ESG stands for environmental, social, and (corporate) governance — three ethical and sustainable considerations for today’s businesses.
Incorporating ESG practices and metrics offer a way to measure a company’s health and stability beyond what might be deduced from the numbers on its balance sheet. Commitment to ESG has shown better financial returns, higher employee satisfaction, and better products to the organizations that prioritize it. Slack on ESG, and you risk being one of the companies that 76% of consumers stop supporting with their dollars.
FUTR.tv interviewed Koru CEO Ricky Marton and asked him why ESG is so important today, and how businesses can make it a priority.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
Every company’s ESG profile, goals, and capacity are different — figure out yours
Your average mom-and-pop shop will have different ESG capabilities than a Fortune 500. Naturally, your ESG goals will look different in terms of budget, geography, and products. That’s why Matron says they begin consultations with a unique analytic business profile for every client.
“The first thing we do is…a quick analytic piece on this company. We’ve built out this tech that’s really amazing because it allows you to simply put in your website and uses a few data points on our end that’s actually able to spit out an assessment that looks like, what’s material to your business, where you operate in, certain sustainable development goals you should be supporting. This is where you are as a business, this is where we’d like you to focus on.”
“Our analysis is based off your industry, sectors you work in, geographic ties, anywhere from supply chains, where you have physical employees, what products do you produce, who is your end user…digital profile of you as a business. This ranges from who you are, what you’ve done, sustainability goals, product differentiators, how you want to grow, then we help you find the partners that can help you push forward.”
ESG action starts with the right partnerships
If your business is food, finance, or retail, you might not know the latest developments in sustainability. It’s vital to know who to turn to for ideas and support and partnerships — and that’s why Marton suggests seeking out innovative initiatives to partner with.
“For example, we were working with a food and beverage manufacturing company, they were really interested in a new refrigeration tech, there are a couple of startups that work with innovative cooling tech that doesn’t use any water consumption and can have the same output as a normal refrigerator, but it’s eco friendly, requires less energy…and by partnering with them, they’re able to reduced overhead required from energy and water use, while also having a green practice and be on the leading edge of a new technology.”
“Those partnerships are what really make their business succeed further, generate more profits, and having the purpose tied into it is really impactful not only in the short term but in the long term as well.”
Even small businesses can do ESG with small steps and the right tech
Marton says ESG is all about bite-sized goals, one step at a time. And with a little help from predictive, analytical tech, you’re already on your way.
“It’s a recipe of looking at where you are as a business. All these different factors go into ESG initiatives, but the most important thing is a bite-sized endeavour. Large companies regularly publish 100 sustainability reports…really intimidating for small and medium businesses. What we try to do is encourage companies that are recognizing this … that’s step one … The secondary piece is: Where are you as a business and where do you want to go in the near term? And how do you create little bite-sized pieces and goals to allow you to get there?”
For Marton, he says it could be as simple as:
- Ensuring your facility is LEAD certified
- Talking to employees about what they care about to better the workplace
- Accumulate data to build an internal ESG practice for what’s good for your business
“What I really want to do with Koru is create what I like to call the crystal ball of partnerships…looking at what exists in real life and then creating a virtual digital copy of it and then having scenario testing done on this virtual version. And what that’s going to be able to do for us is have enough data, enough modelling put together in one place, learning from what makes for a good partnership. And also bad partnership and then be able to create a predictive technology that is able to help companies find the most innovative, most unique and highly efficacious partnerships in the space.”
Listen to the whole interview here.
