Leaders understand that ESG performance is increasingly linked to commercial success – but many still don’t know where to start. Nearly 90% of global executives say sustainability reporting is becoming more important to their organisation, yet fewer than 60% have a clear roadmap for delivering it. (World Economic Forum)

The hesitation is understandable. ESG has accumulated jargon, overlapping frameworks and shifting regulations. Expectations keep rising, terminology keeps evolving, and organisations often delay action because they’re worried about getting it wrong.

But getting started doesn’t require perfection or a fully developed programme. The most valuable first step is clarity – knowing where you stand, what matters most, and how to move forward. This guide shows you how to get there.

TLDR;

If ESG feels complex, the quickest way to gain clarity is to break the journey into a few practical steps:

• Understand what ESG really covers – climate, environment, social impact, economic impact and diversity & inclusion.

• Map what you’re already doing – most organisations discover a substantial amount of their ESG work already exists across Finance, HR, Operations, Compliance and Procurement.

• Build your baseline – consolidate data, policies and practices to create a clear picture of current performance and gaps.

• Identify risks and opportunities – use your baseline to see where you face the greatest exposure and where you can create the most value.

• Set clear ambitions – use SMART principles to turn priorities into measurable, achievable goals.

• Embed ESG into operations – strengthen governance, align processes and engage teams so ESG becomes part of everyday decision-making.

• Communicate progress with evidence – tailor updates to investors, customers, employees, suppliers and regulators.

• Adopt a rhythm of improvement – regular reviews, updates and refinements keep your ESG strategy credible and sustainable.

1. Understanding What ESG Means

For years, companies communicated their responsible practices through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – a model shaped around values and community initiatives. As environmental pressures intensified and governance failures made headlines, that model became insufficient. Investors wanted reliable data. Regulators introduced clearer standards. Supply chains faced greater scrutiny.

ESG emerged as the response: a way to turn broad commitments into measurable practice. Modern ESG typically spans five interconnected areas aligned with the FuturePlus framework: 

1. Climate
2. Environment
3. Social Impact
4. Economic Impact
5. Diversity & Inclusion

Together, these create a complete picture of how your organisation affects – and is affected by – the world around it.

🎙️Listen to this: For SMEs navigating this landscape, listen to our podcast episode on Sustainability for SMEs: Unlocking Value and Growth, exploring how smaller organisations can turn sustainability into a competitive advantage.

2. Identifying What You’re Already Doing

Once you understand the core themes of ESG, the most revealing step is looking at what’s already happening across your organisation. Most companies assume they’re starting from zero, but in practice, a significant amount of ESG-related work already exists; it’s just scattered across departments.

Where to Look: A Department-by-Department Guide

A practical way to uncover existing ESG activity is simply to speak to each team and review the data and processes they already manage.

• Finance – Look for utility bills (often going back several years), fuel records, mileage claims and waste disposal invoices. These can form the basis of your emissions and resource-use baseline.
• Operations – Health and safety data, incident logs, environmental permits, energy management practices and waste contracts typically live here. These convert directly into environmental and social metrics.
• HR – Data points such as retention, turnover, training hours, recruitment diversity, pay gap calculations and wellbeing initiatives build a substantial picture of your social impact.
• Compliance – Due diligence work, supplier assessments and regulatory filings all contribute to governance and supply chain oversight.
• Procurement – Supplier codes of conduct, onboarding questionnaires and early ESG-related questions asked during tenders provide insight into how your supply chain is already being managed.

Individually, these may look like routine processes. Together, they form a meaningful portion of your ESG footprint.

Why This Step Matters

Identifying what already exists has three clear benefits:

1. It surfaces strengths your organisation can build on immediately.
2. It clarifies the gaps that will later shape your priorities and roadmap.
3. It shifts internal perception – from feeling behind, to recognising that a solid foundation is already in place.

This process gives you a far more accurate picture of your current position and sets you up to build a credible, data-driven ESG baseline in the next stage.

3. Establishing Your ESG Baseline

Once you’ve identified the practices already in motion, the next stage is establishing an ESG baseline: a clear, evidence-led view of your current performance across the major themes. This is what turns scattered activity into something structured and directional.

A strong baseline does three things:

1. It creates visibility – bringing together all the policies, data points and operational realities that sit across your organisation. This includes qualitative information (like existing policies or cultural practices) and quantitative data (such as energy usage, workforce demographics or waste volumes).
2. Highlights gaps and inconsistencies. Every organisation has them: areas where data is incomplete, where practices vary between teams, or where impact hasn’t been measured. A baseline makes these gaps obvious, which is essential for prioritising what comes next.
3. Sets the stage for strategic planning. With visibility comes direction. Your baseline becomes the reference point for future targets, investment decisions and sustainability reporting.

The process doesn’t need to be complex. Modern sustainability tools – including continuous measurement frameworks like FuturePlus – simplify this stage. Our assessments break ESG into structured, practical questions aligned with the five core themes. You receive a clear profile of both current performance and future ambition, supported by expert advisory input.

📕Get the guide: For a deeper look at how this works in practice, see our guide on How SMEs Can Measure, Manage and Report Their Sustainability Impact.

4. Identifying Your Risks and Opportunities

Once you have a clear baseline, the next step is determining where to focus. This is where your assessment begins to shape strategy. Instead of attempting to tackle everything at once, the goal is to isolate the areas that carry the greatest risk and the areas that hold the most potential value.

Assessing Risk

Your baseline will have revealed gaps, inconsistencies or areas where practices are emerging but not yet formalised. These signals often point to underlying risks within your organisation, such as:

• Limited visibility of energy use or emissions data, which affects regulatory readiness and future reporting accuracy.
• Underdeveloped diversity, equity and inclusion practices, which influence talent attraction, progression and retention.
• Gaps in supply chain oversight, including unclear labour/environmental standards or inconsistent due diligence across suppliers.
• Weak or informal governance processes, particularly around ethical conduct, decision-making and documentation.
• Exposure to environmental compliance requirements, especially where waste, water or emissions data is incomplete.
• Insufficient well-being, safety or workforce support structures, which can impact engagement, productivity and retention.

Understanding these risks early makes it possible to allocate resources where they are needed most.

Spotting Opportunities

Your baseline also highlights immediate value. Organisations often uncover opportunities such as:

• Cost reductions through improved energy efficiency, reduced waste or better resource management.
• Stronger procurement positioning, supported by clear and transparent ESG credentials.
• Greater appeal to talent, especially where wellbeing, flexibility, development and inclusion practices are already strong.
• Improved investor confidence through structured governance and clearer reporting.
• Better alignment with upcoming regulations, positioning the organisation ahead of compulsory requirements rather than reacting to them.
• Enhanced community and stakeholder relationships, particularly where social impact work already exists in pockets of the organisation.

Opportunities and risks frequently sit side by side. For instance, incomplete environmental data represents a reporting risk, yet improving it can unlock operational efficiencies and strengthen credibility with stakeholders.

Turning Insight Into Focus Areas

When risks and opportunities are reviewed together, patterns emerge quickly. Most organisations find that meaningful early priorities cluster within a small number of themes, such as:

• Energy and environmental impact
• People, well-being and inclusion
• Governance structure and documentation
• Supply chain practices and transparency

These themes provide focus, show where progress will deliver the greatest value, and ensure early efforts are aligned with real operational needs rather than assumptions.

5. Setting Ambitions That Provide Direction

Once your priorities are defined, the next stage is to translate them into ambitions that provide genuine direction. Ambitions work best when they sit between high-level intentions and the practical actions that make progress possible. They help you move from a broad understanding of your ESG priorities to a clear sense of what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.

Organisations often begin by defining ambitions around improving energy efficiency, establishing a more structured approach to diversity and inclusion, strengthening supplier standards, improving documentation and governance processes, or reducing environmental impacts.

A practical way to sharpen these ambitions is to use the SMART structure. This ensures each ambition is:

• Specific – focused on a clearly defined area
• Measurable – supported by metrics you can track
• Achievable – realistic within your operational and financial context
• Relevant – aligned with your most material ESG priorities
• Time-bound – linked to a clear timeframe for delivery

SMART ambitions set expectations, support accountability, and allow you to monitor progress over time. Like:

• Increasing representation within leadership roles by a clear target date
• Embedding ESG criteria into all supplier evaluations by a specific milestone
• Expanding employee training provision within an agreed timeframe

As new data becomes available, as performance improves, or as regulatory expectations evolve, your ambitions can develop with them. This iterative approach helps ensure your ESG strategy remains relevant and responsive while maintaining a consistent sense of forward movement.

Take Clipper Ventures, the company behind the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. As an organisation with the oceans at the heart of its existence, Clipper recognised that sustainability needed to be embedded into operations, not treated as an add-on. Following a comprehensive assessment process, they became FuturePlus IMPACT CERTIFIED in July 2024, using the platform to articulate their ambitions and track progress over time.

6. Embedding ESG Into Operations and Decision-Making

Ambitions only create impact when they shape how your organisation actually works. Embedding ESG means moving from intentions to day-to-day practice, the point where sustainability becomes how you operate, not a project you report on once a year.

Governance & Accountability

Why it matters:
Without clear ownership, ESG becomes fragmented, inconsistent and difficult to scale. Governance provides structure, accountability and a single source of truth.

How to action:

• Assign executive or board-level ownership to set direction and remove blockers.
• Create a cross-functional working group or Green Team with clear roles (Ops, HR, Finance, Procurement).
• Integrate ESG oversight into existing governance, rather than building parallel committees.
• Map policies (HR, H&S, procurement, data, ethics) that need updating to align with your ESG ambitions.
• Review governance quarterly – lightweight but consistent.

Takeaway: One owner, one process, shared responsibility.

Operational Integration

Why it matters:
ESG becomes meaningful when it shows up in the systems, processes and decisions that shape operations. This is where goals turn into measurable improvements.

How to action:

• Standardise data collection for key metrics (energy, emissions, training, diversity, H&S, supplier data).
• Add ESG criteria to procurement and supplier evaluation.
• Embed ESG targets in departmental plans (Ops, HR, Finance, Facilities).
• Update risk registers to include environmental, social and supply chain-related risks.
• Build ESG tasks into existing workflows (e.g., monthly H&S reporting, quarterly management packs).

Takeaway: ESG shows up everywhere – in data, procurement, planning and risk.

Culture & Engagement

Why it matters:
Culture is the difference between ESG that progresses and ESG that stalls. People engage when they understand the “why” and see their role in delivering it.

How to action:

• Share regular internal updates on progress, wins and upcoming priorities.
• Involve employees in shaping initiatives (e.g., green teams, wellbeing groups, D&I councils).
• Highlight good practice across the business — what’s working and why.
• Embed ESG into onboarding, performance conversations and professional development.
• Use ESG in storytelling: why it matters for your organisation, customers, and people.

Takeaway: Culture turns ambitions into behaviours.

🗣️Get expert advice: For additional support, our sustainability consulting services provide expert guidance that integrates with your team and turns sustainability ambitions into measurable action. Book a free consultation to see if this is the right fit for you. 

7. Communicating Progress Clearly and Credibly

Once ESG activity is embedded, the next step is communicating it effectively. Stakeholders, from investors to employees, want to understand not just what you’re doing, but how it’s progressing over time.

Expectations have moved beyond annual sustainability reports. Today, stakeholders expect clarity, comparability and timely updates. Occasional statements rarely satisfy that need.

Effective communication is evidence-led. That means:

• Metrics that show trends
• Policies that shape behaviour
• Explanations of how risks are managed
• Tangible examples of progress

This matters for credibility, avoiding greenwashing and meeting growing regulatory scrutiny.

The most trusted organisations communicate progress continuously. They update stakeholders as new data is gathered or new initiatives go live. Continuous measurement tools like FuturePlus make this possible, enabling real-time updates, refreshed dashboards and ongoing visibility.

Practical Toolkit: Who You’re Communicating With (and How)

Strand Palace Hotel has embraced this approach. As they put it: ‘Sustainability is at the core of what we do, and the FuturePlus framework helps us maintain a forward-thinking approach to responsible business practices.’ Honest, forward-looking communication is one of the strongest ways to build credibility – especially at the start of an ESG journey.

8. Establishing a Rhythm of Continuous Improvement

The final stage is shifting from periodic activity to a steady, repeatable rhythm of improvement. This is where ESG becomes part of how your organisation operates – not a project that resurfaces only when a report is due.

Continuous improvement doesn’t mean accelerating indefinitely. Create a cycle that’s maintainable and aligned with your priorities. This typically includes: 

• Regular data updates with quarterly or biannual reviews 
• Periodic ambition reviews as data quality improves or early goals are achieved 
• Ongoing operational alignment as understanding deepens 
• Regular internal communication that reinforces engagement
• Transparent external updates that maintain confidence

This rhythm doesn’t require major change – it requires consistency. Incremental progress, measured and communicated over time, creates more credibility than occasional high-intensity bursts. With this in place, ESG becomes part of planning, risk management and growth: fully integrated, supported by visibility and continuous refinement.

Where Does Your Organisation Stand?

Every organisation’s ESG journey starts somewhere different. Instead of asking if you’re doing enough, ask whether you have the clarity to see where you are, what matters most, and what to do next.

With a structured approach and the right support, you can navigate rising expectations with confidence, build internal alignment and strengthen long-term resilience. The hardest part is often just knowing where to begin.

If you’re ready to find out, we’d love to help. Book a discovery call with our team to explore how FuturePlus can support your organisation’s ESG journey.