ESG From Compliance to Stakeholder Benefits

ESG From Compliance to Stakeholder Benefits A while ago, I took a test. And I nearly passed it. I'm not entirely proud of how close I got. I'll tell you that story in a few minutes. But first I want to ask you something, and I'd like you to answer honestly, just in your head. When you hear the letters E, S, G, what's the first feeling you get? I've asked that question in a lot of rooms. Zoom rooms, training rooms, the back room of a pub in Sheffield. And the answers are remarkably consistent. Boring. Box-ticking. Expensive. Something the compliance team does on a Friday afternoon so the rest of us can get on with real work. And you know what? Fair enough. For a lot of businesses, that's exactly what it has become. A questionnaire. A spreadsheet. A report nobody reads, written in a language nobody speaks, to satisfy a regulator nobody has met. So here's the puzzle that's been bothering me. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. Strip away the jargon and it's asking three very simple questions. What does your business do to the world around it? What does it do for the people around it? And can anyone trust how it's run?