The Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards (AREA) 2023 is pleased to honor 78 outstanding business leaders and enterprises for championing sustainable and responsible business practices. Presented by leading regional NGO Enterprise Asia, the AREA is the most reputable award recognition program recognizing organizational efforts in creating a culture of compassion, integrity, and in being socially responsible corporate citizens. The AREA serves as a badge of excellence to spur further innovation and best-practice sharing for your organization and the world at large.
Far Eastern Department Stores Ltd. (FEDS) was among the recipients who were conferred with the Green Leadership and Corporate Sustainability Awards. As a benchmark among Taiwan-listed department stores, FEDS has kept innovating, transforming, and diversifying over the past 56 years and has been a sustainable model of transformation among Taiwan’s department stores.
For its Green Leadership Award FEDS established the “Smart Property Management App Team” in 2018 to introduce the concept of big data into the management of department store assets and equipment. Through the set-up of the management application’s platform, FEDS hopes to reduce the time required for the inspection of various equipment and assets. In 2020, two major management applications, the “Inspection App” and the “Property Management App”, have been officially launched, improving management efficiency and achieving more real-time smart management.
The usage of the “Inspection App” has so far managed to save electricity consumption of up to 84,090 kWh for the water chiller units while also reducing the water usage of the cooling towers and saving 545 kWh in energy. Through the application, records are digitalized and uploaded to the cloud, which has contributed to nearly 35,000 sheets of paper being saved. This digitization has also helped FEDS by conducting big data analysis and grasping the latest statuses of all its equipment.
After the implementation of the “Property Management App”, its various functions have helped to improve the efficiency of FEDS’ daily operations. The asset management function, company vehicle management function, manpower management function, and cleaning inspection function have improved working efficiency.
For its Corporate Sustainability Reporting Award, In 2022, FEDS promoted 8 action plans in the three aspects of ESG. These actions include deploying green energy and increasing power generation capacity by 16.7 times, increasing the amount of resource recycling by 36%, cultivating management and operation talents, increasing the total number of annual staff training hours is 20,207 hours, and promoting employee health plans and won the “Sports Enterprise Certification” by the Sports Department of the Ministry of Education.
FEDS also works towards investing in social welfare activities, 2,647 activities have been held in five years, strengthening risk management and inputting RAP risk-oriented audit management platform; by focusing on management innovation, 35 action plans have been promoted, improving the company’s corporate governance and is considered among the top 20% of the corporate governance appraisals for four consecutive years.
After 56 years of operations and through its innovative spirit, FEDS has advanced with time by focusing on staff wellness, talent cultivation, corporate governance, and ethics management as well as staying responsive to changes in the external environment and being able to deliver a strong business performance. In recent years, the company has included ESG in its operating strategies, and established a sustainability-oriented management model, hoping to create higher economic, social, and sustainable value, while achieving a more sustainable business model.
Moving forward, FEDS will make early preparation to implement corporate carbon reduction from the two directions of “energy saving” and “green energy”, hoping to achieve the goal of 30% carbon reduction by 2030.
About Enterprise Asia
Enterprise Asia is a non-governmental organization in pursuit of creating an Asia that is rich in entrepreneurship as an engine toward sustainable and progressive economic and social development within a world of economic equality. Its two pillars of existence are investment in people and responsible entrepreneurship. Enterprise Asia works with governments, NGOs and other organizations to promote competitiveness and entrepreneurial development, in uplifting the economic status of people across Asia and in ensuring a legacy of hope, innovation and courage for the future generation. Please visit https://www.enterpriseasia.org/ for more information.
About Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards (AREA)
The Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards program recognizes and honors Asian businesses for championing sustainable and responsible entrepreneurship in the categories of Green Leadership, Investment in People, Health Promotion, Social Empowerment, Corporate Governance, Circular Economy Leadership, Corporate Sustainability Reporting, and Responsible Business Leadership. For more information, visit: https://enterpriseasia.org/area/.