How we manage our ESG data.
Anne Huber, Chief of Staff at Profusion
When I first started looking into ESG I found myself with a whole lot of question marks and nowhere to find answers. I was frustrated with webinars and talks that would just reiterate the importance of ESG reporting and initiatives. For my situation those were absolutely pointless as I had already understood (like most people in the world) that action needs to be taken. Other articles stated that first, companies need to do their ‘materiality assessment’, leaving me wonder why they can’t use a language I understand.
The big question for me was where do I start and how. So in this blog, I will share some of my knowledge to help others not waste their time.
I will share one action for each ESG pillar – simple and straight forward. This will help you to understand the processes you will have to go through moving forward.
Remember: our goal is to get you going not perfection.
E – ENVIRONMENTAL:
The easiest metric to look at is your direct consumption of energy. How much energy do you consume and what does that mean for your emissions?
Usually, your energy is consumed in your buildings. Sounds simple and for most organisations it is. Talk to your finance team, they will be able to tell you all your suppliers. With that list you can identify all possible emission perpetrators.
Source your meter readings and/or your energy bills. They will tell you how much you consume every month. If you don’t own your building your landlord/landlady is able to give you this information.
Use the UK government’s conversion factors to translate your data into emissions: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2022
With their conversion tables you can take the information you have and calculate the CO2 equivalent emission.
Attention: Make sure you use the right units: kWh vs. mWh – kg vs. tonnes of CO2e
Top Tip: Store all your information in one place so you can find, update and access it easily. Keep one spreadsheet with all your environmental data. That way you have a single source of truth.
How to take this to the next level: In what other ways is your organisation creating or consuming energy? Think about your air conditioning, company cars and energy that you are creating (cooling or heating). If you cover all of the above you are reporting on all of your Scope 1 & 2 emissions and that is a fantastic first step.
S – SOCIAL:
For most organisations Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB) is the most interesting part to look at.
Think about a hand full of KPIs that you regard as important to your business. If this is a step too far for you let me help you:
Total number of employees - #
Number of nationalities in the business - #
Number of female employees - #
Number of employees from under-represented groups - #
Number of employees with disability - #
Number of neuro diverse employees - #
2. Now let’s think about how you can get that data. First of all, talk to your HR team and check what information is already available. If you don’t track any of this data already work with your HR team on a solution to get the information in a secure, trustworth and reusable way (e.g., tracking information in your employee management system or an employee survey).
Top Tip: If you don’t have processes in place to track data refrain from quick and dirty solutions, rather think about how you should set a process up so you can reuse it every time you need data or an update of your data.
E.g., a one off employee survey might sound helpful for now but that means you need to run the survey on a regular basis. For metrics that most likely won’t change regularly (like gender, ethnicity and disabilities) think about where this information should be stored so it only needs to be tracked once and can be accessed easily. I’d recommend the HR management system that you already use to track employee information.
3. Once you have the information, put it somewhere where your BI tool can access it. That will help you in regard to tracking progress and automating some of your reporting.
How to take this to the next level: Think about industry benchmarks to compare your results to and help others understand the meaning of your performance.
G - GOVERNANCE:
The little part of ESG that nobody talks about. Which makes it really hard to understand what it actually means. This pillar is about how ethically you run your organisation. A lot of this are things that can’t be measured in numbers e.g., policies or data security.
To me the eastiest way to measure things is when I can see them in black and white so I’ll start with some easy KPIs to measure here:
Number of board members from under-represented groups - #
Number of security breaches - #
Number of employees that received training on anti-corruption by role - #
Think about what is important to your organisation and what you should be measuring.
2. Collect the data just like you did for the social data and put it in a data base that you can access with your BI tool.
Top Tip: don’t be afraid to use Excel. We all do it! For non-sensitive data it is absolutley OK to use Excel – it’s the easiest way for you to build your easy-access database. Refrain from using it when it comes to personal information; that means don’t use it for emloyee information.
How to take this to the next level: Think about a maturity scale that you can apply for all your governance related reporting which can’t be measured in numbers.
E.g., assessing your data security levels could be connected to desired certifications. The accievement of those certifications can be translated into a maturity level:
If you want to learn more about how to manage your ESG data join our next Managing ESG Data programme: https://profusion.com/managing-esg-data. You will be joined by likeminded peers to share your experience, learn to manage you ESG data and hear from others about their ESG journeys.