How to get started on ESG communications

Environmental, Social and Governance can look like a giant jumble of numbers and jargon. There are plenty of ways to get lost in that forest.

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Amid surging interest in ESG, many communicators are flummoxed at making the topic an essential part of their company’s messages. To put it bluntly, is a 79-page PDF that few people will read the best we can do?

We can do better. It starts with … getting started. Yet some “How to Get Started” guides are so loaded with lingo you need the “How to Get Started Guide to the How to Get Started Guide.” The last step in these multistep instructions is something like, “Inform stakeholders through a multi-channel approach.” Gee, thanks.

Our approach is inspired by a saying attributed to someone with inspiring ideals, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase,” he said. “Just take the first step.”

Our more mundane approach goes back to basics. If you want to get started on ESG, start with the Three Rs: Reading, ’Riting and ’Rithmetic.