Hudson and Vlerick Business School publish their HR Barometer annually to identify the most significant HR trends and challenges of the previous year. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the past year an exceptional one for everyone. In uncertain times, it was a challenge to set the right priorities. What impact did COVID-19 have on the performance of HR? Our online survey resulted in 104 organisations sharing their experiences and concerns. This year, the HR Barometer covered no less than 363,631 employees in Belgium through these organisations.

iGMO partners EY and KBC look back on the way the past year tested medium-sized companies’ resilience. How are companies handling Covid-19? How do they keep helping each other along even now? What’s the pandemic’s lasting impact? A conversation about ‘familial fuzziness’ and rediscovering the joys of entrepreneurship.

Vlerick Business School and ABN AMRO join forces in a new three-year partnership to strengthen academic research in sustainable finance. With this partnership, ABN AMRO will participate in Vlerick’s Centre for Sustainable Finance to facilitate academic research providing a model to measure Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) for SME’s.

CANDRIAM, an innovator in applying ESG research to investment decisions, will support and participate in the Centre’s academic research with a focus on gaining a deeper understanding of the use of AI in sustainable finance. The first academic research project will focus on the role of AI in measuring scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions resulting from global economic business activities. The project will aim to map the linkages of scope 3 emissions, leading to a more accurate, consistent and transparent public reporting of corporate value chain emissions.

“Flexibility” and “The role of hydrogen, green gas and other molecules in Belgium”: these were the topics of the two round tables organised this year as part of the Prime Foundation Partnership with KPMG. To conclude the three-year partnership, and in anticipation of a further collaboration, Professor Leonardo Meeus and Jorn De Neve, Partner, Head of Advisory and Head of the Energy Sector at KPMG, look back on their work.

How can we manage our physical assets sustainably? How can we tap into the circular economy? How can we link the distribution of electricity and gas to that of other utilities like drinking water? And how can we introduce new technologies such as blockchain? Together with Vlerick, Chair Partner Fluvius is embarking on an ambitious research project with one goal in mind: mastering the supply chain game to guarantee utility traffic that is sustainable, affordable and also future-proof.

Distribution system operator Fluvius will be continuing the DSO Chair at the Energy Centre with Vlerick for another five years. “Vlerick makes us take a critical look at ourselves, and that makes sense. After all, no single energy player has all the answers to the question of how we can keep energy distribution manageable for consumers and the environment.” Professor Leonardo Meeus and Donald Vanbeveren (Corporate Affairs Director at Fluvius) talk about this renewed commitment.

Agility is an emerging key dimension of business excellence. Yet, many organisations are still struggling with implementing agile approaches in the area of performance and reward management. That’s why the Centre for Excellence in Strategic Talent Management, the Centre for Excellence in Strategic Rewards and Chair partner Hudson joined forces for a new study that results in 10 key findings, each representing a phenomenon, trend or influence currently playing in agile working contexts.

Today, the government has to rein in a health crisis on the one hand, and has to compensate for its economic impact on the other. The crisis is acting as a catalyst on top of the evolution that the sector is going through, a transformation that should serve to make the respective organisations in the sector proactive, agile machines in which new digital and organisational models play a key role. In the midst of this transformation, the need for vested digital leadership is greater than ever. LoQutus and Vlerick Business School have joined forces to explore the way in which the public sector is experiencing the changes, how it is tackling them, and where the main obstacles lie.

“Just like De Tijd and L’Echo, Vlerick encourages entrepreneurs to remain inquisitive and, in a well-informed way, to take the lead and keep trying new things. So, it's not that we have to but that we want to do things together; we share the same ambitions. For us, these are the best partnerships”, says Isabel Albers, General Editor of the business newspapers De Tijd and L’Echo.