5 Tips for Effective ESG Communications
Communicating your corporate sustainability and social impact story isn’t always easy or straightforward. Your company may be involved in a wide range of activities, including environmental sustainability, social impact, human rights due diligence, diversity and inclusion efforts, corporate social responsibility and giving, volunteer programs, and other initiatives.
To make it more difficult, as you communicate about these efforts you may need to walk a fine line between not telling enough of the story and inflating the story by speaking in aspirational terms. Both of these roads are risky:
By not communicating robustly enough or clearly enough, you risk alienating your clients, investors, consumers, and even your own employees.
By disclosing too much or inaccurately, you risk making promises or claims that you can't keep - also commonly known as "greenwashing."
So how can you reduce risk as you approach communications when it comes to your company's environmental, social impact, and governance (ESG) initiatives?
The most straightforward answer is: just tell the truth.
With that as a starting point, here are five additional tips for effective ESG communications.
1. Align your ESG story to your brand story
ESG is fundamentally not about branding, it is about understanding how your business impacts the world and how the world impacts your business - and then how you proceed to manage those impacts. But if your company also sells products or services, you should be selling your ESG work alongside your existing brand. While some brands are built on sustainability from the ground up, the vast majority are not.
Most companies these days do, however, align themselves to a set of core values - and these values can align well with their ESG work. As you tell your ESG story, you can do so quite effectively within the framework of your existing corporate values and the associated commitments you make to your employees and your consumers. For example, if your values include compassion, resilience, innovation, courage, etc., then integrate those directly into your ESG storytelling.
When you align your ESG work with your brand values, not only will your messaging pillars be clear, but the storyline will be more natural and authentic.
2. Highlight your employees' passion areas and involvement in ESG initiatives
As communicators, we know that our employees can be our best messengers, and that’s especially true when it comes to our ESG initiatives. When employees get truly excited about promoting sustainability or your corporate commitments to social well-being in your community, that authentic passion can come through in how you communicate. Passion isn't something you can manufacture or fake. But when you can use it to bring that personal touch to your ESG efforts, your story will truly come to life.
3. Ensure consistency in your ESG communications
Nothing screams "you're lying" quite like saying one thing to one audience and something entirely different to another - especially when talking about climate commitments or human rights.
Bringing you back to how this article started (always tell the truth) - if you always tell the truth, it will be much easier to avoid lying. If you’re telling your Board one thing and your customers or clients something totally different, you’re running the risk of being inconsistent. You can certainly focus your messaging in a way that is most relevant to each audience, but it still has to be consistent throughout.
Which brings us to the next tip.
4. Always be accurate in your ESG communications
"We will reduce our carbon emissions by 78% over the coming 5 years."
"Our company only sources products from suppliers not involved in forced labor."
"40% of our product is made from recycled material."
As ESG professionals, we've seen this scenario far too many times. When you don't have enough information, it can be tempting and very easy to use estimates, make assumptions, round numbers up, or adjust wording to make it more compelling. This very often can lead to making statements that are no longer accurate.
While usually done innocently and with good intent, the risk of providing inaccurate information in your external- or internal-facing materials is too high. Being precise in how you talk about these issues will help you avoid reputational - and even legal - pitfalls. To do this, communicators need to start from the position of questioning existing assumptions about the sustainability and responsibility of their products, services, and operations. Pressure-test the claims with internal and external experts and have them approve the language.
5. Integrate ESG into your investor relations communications tools
Communicating your ESG priorities with your investors and your board is essential for both public and private companies.
For public companies, you can effectively communicate your ESG narrative by integrating it directly into your other IR communications channels. From your IR website and investor dashboards to earnings calls and SEC or other reporting, ESG should be included as you would any other program or initiative that can impact your business.
For private companies, your Board and other stakeholders (employees, other investors) will also want to be kept updated about your ESG priorities and how you’re implementing them. Strong communications will help as you seek their input and buy-in that you ultimately need to be successful.
Using these ESG communications tips
These five tips, when used in conjunction with a more comprehensive ESG communications strategy, will help you tell your ESG story in the most effective and genuine way, all while ensuring you successfully walk that fine line between oversharing and undertelling.
Do you need help with designing and implementing a successful ESG communications strategy that tells the compelling - and accurate - story of your sustainability and social impact work (without greenwashing)? Reach out to us today and we can help!
The Uplift Agency
Uplift builds strategies, programs, and communication campaigns that advance ESG in workplaces, supply chains and communities.
We know how to navigate the road ahead because we’ve already been down it – 90 percent of our team has led environmental or social programs in corporations or nonprofits. Because ESG is all we do, our services are more comprehensive and integrated than most firms.
