ESG Roadmap  

Any initiatives will have a positive impact so start with the Quick-wins: LED lights, cycle to work schemes, recycling, staff survey, etc. However, the most significant improvements derive from embedding a sustainable culture throughout the organisation and this is only possible from a more organised and formal approach. 

 

A sustainable business also must remain a profitable business so every decision must also be for the good of the company but include consideration for the wider social and environmental areas. 

Any programme must enable action towards a clear and fully supported Vision with buy-in at all levels give everyone involved a sense of purpose and ensure success. The programme requires a different way of thinking and the vision will help keep the transition focussed on what is important. 

 

Most organisations are already doing more than they might imagine and, therefore, every organisation should take stock of where they are and what they are already doing well. This is a simple exercise and PurePath Advisory have a baseline assessment tool to ensure completeness and provide direction to enable the programme to be set up for success and to start on the right track. 

This phase of the programme will usually encompass the next area: calculation of the organisations greenhouse gas emissions. 

 

CO2 is now firmly established and understood as a concept and calculating emissions is a usual starting place for many organisations. Every reporting framework or data demand from the supply chain, as a minimum, will require the calculation of your emissions and this is required as a number (equivalent metric tonnes) and must be supported by robust data. At PurePath we work with a range of Carbon Calculation applications to suit any type and size of organisation and this can be initiated with a simple download of your P&L. 

This can identify an initial view of priority areas for additional investigation and refinement of the data. The first CO2 calculation will not be a perfect analysis and will need several rounds of refinement to obtain and load usage data to eventually calculate a more accurate and robust model of emissions. 

 

An ESG programme requires recognition and consideration of a much wider group of stakeholders across the business and must ensure operations and processes take account of this. All decisions must increasingly take account of the wider responsibilities of the organisation. 

The impact of most organisations is to be found in the value chain and suppliers and customers will become a key source of data. However, this is also the most difficult source of data and so will be a key place to initiate engagement as early in the programme as possible. 

However, a full understanding of the data throughout the organisation will allow a more in-depth understanding of processes and procedures and enable an analysis of efficiency throughout the organisation to enable streamlining and, ultimately, cost savings. 

 

There are regulations and reporting frameworks in place but these will not be required for the majority of companies although the largest companies at the top of the value chain are required to report on their whole supply chains and will require submissions from all organisations in their supply chains. 

The organisation must own the initiative and not just be responsive to the demands of various customers and suppliers. The programme will determine the vision and purpose driving the programme and set the roadmap. This must form the basis for prioritisation and other external factors may be included in this but can not be allowed to drive the programme. 

 

Once the vision, baseline and emissions have been identified and the overall direction has been identified in the vision, the priority initiatives can easily be identified and these become the initial focus of the programme. These initiatives must focus on the enormous benefits that a well-organised and managed ESG programme can deliver. Efficiencies can be identified as well as inefficiencies and these can be used to streamline processes and create cost savings. 

The wider programme can then start to look further into such areas as building resilience, increasing the company’s reputation creative solutions to further improve products and processes and engagement with all stakeholders. 

 

Once the priority projects have been identified, the more detailed work starts on a key element of ESG, data. 

The first stages of the project will help show what data already exists in the organisations and its systems. The Vision and more detailed programme objectives and projects will then identify the data requirements which enables the gaps to be identified. These gaps must then be filled and this involves identifying the relevant, mostly non-financial, data and the systems from which it will come. The data will then have to be extracted, managed and stored in a central repository aligned with the desired KPIs and reporting. 

 

The output of all of the above steps will enable the relevant data for organisations priority projects to be identified, sourced and managed in a central repository. 

All positive action enabled by the programme should be celebrated across all stakeholders which will require a communication strategy which may need to be tailored for specific groups or different types of stakeholders or for different purposes. The communications strategy should map out each of these needs with the relevant supporting data and reports and to integrate and schedule these into the programme. 

A good communications strategy should be robust and can attract new customers, enhance loyalty, engage staff, identify and obtain ESG related finance deals and build social capital.