How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Tough and unpredictable situations may impact on the company’s performance and even reputation in a serious manner.

When talking about a company’s resilience in times of crisis, legal holds the important role of focusing on responding in early stages to safeguard the company from any kind of potential liabilities to even loss of reputation. Our role is to foresee all range of legal challenges that the actual situation brings or is susceptible to bringing in a close (or not that close) future.

A very ample understanding of the organisation, as complex as it may be, is critical to respond with various scenarios that become most likely during uncertain or crisis times. Based on such knowledge, legal provides comprehensive advice related to prevention, but also management of business crisis. As much as we, traditionally, are used to think that legal is rather a support role, it is especially while navigating through terrible times when the focus must shift from supporting to driving the activity in alignment with the (well informed) decision makers and company’s strategic endeavors.

Another aspect is that legal advice loses its aim when not doubled by appropriately educating the staff to create awareness of the risks ahead. Clear and effective communication between legal and the relevant stakeholders, as well as well-shaped training sessions with adapted content and recurrence are of most importance for creating awareness.

Moreover, communication and common understanding are also king in terms of team leadership or collaboration with stakeholders and fostering a balanced professional approach towards challenging times. Trust can be built and maintained only based on open and unambiguous communication. Team members should be encouraged to share both concerns as well as their own orientation towards solutions. Everybody needs to know in this way that they are an important part of the efforts made with the aim of overcoming any certain challenge. Motivation follows and the risk of having alarmed or insecure team members, which translates into affected productivity, decreases.

Crises come with a lot of uncertainty and legal plays a key role in clearing up the air with regards to how the business’ measures meant to mitigate the effects are impacting the applicable legal and regulatory framework and ensures that, in its endeavors, the company stays on the right track and does not expose itself to obvious or less obvious legal risks or penalties, while putting the shoulder on fostering a trustful environment at workplace, to best sail the troubled waters.

In my opinion, as odd as it might sound, there are no more valuable times of learning, deciding and moving forward than crises, especially since these come normally with a new range of risks that were previously low or even did not exist. Focusing on the positive, with the right mindset and determined efforts, not to mention the communication and negotiation abilities that are rather commonly shared by lawyers, you can finally attain great satisfaction by overcoming tough times, as long as you take your team with you in all aspects: shared responsibilities, prioritisation, transparency, trust and both way commitment in order to stay in line with the company’s goals.

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?

Sustainability is and will remain an essential topic within the organisation. An interesting question is if legal function supports or rather drives sustainability – sustainability practices are a source of progress but fairly said, potentially a source of liability. The importance of legal departments will become more and more important as the applicable legislation, as well, becomes more nuanced in sustaining standards of good practices.

Our company has a clear strategy and well-defined targets. Three dimensions are at the core of this strategy: environment, social and governance. For further success, the company is committed to minimising the environmental impact of its business activity, focusing on the climate and climate change. Then, on the social side, the company’s employees remain the most valuable resource and are supported through fair and performance-oriented payment, company pensions and flexible working time models, on the other hand there is also the involvement towards non-profit organisation, investment in research and social projects. Finally, the governance dimension is of utmost importance and, for legal, the focus as part of the overall strategy. The established compliance management system is designed to ensure the best behavior in line with the values of the company and with the applicable laws and regulations. Business integrity is a high priority. Full attention and respect for human rights is a mandatory side of the corporate culture and the same is expected from our business partners.

Coming back to the GC role in this strategy evolved around company’s values and, in particular, sustainability as first defined value of the company (“Sustainability, Innovation, Excellence and Passion”), I believe that such role represents a strong support for ensuring compliance with human rights and environmental protection, in the first place, but like I was mentioning before, we observe and contribute so that our business partners also do. We can say for sure that we are facing complex regulations both deriving from international sustainability governance, but also the local laws that are mandatory to observe, since our presence is relevant in many countries. As the main source of counseling for the boards and further management, the GC advice, as well as strategy, must be excellent in terms of knowledge, balance and clarity. Beyond counseling and support for the implementation of needed actions to be fully compliant, the role becomes more complex when there is a conscious decision to become part of the driver’s team, where proactiveness and strategic thinking are at least of the same importance. In doing so, a GC plays a role in the overall company’s image which must remain unharmed, in advocating the company’s goals and in bringing together different stakeholders at the core of the opportunity that comes along with sustainability efforts: aligned strategy and shared values in a successful company.