Why is choosing the right ESG standard important for your company?

With more investors veering towards ESG compliant investments, organizations have begun to take note. Maintaining sensitivity and sustainability around all business activities is slowly becoming standard protocol. ESG compliant organizations consider three key factors when they align their activities; 

• Environmental impact: Organizations are not looking at more eco-friendly practices by avoiding pollution and waste creation. but incorporating environmentally positive actions such as paperless offices and tree planting as corporate activities. 
• Social impact: Stakeholders are key influencers in terms of business success. Watching social impact involves staying diverse and inclusive both within the organization and externally.  
• Governance Impact: Businesses must maintain two key components; strong internal guidelines for health, safety and success, and compliance with government regulations. 

Introducing these protocols into the organisation’s foundation helps with a top-down approach and encourages thought around sustainable practices and their contribution towards steady future growth and success.  

Worldwide standards of ESG compliance vary, with each country instilling its requirements around sustainable and ethical practices. As worldwide standards slowly establish themselves, private entities (investors especially) tend to have their structures to gauge ESG adherence. The three main assessment criteria used are; 

Questionnaires: 

These enable the company to go into detail about internal practices without reporting. One of the wider used ESG questionnaire standards was the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project). Completing the questionnaire feels like the minimal effort from the organization. as the intention is to encourage the highest degree of disclosure and transparency around fundamental questions.  

Leveraged Information Reports

These reports are conducted by third parties such as Newsweek Green Rankings to understand an organization’s. Performance and publish a report on their findings. Once the information is gathered, companies are invited to respond to changes before the report is published. Often the statements within the reports are defamatory and. Unflattering, therefore it is in any organizations best interest to address them swiftly.  

Reporting Frameworks:

 Using the industry of the organization as a guideline, businesses are encouraged to write their own reports. The framework for the same offers flexibility in terms of the information the company wants to divulge and uses the core ESG components. to explain the success with reaching stronger sustainability standards. 

Choosing the right ESG standards to assess corporate activities helps investors. Understand the degree of ESG compliance exercised before making an investment decision. In any organization’s best interest, it would be to comprehensively understand how investors assess ESG compliance and, second, model information available to the public around those standards. This way, investors can focus on pertinent data and recommend organizational changes to enhance the likelihood of funding. 

It is important to recognize agencies within all countries that help enforce and demystify ESG compliant standards. ESG advisory services or ESG consulting help organizations make the right decisions around sustainable practices while maintaining profitability. Actions can be customized based on the organization with long term plans in place to improve ESG ratings.

Often the statements within the reports are defamatory and. Unflattering, therefore it is in any organizations best interest to address them swiftly.