This past year has been a busy time for Social Invest on the ESG front – particularly in the housing sector.
We worked with a number of housing organisations, including Bromford, Sovereign, Soha, Abri, Home Group, CHP, Hyde and leading sector funder bLEND, part of The Housing Finance Corporation, with their ESG approaches and reports for the 2021/22 reporting cycle. We’re also proud to be the communications partner to Sustainability for Housing, which oversees the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing.
Our projects have also seen us team up with corporate finance advisory Newbridge Advisors in some cases, who brought in their expertise in ESG-linked debt, finance frameworks and the debt capital markets.
How does Social Invest’s ESG reporting support work?
Our ESG support starts with client-tailored sprint workshops with all the key people who will be working on the ESG reports in the organisations we’re supporting. These key people often include CEOs, CFOs, sustainability managers, ESG managers and heads of operational departments, as well as marketing and communication managers/directors.
At Social Invest, we believe ESG is embedded in all aspects of business operations, so it is important to have all the key people inputting into the report from the start – this also helps to embed ESG values into the roots of an organisation.
We work hand-in-hand with people across the business – including the communications team – with the aim of helping them feel engaged and empowered by the approach and excited by the potential that ESG has to offer.
For those clients who were just starting off on their ESG journey with their first ESG report, we helped them identify their ESG priorities, set out what they wanted to achieve, and how they can get started with their new ESG work.
And, for those who were going into their second or third year of reporting, we helped them recap and reflect on their ESG journey so far, how they could evolve and improve their reporting this year, as well as challenging them on their ESG goals.
Social Invest and Newbridge are engaged in the ESG and sustainable finance worlds, keeping up-to-date with the latest developments and investing our time to understand what’s coming down the line on ESG. We bring that knowledge to the workshop process, often providing valuable insights on the wider markets, regulatory environment and the way in which key corporate frameworks are evolving.
Once the sprint workshops were completed, we supported our clients to plan what their ESG report would look like and what should be included – for example, the framework they should adopt – using our expert knowledge and desktop research of their sector. This part of the work included assisting clients in collating their data, drafting the report copy, and then guiding them through the various design stages. For some projects, we worked with the client’s in-house design team, and on others, we used our designers.
If required, we also supported clients on the launch of their reports too. This was through writing press releases, setting up media interviews and coordinating in-house communication teams.
We enjoyed supporting our clients this year, and seeing their development during their ESG journey is excellent. We’d also like to give thanks to Newbridge Advisors who have also partnered up with us on some of these projects. Their support has helped our clients create in-depth and authentic reports.
If you’re looking to take your ESG reporting to the next stage in the new upcoming reporting cycle, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team. To see how else we could help your organisation with comms solutions, check out our case studies here.
For further information contact:
Nishall Garala, Account Manager, Social Invest – nishall.garala@social.co.uk
Luke Cross, Director, Social Invest – luke.cross@social.co.uk