Who said that serious environmental, social and governance questions could not be turned into a game?
In its latest communication effort — an online "dilemma" game — P+, Pensionskassen for Akademikere, Frederiksberg, Denmark, the €19 billion ($23.2 billion) multiemployer workplace plan for employees of academic institutions, is encouraging its participants to face the same difficult decisions that plan executives do to learn about P+'s exclusions policy.
Participants can decide the fate of companies such as Facebook Inc., Mitsubishi Corp., BHP Group Ltd., Tesla Inc., and Royal Dutch Shell PLC by either clicking to divest or keep them in P+'s fictitious portfolio.
Kirstine Lund Christiansen, head of ESG at P+, which already excludes coal-linked investments and most oil companies, said the fund wants to reach more people and engage with them beyond the more serious statements on ESG issues that are currently published on its website.
"We have realized we have to get better at communicating to our members. For years we have been communicating in quite long technical documents. We still do that because it is our obligation to be transparent of our work," Ms. Lund Christiansen said in a telephone interview.
But she added: "We are trying to communicate about the dilemmas and tricky conclusions where we have companies in the portfolio that have issues around ESG," noting that it's about letting participants know in an easy way that ESG is not a "clear game."
Ms. Lund Christiansen said participants decide about companies, some of which are part of the plan's real portfolio, such as, for example, Tesla. Players have to decide if Tesla should be kept in the portfolio because it is contributing to a low-carbon economy by producing electric cars despite the evidence that Tesla has violated labor laws. When they make their choice, they learn P+'s positions on the issues, including that Tesla is still part of P+'s portfolio but executives engage with the company on the ESG issues.
