to be. It’s going to be difficult because you’re used to doing things a certain way, but you might make the effort to change, which is what we need. Right. Because, I mean, if we do the same as we were doing before, probably there’s not going to be any sustainable changes, but we need to kind of bring the people. So for that, it’s very important, as you were saying, to kind of know what are the goals and also the language many times, because you might need to translate things. And then I think there’s also a very important point that at least has worked for us very well, and it’s giving the stage to others. So we have a monthly board meeting, an ESG board meeting where most of the important people of the company are all the big decision makers. And when we come with different propositions, it’s not something that we say, it’s sustainability department, but if it has come from the commercial department, from this other company, or the operations department, then that person who had that idea and we work with comes out, tells the thing and they get the whole representation because it’s actually them where they’re going to have to do it and deliver it. So why does it have to be me explaining it if it’s others who are going to make that? And I think that has helped a lot because they’ve seen that we don’t want to take their or their job or their visibility. We just want to make it happen and they can take all the benefits for us. It’s fine. We’re happy with having the KPI’s covered. That’s great. You just said something that at the beginning when, okay, you have dissociation, when you invest and you have a startup and you’re in Asisa, this proves that you don’t care. Taking the credit out of the teams. You are always a team player. As we have seen in the past, the best way to get things done are not when you push them up to the bottom of the company, but when the ideas are born from within and the teams, they feel themselves like if the idea is their own, and that’s a way how they create and they do more things as a leader in healthcare. And now we’re going back to Asisa itself, how does ASISA, environmental and social responsibilities are tackled and what are the initiatives that you had left to advance your sustainability agenda? Because I know that there’s like these big chunks of ESG. So how, what are the particular things that you are doing in each case? All right, so, well, first, well, when we define the whole strategy, well, we first asked the people, right? So we asked our employees, the whole group. We asked clients, we asked patients, we asked suppliers, and we even asked the government. And, you know, it was really interesting because the importance that each group gave to different verticals and initiatives was so completely different. Right. So I would say most of them would care, for example, patients and clients would care about, you know, the service we would deliver. Then society would care about how we would take care of other people who might not be our direct users, but can benefit from what we do. And then, of course, our employees would care about how we cared about them and suppliers if we would continue with them in the long term. So, of course, there’s different interests and we have to have them all integrated in our strategy. So then once we knew what was important for each of them, we designed a strategy that would obviously tackle the three verticals because we have to comply in all of them. Right. But you know, in a more focused way to what was important to all these stakeholders. And in that sense, environmentally, we have a big impact in the healthcare delivery, not so much in the insurance part because that’s more risk management and maybe, yeah, some operations handling, but we don’t really, there’s not so many emissions generated, but when you go to hospitals, it goes like boom, all the way up. Right. So what we did is we focused a lot on that part, environmentally, within the healthcare delivery, in the social part, we focused more on the insurance delivery so that people would be cared for, they would have good attention, and then the governance would go all the way. Right. So just to give you examples of what we’ve done, we had already had a lot of investment in, of course, hospitals. As I say, all the benefits go back. And what we do is we reinvest them. So we reinvest them in better machinery, in a lot of training and development for practitioners in the infrastructure. But then we were like, okay, so we want to reduce emissions because our plan is to be carbon neutral for next year, right? So we don’t want to be carbon neutral just because we’re paying for the emissions we generate. What we actually want to do is lower those emissions as much as possible and we want to do it in a very sustainable way so that it doesn’t cost us, it actually benefits us so that the rest of the group is asking for the same things. And so for that, we had to study a lot where the most emissions were. We had to track them automatically so that it wasn’t a lot of time spent in knowing where this energy was being consumed and then looking for alternatives that might mean a large investment that would be paid for because of the lowering of the costs. Once we’ve done that, and we are already, we’ve already done most of the investments. And funny enough, most of them are going to be paid for in two, three years. So it’s not like that’s really good. It’s amazing. Yeah. So it was actually an easy sale for the hospital managers. It was like, yeah, they’re going to pay for it for like 20 years. You can see that. And this is without taking into account the potential help from the government, which we’re not accounting for, just in case it never comes. But if it comes, it’s even better. And once we did that, then we can focus on, okay, now, how can we lose all the fat from our processes in order to make it even leaner? And not only because it costs less, but also because it makes people happier to have a very simple process. And also because we want by the end of next year to pay for the extra emissions we haven’t been able to reduce. And in that sense, we want kind of in our, say, the bill to be so low that, you know, in the whole group, it’s not going to be even accounted for. It’s going to be like, yeah, this is like another, you know, expenditure, but so solo that it doesn’t really weigh in our account. So that’s, that’s environmentally what we’ve done. And then socially in the social part, apart from the different allocation of, you know, we’ve got a foundation where we already donate a lot of millions to different projects, we wanted to also deliver what they were asking for. So with our suppliers, not only environmentally but also socially, we’ve been working with them, helping them in this process, because, as you say, most of them are not large companies, so they don’t have the resources or the knowledge. So there’s a big job being done in that. Then also we wanted to not only reduce emissions but also benefit them. So we’ve kind of organized ourselves in a way that they have to come less often. So instead of coming three to four times per week, now with one time per week, just because we made the effort of organizing our household, they only need to come once, which is good for their margins as well, and also for their emissions and also for our scope three, so that alignment of goals once again. And then with our clients and our patients, which are what make us sustainable because they’re actually the ones that pay for our services. And we’ve done a lot of focusing. So we’ve really worked on delivering a better service, which is what they really wanted. So just to give you an example before, you know, when you have, for example, our clients in the health insurance policies, there’s some things that, even though they’re paid for by the insurance company, you need to kind of analyze them. So, for example, I fall down and I break a knee. I’m going to probably need an x-ray in order to see where that knee is broken and all that stuff before that was all manually processed. Right? So it might have taken maybe 14 days to have since the moment you asked for that x ray to be done, to actually have it done. And now we implemented a lot of AI in order to, you know, if you’ve broken a leg, you’re probably going to need an x-ray. So why am I going to make you wait seven days until the person actually reviews that and gives you an ok? And then you have to go back with that and go to the censor call and have that x-ray, maybe in a week. Right. So now what we do is it’s automatically reviewed and if it’s a go, we directly give you the first appointment available in 48 hours. So what usually used to take around two weeks now can be done in 48 hours. And so that also helps you because then your treatment starts earlier, there’s no extra pain, et cetera. So that is just an example of how we’re using technology to leverage our service for what makes us sustainable for our clients and patients. That’s fantastic. And eliminating those bottlenecks that you were saying, okay, two weeks instead. 48 hours instead of two weeks, that’s fantastic. You said something at the beginning when, okay, we asked all of our stakeholders. So you conducted a maturity analysis. You understood everything. I wanted to link this to something that we had further in the interview, and it was, okay. Now that you have done your single maturity, how are you incorporating all of this knowledge into the double maturity so you can do your CSRD reporting? Because I know that a lot of companies like yours are going to be eligible to report under CSRD. What is the process and high level, what are you doing to this? So once you’ve identified these needs or their interests, you have to turn that into actions, right? Because they have to be measurable. So what we did was, okay, once we got all the answers, we kind of placed them in different kinds of KPI’s. So if for some groups of us it’s important that we are better or all that circularity is addressed, then we definitely need to work on that. And how can we work on that? So because we are a vertical, integrated group, it’s not as if we can only do it within the insurance company, right. We have to actually work on circularity as well in hospital management and as one technology management, because we also have tech companies. And in this sense, first you have to kind of place it, and then those become sub projects that we’re working on. So the first time we did this, we came out with 154 initiatives which have turned out to be more, some of them and others we’ve turned down because they made more sense. So you also have to analyze them. These initiatives, some become pro, sometimes projects, sometimes one initiative becomes like ten projects, and maybe an initiative becomes nothing because it’s not possible. There’s no technology available or it’s just too expensive or unapproachable for now, but it’s always there. So we’re kind of tracking that that’s how we’re doing it for now. Fantastic. Yeah. And now linking to the next part and talking about digital transformation, how do digital innovators use AI, maybe at Asisa or at Eniax, to support your sustainability efforts or your goals? Can you share some specific examples on what you have done other than the one that you already shared with me about this process in insurance? You mean only AI or technology? No, technology as itself. What I mean. So for example, we have had to work a lot, one very simple initiative that is now being held, and that was not. It can be simple, but then complex. I’ll tell you the simple part. And then how it can get very complex. So one of the objectives we have is to reduce paper consumption. You know, we know that 90%, I think it’s 96% of paper is recycled. But. But then you have the, you know, you have the tint, you have the energy consumed and then, you know, the recycling process is already energy consuming as well. So if we can erase paper, then we’re doing something good, right? Because there’s a lot of process, especially in healthcare, where sometimes that paper needs to be kept for five years and digitized, etcetera, etcetera, because it’s maybe your, I don’t know, your exam, your x ray needs to be kept in place for five years, just in case there was a back practice and then you can come back to it. So we started very, very easily within our offices. You know, there’s certain departments that love, you know, printing documents, to name one of them would be the legal, legal team. Yeah, I was thinking the same. You know, you have all these contracts that you have to sign. So there’s a lot of new technologies that allow for that sample digital signatures being used. So digital signature has already been implemented in our, you know, back office, which has allowed for a lot of transfer, not having to. Sometimes, for example, in a dental clinic, you would hire a new dentist or a new nurse, and so HR would send the document, you would print it, sign it by the people who are there, and then send it back to the headquarters to be signed by the person from the headquarters. And then that would be kept in a place, right, or sent back so that, you know, the new employee had the copy. So this sounds like, you know, this sounds like old ages, but it was like that a couple of years ago, right? With 7000 employees. I can’t imagine warehouses of paperwork. Exactly. And then also there’s a lot of new employees. So because especially in healthcare delivery, maybe you’re working in Madrid now, but you as a doctor suddenly decide to go to Dubai, right, for a living. So we need to fill that space. And there’s a lot of rotation, and even if you try not for it not to happen, it happens a lot. So that was the simple part. Then there’s a lot of printing that’s not necessary. So we’re starting to track printing so that people don’t start printing their, you know, trips. So I have to go by train to Malaga and I’m just printing my. Just in case the wallet is the boarding pass. Yeah, exactly. And things like that. So now when you see that there’s some monitoring, suddenly the print goes down and then you can also analyze what are the moments when there’s more printing. And you can go and work with those departments because some printing is necessary, of course, but then that goes to. So when you deliver healthcare, when you go as a patient, I’m sure you’ve been to the dentist or to the doctor in the past years. So the first thing you have to sign is that you’re okay with your data protection, privacy management. Then you have, if you, when you have to do an x-ray, you have to sign that you’re okay, that the x-ray is going to be done for you. Then when you have to do a surgery or any procedure, you need to sign that. The doctor has explained to you this. So sometimes you have five documents that you have to sign. Those documents not only have to be printed if you don’t have it well processed, but also, as I said, digitized and saved as well during five years. So when you manage 400,000 patients per month, you can see that this is a big deal. Right? And so technology, so you don’t even need AI for this. You just need technology in order to allow for this to happen. So now you have the tablet where you’re looking at it, you can sign it, and that comes back to your doctor. Your doctor signs it as well. And that is a digital copy that we can send you by email. So you have it, and then it also is saved in our cloud. For that, we need to have cloud services, we need to have integrated our systems, we need to have the digital signature as well integrated. But in the end, once you make that effort, it allows you to get 400,000 patients per month for that service. Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I know that people sometimes, okay, but technology also has its own digital footprint and this carbon footprint. Yeah, but it’s a lot less than having all of those papers. So at the end of the day, you aim to reuse, reduce, reuse and recycle at the end of the day. So I think you’re in the middle and that’s something that also might be aligned with what you were saying at the beginning when, okay, we want to reduce our carbon emissions and at the end of the day if we go to a place where it’s not sustainable anymore, we need to do some compensation, you know, some type of things like that. I would also have that question. I know it’s not, what are your plans on compensating? Because I can imagine that it’s really huge. Yeah, it’s huge. There’s a big opportunity space there and also it’s not very standardized. So we’re actually working with ie. So we have a couple of students working on a project because we gave them that challenge. Also because we’re small, we don’t have that much team and we want to do it right. We just don’t want to go and say we planted so many trees in the Amazonas, which is fine, you know, but you know, if you’re midden here, you want to compensate here. Yeah. Which is what we’re planning on doing. So now we are in the middle of that project which has to be delivered by the end of this month. And the project is in order to map all the possibilities and also to do a mix because even though we very quickly go into planting trees, there’s so many other things that. You can do it, especially carbon credits. You, you have a lot of different ways to do this and not even. That as well, of course, but also when we live in a peninsula, have you seen the mediterranean sea? Like, have you been recently like this past summer to, I don’t know, Alicante, Marbella, wherever, Costa brava, Mallorca. It’s full of plastic. It’s terrible. And you know, we’re planting trees in the Amazonas, which is very needed. But, you know, and then we have, we have what’s happened in La Manga, you know, in Murcia and. Yeah, and we’re so unfocused. So we actually want to do things that impact, you know, even if it’s not our direct community or indirect community. So if I can have children that are in the beach that’s cleaner, I think, you know, even if they’re not the children of my clients, but they might be, you know, sibling, they might be classmates and they’re benefiting from something that we’re able to help in because we’re going to spend that money anyways. Yeah. And I can imagine that with the scope of ASISA, I can’t think about anyone in Spain who doesn’t have a relationship with you. I mean, it’s healthcare at the end of the day, if it’s not me, it’s my wife, it’s my daughter, it’s maybe my parents or whoever. So I think you have a huge opportunity to do good for your community, for people in Spain, but also you have a great challenge because you have a lot of people to impact as well. Absolutely. No. And also that’s one thing we’re looking at because we are experts in healthcare. Right? So it’s fine that we go to the environmental part when compensating, but we can also compensate for what we know best, which is delivering care. Right. So sometimes, you know, that social perspective can come back. We’ve already doing it, but you know, in a more conscious way and you know, with more resources in order to put this compensation effort into something that is more and more needed. I mean, only this past year emergency visits have increased 30%. Most of them probably weren’t real emergencies, but this is collapsing in the system. So, you know, you’re there with your big problem and I’m there with another bigger problem, but we’re treated the same. So there’s a lot of help there in this system as well. Which is also why we’re looking at this as a special project with certain students that are dedicated to it because I think we can go further away than the typical compensation that’s been done until now. Fantastic. I can imagine that people who work with you in these projects are really excited because it’s a huge opportunity to create a lot of good impact in society. So congrats to that because it’s amazing. I’m definitely excited about it. Yeah. Following next, and we have been discussing your impact and your stakeholders and how you can impact them. How do you engage them, how do you communicate everything that Asisa is doing? And this question for me is really important because I have seen that companies many times, they do a lot of things, they do more sustainably than sometimes they know, but they don’t communicate it. They don’t showcase what they’re doing. And of course it’s good that you’re doing good things, but your stakeholders need to know that you’re doing that. Yeah, I agree with you. That’s super important. And sometimes we’re so focused on doing stuff and not telling it that it might be lost. I mean, I think 1st 1st, you need to work with those closest to you because you need to really engage them and make them passionate about this because it’s a pain. I know it. You’re there. You’re not measured for this. And then you’re asked to do this. Right. So I always like to say, because we’re in this healthcare spectrum, that we want to be the heart that makes everything beats, you know, so we don’t have the limbs, the limbs are the different departments or, or companies, but we want to fuel them with blood so that they’re strong and active and passionate about it. So it’s a lot about how you tell things, right? And I think that, you know, talking in a very simple way. So I haven’t said double maturity. I’m always talking like, you know, the language that my parents would understand because I think that’s the way. And we become too technical and then that’s taking us apart from reality. And then also, so talking the language is very important and making them passionate about it, making them feel they’re doing something good, you know, because then they come back home and they’re proud for more because it’s them doing it. And then also when it comes to maybe not those people that have to help you, but those people that have to support you, we are working on actually giving them, educating them in. I don’t like saying educating because I’m no one to educate, but definitely delivering them tools and knowledge that we have and that might be useful for them. So, for example, we conducted an LCA analysis of our main product in insurance, which is the health insurance product, because we thought, okay, it’s easy when you place it in the healthcare delivery hospitals because everyone understands that, but people don’t really understand generally how a health insurance product works. So we did this analysis of where are the largest emissions from an insurance product? From a health insurance product. And not surprisingly, it was mostly on the part when you actually use it, right. So, of course, yeah, hiring a product generates certain emissions or unhiring it. But then there’s the part of when I’m using it, which is when I’m going to the doctor, when I’m having, you know, it’s an x ray done or when I’m having surgery, that’s when most emissions come, because it’s when you have to transfer it, you have to, there’s a lot of waste and everything. And now our next goal is actually to create the first green product, which means I want to actually tell people that, you know, you can have the same delivery of healthcare, but you can generate less emissions, and for probably the same price, those emissions that end up being generated are going to be compensated. So you, as a user, are actually contributing by having a similar service. Just that, you know, you’re being directed by us to where there’s less emissions, you’re going to be able to contribute to having a better, as I say, a healthier planet, which is what we’re looking for. And that takes a lot of time and effort and investment. But I’m sure that there’s going to be a lot of people that like this. You know, people are now looking at where they can buy their better groceries, that they have less impact, where they can, what kind of, you know, furniture has less impact, things that they do in their everyday life. Why not my health insurance product? I mean, you always have to go to the doctor, right? But why not go to a doctor that’s a local one, that’s close to your place, that’s as good as any other doctor. And if you can, if you do, you cannot go even better and just have a cold, because maybe you’re going to have the same. Or if you have to have an x-ray done, do it in a place where it’s consuming 100% renewable energy instead of one that isn’t. So this is also kind of the idea is to first educate the consumer that they can actually contribute having the same service, and then also the suppliers, that they should jump into this van, into the green van, because it’s going to take them to a better place in the end. Green van, I love today I learned something new. I remember that a few weeks ago we had our APLANET Summit. Robert, one of the speakers said, green wishing, I think it’s better going from this green wishing to do specifically initiatives that are helping people. And I really think this is fantastic. What’s up in the future? What’s coming next for Asisa? What’s your vision and how do you want to be positioned in the future with the company? Well, I think Asisa now has come to terms with what we were supposed to be doing. So it is coming to terms in all aspects, which I think is great. And it’s already a great accomplishment because just like, you know, managing all this big group, in that sense, it’s already interesting and difficult. But I think our next step is addressing circularity wherever we can. So unfortunately, the industry where we’re in is a very consuming industry, especially in healthcare delivery. So I’m sure you’ve heard this, that if healthcare was a country, it would be the fifth largest polluting country. Right. So we’re not, we’re not like, yeah, it’s not like technology and cloud services that, you know, they’re, in that sense, luckier. They have other challenges, but in that sense, they kind of have an easier path if you want to do it. So we have to address it. And of course, we can’t tell our patients, hey, look, I’m going to give you this, you know, this gown, it has been used by another patient, but, you know, we have to do it. You know, we have to reuse. That’s not going to help. No, that’s not going to work, especially because, you know, also regulation has gone a lot for that. So we really need to work on circularity, which we’re already doing, which we’re already turning waste, hospital waste, and non sanitary waste into resources, which is great because it’s not only helping us manage it better. Sometimes, you know, you mismanage because you don’t. For you, it’s an extra task. No, because we’ve managed to get paid for that. People, we have specific people in the hospital that are really dedicated to it and they have incentives, so they’re managing it in a much better way. I’m not saying that they weren’t doing it before, but now they’re thinking about other things that they can manage. So it’s great because they are aligned again with our goals. But this has to go everywhere in the company. Right. So this is where I think we have to focus our efforts now, apart from complying and reporting, which already takes a big chunk of our time. But if we want to do projects that really make sense in healthcare, definitely circularity is one of them. That’s great. Yeah. At the end of the day, I know that the EU, it’s bringing all of this law of CSRD and this brings like this compliance area upon all of these companies. But when you go step further and you go from compliance to sustainability to initiatives to what you’re thinking about circularity, it’s amazing because that changes the view and the perspective of the company. I know that, as you have said, Asisa already has this long, long term thinking. So you’re already planning ahead and that’s really good. And you’re like miles away from many other companies that are just beginning. But I would like to ask you something. What would you say to someone who’s starting into this journey? And once again, it works for a company of 500 people, less people, less resources. And I know that I asked you this at the beginning but what would be your advice to them? Well, I wish them a lot of luck, for sure. A lot of patience. No, you know what I think. I mean, of course, the impact in a large group like ours is big, but I think only if you, if you put it proportionally, it’s the same as in a small country company. So you don’t. So just because I’m talking about large numbers, it doesn’t mean that. Yeah, we also have large emissions. Yeah. So small companies have less emissions. And definitely any change is going to be as proportionately impactful as anything we’ve done, I would say. Well, first of all, as always, this is like a startup, right? So you need to first kind of organize things, the basics, and then focus on what is really adding value. Because if you focus on things that are nice to have or, you know, maybe. Yes, but let’s, then you’re going to lose focus, and there’s very limited resources. Even us, we’ve got a very limited budget that we, you know, we have to tightly manage because, well, we’re not, we’re not. Well, we’re becoming a revenue generator, which is great. And that would be my second, my second advice. But first of all, you have a very little budget. So they’re like, here you have โฌ100 and show me what you can do with this. Right. So you have to use those โฌ100 very, very, very creatively and very in a focused way. So see where you have quick wins, where you have, where you’re actually adding value to the company and to the company in general as a stakeholder. And then once you have that and have a little bit more of a buy in from the different areas and management, and then look to become a generating department, because sustainability can’t be an expense department. It really needs to be a generator. How? As I said, we focus, at least in these two variables, which is optimization and positioning. There’s a lot of opportunities in any single company that you can position yourself in and then you can optimize. And there’s so many people that are not even looking at it because they’ve been doing it like that for all their lives. So you really have an opportunity to get in within the business and see how you can. And most of the time, optimization is sustainability because the first way to be sustainable is becoming financially sustainable. So, if you don’t have the finance, it makes no sense. Right. Because there’s no long term, and I’m sure I really like changing that view. And when, when I talk with friends that are peers that are within this area and they’re not in the EXCOM and they’re not, you know, they don’t have a board report. I’m like, yeah, this is a waste of time. You just. Because then you just become, what, another, you know, expense department. You really need to be with the businesses where the account management is because that’s where, that’s where you get the visibility, the buy in, and definitely the investment. You said a lot of good things today, but if I had to keep one, we’ll be the last part that you said. You need to become a revenue generator that will help you and that will actually make the sustainability departments getting to the core of the business operations. I think that’s great advice for people, and I think it’s the first time that I heard it in our interview. So thank you very much for sharing this. Lastly, I want to thank you very much for your time, for your knowledge, and your. For allowing us to learn a bit from you. I always ask people who come here, who else would they want to see at Atox? Who is a person that you would like to share their knowledge with us? Well, I would be very interested in knowing any service company that has a sustainability department where they’re actually working. Circularity. I think that’s something that we haven’t seen. We’ve seen circularity in manufacturing mostly, but service companies that actually work with that, I think would be super interesting for anyone within sustainability. I can’t say names because I don’t know them myself, but maybe you can find out who did. Pauline, you have a task there. Yeah. Thank you very much for your time. I really enjoyed this interview and I learned a lot about the bottle. A small present, also reused. It’s circular and recycled. I wouldn’t expect less from you guys. Thank you very much and have a great day. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. |