The brief study: How sustainable are virtual general meetings in an ESG comparison?
The new brief study by Jan Bieser, Jurek Müller and Christian Wilk uses ESG factors to analyse how sustainable a virtual general meeting is compared to hybrid or physical event formats.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies had to switch from in-person to virtual collaboration overnight. This also affected general meetings and brought with it numerous challenges, such as ensuring secure and legally compliant voting procedures and promoting interactive discussions.
However, virtual general meetings also offer significant opportunities, such as location-independent participation, lowering event costs and reducing travel-related greenhouse gas emissions. Companies are therefore faced with a complex decision: should they hold physical, virtual or even hybrid general meetings?
The ESG approach provides a suitable framework for evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of physical, virtual and hybrid event formats in terms of environmental, social and governance criteria.
Advantages and disadvantages of event formats
Virtual meetings reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs by eliminating travel, venues, hotels and catering. They are easily accessible and save time. However, digital tools can be difficult for some shareholders to use.
Physical meetings offer more opportunity for face-to-face interaction and encourage discussion and networking. They help to build trust and make it easier to reach agreements. These advantages can be offset by advancing digital tools and the increasing digital competence of participants.
Hybrid meetings combine the approaches of virtual and physical meetings. This offers flexibility to fulfil different requirements. However, hybrid meetings are more complex, as seamless integration of both the physical and virtual components is required.
For a company to make the right choice of event format, it must be adapted to its individual needs. After analyzing the ESG criteria, each type of event has its advantages and disadvantages, which must be weighted according to your own needs.
To view the entire brief study, click here.