Compliance can lead (or should be a part of) your organization’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) program. ESG provides an opportunity to bring change and influence to matters that Compliance would have difficulty in bringing by its own capacity. The focus here will be on how compliance can initially start an ESG program. If you need an ESG primer, please refer to my article from January’s issue of CT, “How compliance can impact ESG.”^[1]

If your organization does not have a group of individuals coordinated in ESG efforts, then the first step is to plan on how to manage ESG matters in the future. A case presenting why your organization needs coordinated ESG management and how it will benefit from focused ESG efforts can be made to an individual leader or group of leaders at your organization. Having buy-in and leadership support from the beginning is the best way to jump-start your ESG endeavors rather than tackling all these items in a siloed manner without support.