This report allows firms to highlight their responsible business practices, community and sustainability commitments, and social innovations.
We know that the work we do impacts our clients, communities, and teaming partners. We have a responsibility to make life better for those around us, and an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) report can help us do so.
An ESG report is a way to take inventory of our current practices, set goals for the future, and track our progress as we work toward these goals as a company. Our company chose to go through the process of creating an ESG report to help us track our progress around our environmental impact, company culture, and leadership.
We published our first report in 2023. This report is publicly available on our company website. Our ESG report will be updated annually, and the second version of the report was published in April. See the latest report here.
Benefits of an ESG report include:
- Risk mitigation. Considering environmental and social concerns increases resiliency and reduces risk (operational, legal, reputational, etc.).
- Marketing. An ESG report allows prospective clients, partners, and employees to see how a company’s values are reflected in their work and organization.
- Employee engagement. Compiling an ESG report requires expertise and input from many different people in an organization. Including employees in the creation of the report and execution of its goals is necessary and can increase employee engagement.
- Innovation and adaptability. Considering sustainability and social responsibility in all aspects of the business challenges us to innovate and adapt as the industry changes.
Here is our approach to each ESG pillar:
- Environmental. This pillar challenged us to understand our impacts on the environment in our external operations as well as through our internal projects, and set goals to reduce these impacts. We primarily focused on energy, emissions, water, waste procurement, and green buildings. We paid attention to internal elements, such as product sourcing, to our project impacts. In other words, how are we contributing to the care of our physical world and creating spaces for people to thrive? Because we lease many of our office spaces, we track data related to water use, energy consumption, and carbon emissions as best as we can and make use of available resources to make assumptions where necessary to establish a baseline (e.g. Environmental Protection Agency emissions factors).
- Social. This pillar addresses our company culture and the exciting ways that our employees are contributing to our community and broader society. This portion of the report excites me the most because it’s centered around the best part of our company: our people. We chose to focus on community involvement, training and development, and diversity and inclusion. While we delve into programs and policies in place to support employees, a large portion of this section is composed of employee features. Whether it’s an innovative approach to our work, a passion for supporting the next generation of AEC professionals, or getting involved in their community, these features highlight the unique ways that our people are contributing to the industry. Representation matters and featuring a diverse group of employees emphasizes that our company, and the AEC industry, is for everyone.
- Governance. This pillar address how our company is led, from our board of directors to corporate management, and how we consider the impact to people and environment as part of our decision making.
Our ESG report allows us to share our responsible business practices, community and sustainability commitments, and social innovations with potential employees and clients. Above all, our goal is to take responsibility and continuously improve our impact on the world around us.
Lalitha Benjaram, EIT is diversity and inclusion program manager at Mead & Hunt. Contact her at lalitha.benjaram@meadhunt.com.