ESG advice
Support with all your ESG topics
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics are playing an increasingly important role in organisations. This is partly due to new legislation such as the CSRD and CSDDD, and partly to increased awareness among customers, employees and other stakeholders.
Empact helps large and medium-sized organisations ask the right questions and find the right answers. You can also come to us with ESG compliance issues. Our experienced consultants will guide you and help you make real progress and real impact.
Internal and external ESG questions
When we talk about ESG questions, we make a distinction between internal and external questions. Internal questions can be addressed by the organization itself, but external questions require the involvement of business partners and stakeholders. These questions are often an extension of each other. After all, your scope 3 is partly the scope 1 and 2 of a supplier.
For questions that can be answered within the organisation, the challenge is often finding the right data and interpreting it. But interpreting stakeholder questions and translating them into action can also be a challenge.
When it comes to questions that need to be answered outside the organization, the trick is to ask the right questions and involve the right upstream and downstream value chain partners and other business relationships. Thorough knowledge of laws and regulations is essential here, because they often determine how far an organization has to go in providing data.
Frequently asked questions
Read below the most common questions by topic our experienced consultants can help with.
Environment, or ecological issues, relate to the environment and climate. Questions our consultants regularly provide support on include:
- How are CO2 targets defined and achieved?
- What are our Scope 3 emissions and how can we improve them?
- What is the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of our products?
- How do we measure environmental impact? And how can we improve it?
- How will climate change affect our water needs?
- How are we going to reduce pollution throughout our supply chain?
- How can circular economy principles be implemented in the organisation?
- How can we encourage recycling and reuse of materials?
- And how does this fit into our business model?
- How will changing biodiversity affect our organisation?
Social questions revolve around issues such as working conditions, human rights, inclusiveness and privacy. Some questions we can help you with are:
- How do we deal with working conditions within the organisation? And is this sufficient?
- How do we ensure diversity and inclusion?
- How can we encourage social engagement and support for local communities?
- How can we ensure that working conditions throughout the value chain are fair and humane?
- What can and should we do to develop an engaged and socially motivated team?
When we talk about governance within ESG, we are talking about good governance. Good governance is focused on long-term value creation. Common questions in this area include:
- How do we report in line with the CSRD?
- How do we collect, validate and safeguard our ESG data?
- What is the policy on bribery and corruption?
- How do we ensure good governance of the organisation and supply chain partners?
- How do we manage lobbying in relation to sustainability goals?
- How can we be accountable to stakeholders, including shareholders, employees and the community?
- How do we implement responsible procurement?
ESG compliance can be interpreted in two ways: narrowly and broadly. In the narrower sense, it is simply a matter of complying with legal requirements and thus becomes a tick-box exercise. In the broader sense – and in our view much more interesting – it is about using regulations and laws as a springboard for truly ethical and sustainable business. After all, who is going to take an organisation seriously that is obliged to report on child labour in its value chain but does nothing about it?
Empact can help you determine the compliance frameworks relevant to your organisation and, if desired, support you in drawing up reports and developing and implementing a successful ESG strategy. That way, we really help you move forward.
ESG standards
Specifically, when it comes to ESG compliance, we are talking about meeting the following three forms of ESG standards:
- European and national ESG laws. Such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD);
- Voluntary (reporting) frameworks. An increasing number of existing voluntary frameworks have been translated into binding legislation. For example, the OECD Guidelines have become part of the CSDDD and the CSRD. However, these laws do not apply to all organisations (yet). Empact can help you implement voluntary ESG frameworks in your business. These include the OECD Guidelines, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the UN Global Compact, GRI and SASB.
- ESG ratings and scoring systems. In addition to complying with international ESG standards, it makes sense for organisations to show stakeholders such as customers and investors how well they perform on ESG topics. Empact can help to determine the most appropriate system and the (data) issues that arise in order to achieve compliance. Of course, we don’t do any greenwashing because we want to make a real impact. Standards to consider include Sustainalytics, Eco vadis, CO2 Performance Ladder, MSCI, S&P Global Scores, EPD (Environmental Product Declaration), EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) and B-Corp.
Considerations
Each of these different standards has its own advantages and disadvantages. It depends on the context which ESG legislation, guidelines or standards make sense for your organisation. Some of the things we take into consideration are:
- Do you fall within the scope of (European) legislation because of the number of employees or the size of turnover?
- Does your organisation supply to other organisations that are in scope of European legislation, which requires you to provide certain information?
- Do you operate in a high-risk sector or country?
- What is your organisation’s ESG maturity level?
- What is your organisation’s level of ESG ambition?
Working together
Do you recognise these ESG issues in your organisation? Or do you have another ESG issue that you urgently need help with? Then don’t hesitate to contact us. Whether your question is big or small, we are here to help.
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