Environmental, Social & Governance Compliance General and Commercial Documents
Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) includes factors from climate change, environmental conscientiousness and sustainability to social aims and governance responsibilities.
The ESG Information pages provide a very useful introduction and background to the subject, with some suggestions about issues that businesses should be considering and taking on board. You can see those pages here.
ESG is increasingly being seen as a top priority for businesses and as a result they need to have a range of ESG-related compliance documentation in place to help them to tackle ESG corporate and commercial issues relevant to them.
This group of documents comprise some templates to assist with formulating ESG policy, strategy and other corporate and commercial documents that businesses might wish to use. This group can also be found in the Corporate folder here.
There are additional ESG corporate board minutes and other document templates which you can see here.
Environmental, Social & Governance Compliance General and Commercial Documents is part of Business . Just £38.50 + VAT provides unlimited downloads from Business for 1 year.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does ESG actually mean for my business? +
ESG stands for environmental, social and governance, the three areas against which businesses are increasingly judged. Environmental covers your impact on the climate and environment, social covers how you treat staff, customers and communities and governance covers how the business is run and held to account. In practice it means being able to show a considered position on each. The information pages and templates in this sub-folder help you develop one.
Is ESG a legal requirement or just good practice? +
It is mostly stakeholder-driven rather than a single law, but parts of it bite legally once you are large enough. There is no general ESG statute, yet larger companies face mandatory energy and carbon reporting, and businesses with turnover of 36 million pounds or more must publish a modern slavery statement. For most smaller businesses ESG is expectation rather than obligation, though a fast-moving one. These templates help you respond proportionately.
What ESG documents should my business put in place? +
A sensible starting set is an overarching ESG or sustainability policy, a more detailed environmental policy and a statement of your ESG strategy or objectives, extended into supplier and commercial arrangements where relevant. These give you a consistent position to point stakeholders to and a basis for action rather than good intentions. This sub-folder provides templates to formulate ESG policy, strategy and related corporate and commercial documents.
Do I have to report my company's carbon emissions? +
Only larger companies must, under Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting. A company generally counts as large, and so within scope, if it meets at least two of 250 or more employees, turnover of 36 million pounds or more and a balance sheet total of 18 million pounds or more, in which case it reports energy use and emissions in its directors' report. Smaller companies are outside the duty, though many report voluntarily. These templates support your wider ESG position.
