What Does ESG Stand For?
ESG stands for environmental, social & governance, they’re essentially a set of standards monitored by the businesses following & potential investors. These represent the 3 main topic areas & are often referred to as pillars within ESG frameworks. An example of ESG could be a company’s commitment to diversity, equity & inclusion, as well as their labour practices and impact on the local community.
How Does ESG Affect Business Growth?
Having a significant impact on corporate growth in the modern world, ESG is definitely a factor that affects business growth. Companies that adopt ESG principles not only reduce risks related to environmental and social challenges, but also open fresh growth opportunities. Businesses can improve their reputation, draw ethical investors, obtain affordable financing, and even grab emerging market opportunities by implementing sustainable practises, lowering carbon footprints, developing diverse and inclusive workplaces, and exhibiting excellent governance.
In essence, organisations seeking long-term success in a more ethical and responsible corporate environment must grasp how ESG impacts company growth.
Smart IT Choices & ESG
There are several steps businesses can take to accelerate change – and IT teams hold the key.
Although many companies are now well-versed in environmentally friendly measures such as recycling schemes and switching to renewable energy providers, other operational areas often lag behind. It’s all too common for organisations to be operating power-hungry PCs that do not maximise renewable energy sources. Many businesses do not realise that enterprise IT is a huge generator of CO₂, generating 1% of global emissions – that’s equivalent to half the emissions from aviation and shipping worldwide and equal to the total produced by the whole of the UK.
Using DaaS To Boost ESG Performance
Adoption of Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) is one way to contribute to ESG targets. VDIPOD, for example, is a purpose-built VDI platform hosted from data centres operating on 100% renewable energy. It provides firms with metrics and an audit trail to simplify ESG reporting. Organisations using this solution use 81.7% less energy with an 89% renewable power model at source (one VDI server supporting 60 laptops/thin clients) and CO₂eq reduction of up to 43%1 compared to traditional workstations.
Since migrating over 400 employees to VDIPOD, a multi-award-winning architecture studio has already achieved a three-fold increase in renewable power use and a 90% reduction in kilowatt hours per person.
Although the cost of implementing a green data centre on premise is unviable for most companies, IT teams can still make wise environmental choices about where to host their data and services. With public cloud hyperscale’s increasingly under fire for under-used resources and poor environmental controls, smaller cloud providers may be a consideration. Creative’s private cloud solutions are hosted from Equinix-powered data centres, which operate on 100% renewable energy. The company’s data centres are optimised to achieve a power usage effectiveness ratio (total energy used versus energy delivered to IT equipment) of c.1.2 versus an industry average of 1.8.
Explore Ground-breaking IT Solutions with Creative ITC
With a growing body of evidence that clearly links corporate ESG initiatives to value, higher profits and new growth opportunities, no business or IT leader should view investments in sustainable practices as ‘nice-to-have’. Along with proof of operational and financial gains, sustainable firms are shown to outperform their peers on EBITDA and profitability through increased productivity, top-line growth and lower operational costs. These organisations are also better placed to take increasingly stringent regulatory reporting requirements in their stride. Other benefits for publicly owned companies include reduced downside risk, greater equity returns and improved credit ratings.
Global engineering company SNC-Lavalin is working with Creative ITC to reduce its global data centres from 16 to three. “One of the biggest benefits we’ve already seen in our carbon footprint is we’ve reduced storage by 69%, electricity by 53% and floorspace by 45%,” said Steve Capper, Group CIO of SNC-Lavalin.
As climate concerns grow more urgent, business and IT leaders should keep these benefits front of mind and leave no stone unturned to transform their operations for the better. Future success – for their firm and the planet – depends on it.