EY CEO Forum

A virtual conversation from CEOs to CEOs

As companies around the world grapple with the impact of COVID-19, leaders looking to protect their companies may be tempted to ask only short-term questions. These are vital questions for sure. Yet, the shift towards long-term value creation, so present in the last couple of years, remains an essential subject on the CEO’s Agenda, as the wellbeing of employees, clients and society at large are connected more than ever.

How do I keep my employees safe? How can my company help public health-care deal with the COVID crisis? How can we respond to new clients’ concerns? How can we accelerate innovation and digitization in response to new realities brought by this crisis? These are all questions with short-term focus, but which we think will have ripple effects in the future.

Innovation will be accelerated by COVID, according to numerous analysts. The well-being and retraining of employees will continue to be instrumental for successful companies. While awareness about externalities of our way of living will increase the scrutiny on business sustainability, the focus should be on long-term solutions, not on immediate results.

A transition from shareholder value towards stakeholder value, creating value in the long term for wider groups, such as employees, consumers and society should be expected on a global scale.  Consequentially a company’s value will be increasingly reflected not just in its short-term financial performance. Thus, organizations and stakeholders need to start shifting their focus on creating long-term value and rethink their metrics when measuring the success of their organizations, to include factors such as talent, innovation, the impact on external stakeholders (society and environment) and governance.

Having this in mind, The EY CEO Forum is designed as a high-level dialogue platform, with notable representatives from academia and the business sector, that aims to ensure an effective discussion between relevant actors on creating long-term value for Romanian businesses, society and country as a whole.