Aligning Your Values to Do the Right Thing

Published byAngus MacLeod

12th March 2024

ESG is a commitment to your employees, partners, investors and more. Angus MacLeod, partner at Wright Johnston & Mackenzie, explains what it is and its significance

Times have changed, and continue to at a rapid pace — staying ahead of the curve is vital for any organisation that claims to be modern, innovative or progressive.

Often at the centre of this journey to stay at the forefront of commercial sensibilities is an effective Environmental, Social and corporate Governance (ESG) strategy or set of policies.

ESG is a set of considerations that all responsible, forward-thinking, 21st-century businesses should think about.

It is a commitment to your employees, partners, suppliers, investors, friends, and family members. They want to know your business is doing the right thing and that your values align with theirs.

At Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie (WJM), it is something we, working closely with Irwin Mitchell, are being proactive about.

Based in Scotland, with offices in capital city Edinburgh, business hub Glasgow, Inverness, Dunblane and Dunfermline, WJM is a firm that not only educates our clients on ESG, but our employees, too.

Meeting ESG responsibilities to protect people, communities, and the planet without compromising ambition as a business can be a challenge. It’s about prioritising what’s important and managing the impact we have on the world around us.

There are benefits too, of course, to this work, including ensuring you’re compliant with regulatory requirements, business growth, cost reduction, talent acquisition and retention, resilience and futureproofing and, crucially, having your ESG offering in order can help attract investment.

For our people, although we’re a business, we don’t want to be an impersonal corporate entity. Our long pedigree as a responsible business rooted in the communities we serve means we try to reflect the needs and wishes of our people and our clients, and act responsibly towards the world around us.

WJM is currently developing an ESG strategy of its own, inspired by that of our new colleagues in Irwin Mitchell, which we hope can act as a guide through the often-murky waters of the modern commercial world.

Focusing on our clients, one of the key cornerstones of our external offering is our ESG Advisory Service.

Manned by our ESG experts, the focus is on helping organisations to protect their brand, support growth and investment, ensure compliance with regulations, focus on talent retention and build commercial resilience.

Our legal advisory suite offers expertise on business protection and resilience, corporate structure, governance and ethics, regulatory compliance, digital, cyber and data protection, people and social matters, and environmental sustainability, to name but a few.

Another vital tenet of our ESG proposition is training surrounding diversity and inclusion (D&I).

The D&I assessment is a tool we are using to help our clients understand and build their bespoke inclusion strategies and to advise on the steps to be taken to set goals, imbed an inclusive culture, and measure and learn from the activity.

To help embed an inclusive culture, we also plan to provide D&I training via an e-learning programme, targeted at employees, line managers and senior leadership, alongside face-to-face training.

Another part of our offer will be our Cyber Security Health Check. This interface will help our clients understand the cyber risks they are exposed to and the key hygiene factors to help reduce those risks.

As our clients and employees navigate these new innovations, of course, there will be questions and that is why we have exciting plans to roll out our ESG Hub — a free online resource, which aims to help organisations stay on the front foot with the latest insights.

And, while the main purpose of our ESG Proposition is to help and inspire people to do business responsibly and sustainably, we also provide and support relevant horizon scanning and thought leadership.

Outwith our work with clients, as part of my role as an ambassador for Highland Renewables, an innovative sustainability and tourism partnership, WJM is trying to act as a catalyst in the area and create connections.

As a partner at our Inverness office, I’ve witnessed environmental policy become progressively more and more central to our day-to-day work. Indeed, across our entire client base, there is increased interest in the field.

Clients are looking to draw individual aspects of what was once their corporate social responsibility (CSR )model together under a broader environmental heading, such as the importance of having policies in place that are good for the planet.

At WJM, that is something we are hugely passionate about as a firm. We recently hosted another installment of our popular annual renewables seminar to dig deeper into the latest innovations and trends in the sector.

We must keep up to date with the ever-evolving requirements of our clients and this individual piece of work speaks to the entire ethos at WJM.

In 2024, ESG sums up the very soul of a business. In our view this ought not to be purely transactional and should be based on a common set of values set deep at the foundation of the way you operate.

The most important thing, however, is to put it into practice, pushing forward innovation and maintaining our proud reputation as a progressive and, crucially, a responsible business.

This article first appeared in Legal Practice Management magazine