As pressure mounts for companies to be more transparent around their ESG commitments, so too does the need for more roles across the business to get involved in meeting those commitments. It’s no longer feasible or desirable for one person or team to take on sole responsibility for ESG or sustainability, particularly when it comes to reporting.

Whether it’s meeting legislative requirements such as producing SECR reports or satisfying investors’ increasing demands for evidence of sustainability being embedded within operations, the scope and scale of both measuring and reporting are increasing at pace and everyone has a responsibility to play their part. That is of course assuming that ESG principles really are embedded within the business rather than just bolted on to look good and sitting separately from the main strategic aims and objectives. This is a critical point, because those companies where it’s been ‘bolted on’ will struggle to see the real benefits and how the triple bottom line can be impacted.

The trend for some time now has been for organisations to develop a sustainability ‘function’ and we’re not suggesting this is the wrong approach – it undoubtedly needs to be driven and led and having a function with that responsibility will help ensure actions are taken and measured and that a strategic approach is applied across all aspects of sustainability rather than it falling between a number of roles. Nevertheless, as sustainability and ESG (and for the purposes of this piece, we’re using them interchangeably) have evolved in recent years, so too have the reporting requirements and it’s fast becoming too much for one person to successfully manage. Added to which, because sustainability fundamentally cuts across so many other functions – HR. governance, environment, health & safety, corporate affairs, operations, procurement and more – the role needs to be more one of inspiring and coordinating to ensure ESG considerations truly have seeped into each area of the business and are properly rooted into culture, strategy and operations at every level.

The focus should be on behavioural change, raising awareness and educating others to help them understand how their piece of the jigsaw fits with all the others to make sustainability a complete picture. Where it is truly embedded, the company’s purpose and values will reflect this ethos of ESG – not necessarily explicitly – and they may even have gone so far as to include it in job descriptions at every level and across every team, so everyone knows what their part is and why it’s important.

As TCFD reporting requirements are rolled out over the next few years and as we await the details that will underpin more comprehensive Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) on many companies, one thing is clear – reporting is here and the demand for it is only going to increase.

As someone embedded in the ‘world’ of sustainability, it bemused me this week to hear one contact in the insurance sector speaking with surprise about how clients were starting to ask about sustainability just “out of the blue” as he put it. For all of us at SustainIQ, we’ve seen this coming for many years and it’s why the company was founded back in 2017. Transparency, trust and togetherness are our values and everything about the drive for more openness around sustainability and ESG in recent years and months validates the importance of those values. We need greater transparency around the growing numbers of sustainability claims being made from companies across all sectors – data can help with that; we have nothing if we can’t inspire trust in our customers, investors and employees – again, data can provide the foundations on which to build that trust and finally, togetherness – we can only achieve our aims by working together, both within our own companies and in wider society. A sustainable future can be achieved if we each take responsibility for playing our part rather than leaving it all to the sustainability team.