Is ESG on your corporate agenda?
ESG has quickly risen up the corporate agenda and large businesses need to be putting in place the right foundations to prepare for new sustainability-related regulations.
Organisations that stick their heads in the sand will jeopardise their own financial sustainability in the longer term. There’s increasing demand from employees, and from those you may want to recruit, as well as clients. Organisations increasingly want to work with advisors whose values chime with their own, who have a net zero-carbon strategy and who can help them make greener choices.
With that in mind, Jessica Wilkes-Ball, sustainability manager at national law firm Mills & Reeve reflects on changes the firm has made and how to improve the sustainability of your own organisation.
Make the commitment
Getting buy-in from the top of the organisation is a key place to start - you can’t make meaningful change without this support.
Mills & Reeve has committed to be net zero by 2050 and is following science-based targets. Our head of ESG and social value, Neil Pearson, helps to identify, implement and measure metrics to assess and improve our ESG performance.
Actively engage every one of your employees to create change
It goes without saying that having your people on board to create change with you is imperative. The steps we have implemented have included:
Internal communications: We launched an internal sustainability hub, ESG newsletter, podcast series, and we run events featuring guest speakers, such as the Net Zero Business Engagement Lead from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. We also conducted a survey to all staff to understand what matters to them and asked for ideas of initiatives they would like to see us implement.
Training: We have an internal microsite with online training and resources, and all employees and partners are offered environmental awareness training. In 2023 we are planning to roll out a bespoke Carbon Literacy training course.
Community: We created a network of knowledgeable ambassadors in each office to drive progress, raise understanding and share information.
Working group: A group of cross-functional people from across the firm meet regularly to make sure policies and procedures are working towards our net zero ambitions.
Get clued up
There’s lots of amazing, and free, resources out there full of information and good ideas to help you learn more and develop your own sustainability strategy. Watching relevant YouTube content, reading sustainability reports of firms and listening to the Mills & Reeve Talking ESG podcast are all good ways of doing this.
Visible changes
Visible changes, such as introducing socially conscious and sustainably grown tea and coffee suppliers and banning single-use cups, are daily reminders that we are determined to play our part in creating a greener world. It’s about changing perceptions and behaviour.
Business travel is another way to make this change. Make the most of the cycle to work schemes available to organisations and really consider if meetings need to be travelled to or if they could be over video call.
Alongside offering the cycle to work scheme to employees and implementing tech changes within our offices to allow video calls to be taken seamlessly, we have an electric bike for our Oxford office to allow our people to travel between meetings in the city.
Eye on the supply chain
Looking outward to your supply chain is a really important part of your organisation’s sustainability journey.
We have an in depth ESG questionnaire during onboarding and actively collaborate with our suppliers to understand and monitor their environmental credentials, the impact of their activities and commitment to ESG and Net Zero. We now collect more detailed data on the ESG commitments of our suppliers and are working towards a bespoke online portal to provide us with an accurate view of supplier commitments and how this supports our own net zero ambitions.
Listen to the Mills & Reeve Talking ESG podcast
www.mills-reeve.com
Mills & Reeve’s UK presence: Oxford | Cambridge | London | Birmingham | Leeds | Manchester | Norwich
