On the 7th September, Satarla CEO Sarah Gordon led a round table discussion on behalf of the Risk Leadership Network to explore the following questions:
1. What is ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) and ESG risk management?
2. How to work with ESG, sustainability and other teams within the organisation?
3. The role of ERM (Enterprise Risk Management) in ESG risk management and the identification and management of threats and opportunities?
4. Key steps in building an ESG risk management framework?
The slide deck used to support this discussion (which contains lots of useful links, tools and tips) can be downloaded here: (Video to follow).
Key insight discussed included:
- ESG is evolving very fast, but is still incredibly silo'd (as in the Environment, Social and Governance experts don't tend to work together). Massive opportunity rests in not only integrating these three aspects, but also ensuring they are integrated into the broader management of the organisation. Risk management can be a fantastic mechanism through which this can become a reality.
- Risk management is well established within each of the ESG disciplines.... however they all use slightly different terminology and techniques. Listening to what each subject matter expert is truly saying (and encourage everyone to have patience!) is key as ultimately we are all pushing in the same direction.
- Lots of organisations are in the process of building or refining their ESG risk management framework. These can take many forms but in essence require an organisation to:
1) Know what they are aiming at (ie how seriously do they want to take sustainability?)
2) Acknowledge the potential threats and opportunities to achieving this and do something about them where possible.
3) Track the progress being made and adjust where needed.
(sound a bit like normal risk management..... well it is!).
Satarla's partner ESGuide depicts this ESG framework through the following very simple diagram:
A more detailed set of steps that you can use to create your own ESG risk management framework, refined through many years of working across multiple sectors is as follows:
For more information on how to build your own ESG and / or risk management framework, please contact us at: contact@satarla.com