Mandi McReynolds, the Global Head of ESG in Workiva, joins the show to discuss how tech solutions have made ESG reporting easier, what organizations should consider before investing in tech, and the significance of putting stakeholders at top priority, and the future of tech in ESG.
▶️ Simplifying ESG with Thomas Fox & Mandi McReynolds:
Key points discussed in the episode:
✔️ Mandi McReynolds emphasizes communicating with your stakeholders to identify your company’s societal and business values. Stakeholders consist of internal, external, and customers.
✔️ Mandi McReynolds describes how Workiva simplifies the ESG reporting process.
✔️ Internal controls are the backbone of an effective ESG program. To create processes that stakeholders can trust, have different subject matter experts to add value to the discussion.
✔️ Look at the business value drivers and societal impact value drivers of your ESG plan. Before investing in tech and talent, identify your strategic value in materiality assessment and assessment engagement.
✔️ Bring a holistic picture of what your stakeholders care about regarding ESG.
✔️ How financial value has always been intrinsically linked to ESG reporting.
✔️ Find the balance between achieving your ESG commitments and not burning dollars.
✔️ Mandi McReynolds gives her predictions on the future of the technological component of ESG.
Mandi McReynolds is an award-winning author, educator, and practitioner-scholar. She has spent her career building corporate responsibility and environmental, social, and governance divisions across four different industries. Mandi serves as the Senior Director, Environment, Social, and Governance at Workiva. McReynolds is the co-editor and co-author of Diving Deep in Community Engagement: A Model for Professional Development. She received her B.A. in Organizational Communications from Cedarville University and M.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies: Speech Communication, Women Studies, and Higher Education from Iowa State University. She enjoys swimming and playing volleyball with her daughter, Ava, and traveling with her husband, Adam.
Resources
Learn more about Workiva – ESG reporting made simple – https://www.workiva.com/.
Mandi McReynolds on LinkedIn
ESG Talk Podcast
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Tag: ESG
Tom Fox welcomes Jules Oringel as his guest this week, and she may have the most unique story that’s ever been shared on The ESG Report. Jules is a second-year student at UNC where she double majors in Business Administration concentrating on ESG, Sustainability and Human Organizational Leadership & Development, with a minor in Public Policy. She’s here to talk about her passion for ESG and sustainability, and the road to pursuing it as a professional career post-grad.
Entering the World of Sustainable Development
Tom asks Jules what led to her studies at UNC. Jules explains that in 2018, after losing a loved one in the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, she founded Return Home Supplies, a youth-led nonprofit organization working towards ending gun violence in America. Speaking about gun safety legislation not only helped her heal from trauma, but also educated her on how policy and business were intermixed in a way she’d never understood before.
She was really introduced to ESG in college, and was so interested that she declared a major in business in addition to her focus in public policy. In Jules’ words, “Taking classes in ESG is just opening my eyes to what ESG in business and nonprofit can do to make the world a better place.”
The Impact of Customers on ESG
In her classes, Jules is learning about the economic benefits of working towards sustainable development goals as a business. Some notable benefits include higher sales, employee retention, and brand loyalty. She cites Patagonia as a worthy example for other businesses to follow. “We can’t go through and do hours of research on every single product we’re purchasing,” she comments. However, she continues, if we are mindful of the companies we purchase products from, we can make our own carbon footprints more sustainable. Ultimately, though, it’s up to corporations to focus on ESG to enact greater change.
Generation Z and ESG’s Future
The current generation is very willing to embrace many concepts pertaining to social justice. Tom asks Jules why she thinks that may be. “My generation is the most diverse, and the generation most focused on social and economic justice,” Jules claims. Generation Z strives to eventually work for organizations that care about their employees, their environmental impact, and forming long-standing partnerships with social organizations working to alleviate standing issues in our society.
However, she highlights the fact that without large companies listening to what Gen Z is looking for in terms of ESG, none of these problems will be solved. She hopes that as this generation continues to educate themselves and enters the work force, employers will begin to see the value of ESG.
Why Should ESG Internships Be Offered?
Jules speaks about the process of applying for internships. Tom asks her, “Do you have any thoughts that you could share directly to businesses about why they should offer ESG internships?” Though there are tons of marketing and finance internships available, it’s difficult to find roles in ESG despite the high levels of interest expressed by the current generation. Jules understands the requirement of 5 to 10 years of experience for most of the roles that are offered in social and environmental impact management, but encourages companies to work on providing more opportunities to learn from the best in sustainability, to ensure that they have convenient access to people who are ready and willing to tackle ESG issues.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals
There are 17 UN sustainable development goals ranging from zero hunger to decent work and economic growth. Each goal comes with specific targets to help meet them by the year 2030. The UN Global Compact hopes to provide different frameworks and resources to encourage businesses to embrace these goals. Should businesses cooperate, we have a chance to achieve a much more prosperous and equitable future, Jules points out.
RESOURCES
Tom Fox’s email
Jules Oringel | LinkedIn | Instagram | Return Home Supplies
UN Global Compact
Categories
What is the Role of Tax in ESG?
What is the intersection of tax and compliance? Why does a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or compliance professional need to sit down with the corporate head of tax? How does a corporate tax function fit into a best practices compliance program? It turns out there is quite a bit a compliance professional can learn from a tax professional. Moreover, there are many aspects of tax which should be considered by a CCO and compliance professional from an overall risk management perspective. Unfortunately, these questions are rarely explored in the compliance community. In this episode, we explore the unexplored topic of the role of tax in a corporate ESG program.
How Tax and ESG Intersect
Tracy tells Tom, “There are external forces pulling tax into the ‘S’ and ‘G’ of ESG.” In the social sector, different jurisdictions have different tax rates and laws, and as companies begin to operate in a tax-efficient manner, their activities will gravitate towards lower tax regimes. Tracy adds, “You’ve got forces trying to push the concept of ‘fair share’ rather than compliance with tax laws of different jurisdictions.” Governance-wise, it’s becoming more common for companies to be required to talk about their compliance tax audits.
The Role of Tax in a Company
With the growing pressures on ESG transparency, there’s a push to standardize reporting and scorecarding of companies based on their tax transparency. This would include things like the reporting of an organization’s effective tax rate.
Tax and ESG in Multinational Organizations
Institutional investors play a major role in impacting the activities of a multinational company. When making investment decisions, these entities heavily incorporate ESG scorecards with tax transparency, further emphasizing the need for a relationship between the two sectors.
Resources
Tracy Howell | Email | LinkedIn
Vault Platform CCO Tori Reichman joins the show to discuss how employers should embrace their employees’ expectations, use tech solutions to report misconduct, value ethics and mission alignment more than ever before, and what companies should do to retain top talent.
▶️ Supporting the S in ESG through Tech Solutions with Tori Reichman:
Key points discussed in the episode:
✔️ Tori Reichman explains her interpretation of the S in ESG.
✔️ The role of ethics and ESG implementation in a company’s culture. Employees are encouraged to report misconduct so cases can undergo evaluation and investigation.
✔️ Tech solutions help businesses have a more precise grasp on their ethical health. Having data all in one place takes away all the extra work.
✔️ Companies are now held to a higher standard due to employees being more vocal when their practices are considered unethical or go against their morals.
✔️ While millennials and Gen Z-ers are more comfortable leaving jobs for greener pastures, baby boomers and Gen X-ers prefer to stay longer. However, both choose employment in companies that align with their values and beliefs.
✔️ The Great Resignation resulted from employees realizing they disagreed with their workplace’s culture and mission. As time passed, workers shifted to a more realistic approach in selecting their employment.
✔️ When companies are true to their vision and mission, this encourages employees to stay longer. The interest to evolve and implement ESG platforms has reached organizational levels that have never been seen before.
✔️ How a business interacts internally attracts new talent. Modern employees consider things beyond the 8 hours when working for you.
Tori Reichman is a Founding Team Member and Chief Customer Officer in Vault Platform, where the vision is a world in which workplaces are inclusive, safe, and diverse. Vault’s mission is to provide companies with the world-class ethics and compliance tools they need, delighting them with innovative, simple, intuitive, and empathetic technology and surprising them with unrivaled customer support to help them achieve their goals.
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Do you have a podcast (or do you want to)? Join the only network dedicated to compliance, risk management, and business ethics, the Compliance Podcast Network. For more information, contact Tom Fox at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.
Lawrence Heim joins the podcast to discuss PracticalESG, the CCRcorp-run blog working to provide ESG information in bite-sized pieces, SEC’s proposed framework and its contents, the processes of regularizing standards, and what organizations must do to ensure accurate tracking and reporting.
▶️ Practical ESG with Lawrence Heim:
Key points discussed in the episode:
✔️ Practical ESG receives tons of positive feedback and aims to cut through the fluff and marketing.
✔️ With an expert advisory board, PracticalESG has had in-depth contributions on climate issues, investor perspectives, corporate culture, and how they all relate to a successful ESG program.
✔️ Just recently, the ISSB has made public a new multi-jurisdictional working group of regulatory agencies in the accounting and securities arenas for a number of countries.
✔️ Convergence is the process of establishing standards as regulatory. When IFRS adopts a standard, it isn’t automatically established as regulatory. Countries must go through legal and administrative processes to make them enforceable. FASB is responsible for this function in US jurisdiction.
✔️ The SEC’s proposed framework has three scopes: direct emissions, third-party emissions, and supply chain emissions.
✔️ Lawrence Heim notes a potential misunderstanding in the SEC proposal: CO2 emissions reporting by companies to EPA is limited to operations that emit 25,000 tons of CO2 annually – either directly from their locations or as a result of third-party combustion of the products manufactured (such as gasoline). EPA’s CO2 emissions reporting will not ease the proposed SEC emissions calculation burden for companies that are below the EPA threshold.
✔️ Manage and track responses to information requests in your organization. With receptionists, monitor how they reply to more technical questions and equip them with the right tools and know-how.
Lawrence Heim is the Editor of CCRCorp’s ESG platform, PracticalESG.com, where he shares insights based on over 35 years of supporting companies in environmental, health & safety compliance and management. He’s led various types of non-financial audits, designed corrective action programs and helped implement sustainability programs. He spent nearly a decade in-house at a Fortune 150 manufacturer and went on to help create the Global Environmental Risk Consulting Practice at Marsh USA. Later, Lawrence founded & led the Sustainability practice at Elm Consulting Group, and most recently, he led the development of supply chain due diligence standards at the Responsible Business Alliance/Responsible Minerals Initiative. When the SEC’s conflict minerals rules were under consideration, Lawrence was the only non-financial auditor selected to give testimony to the Commission. In 2018, he published the book “Killing Sustainability.” Lawrence also sits on the board of ASSET, a non-profit anti-slavery organization.
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
- China-Taiwan risk insurance. (WSJ)
- Airbus defendants claim UK government approved bribe payments. (Bloomberg)
- Is government investigation hurting US solar industry? (WaPo)
- SEC extends comment period on climate Change risk reporting. (Reuters)
Tom Fox is chatting with Jay Rosen in this week’s ESG Report. They discuss the critical factors involved in aligning your company culture with your ESG strategy.
What is Culture?
ESG considerations have been taking center stage and are now critical for sustainable success. However, a key area organizations may overlook when planning their ESG strategy is culture, which refers to the way things get done within an organization, comprising norms, beliefs, and behaviors that determine how people show up at work.
How to Shift Company Culture
“Getting culture right is essential for any successful transformation,” Jay says. Investing heavily in ESG-friendly structures, workforce strategies, and governance models only do so much, but the real change lies in educating the company around the goals of ESG, aligning hearts and minds.
Jay points out that few people are prepared to alter their attitudes and beliefs simply because senior management tells them they should. Leaders are therefore required to give people a say in culture change and make it clear to everyone in the organization why the change matters, and how it allows them to meet consumer and societal needs better.
What Makes Up the Right ESG Culture?
If a company says they’re all about ESG, then they need to show it. Internal company policies, processes, and cultures must align with their external communications. Correct behaviors can include things as little as carrying a reusable water bottle, using public transport, or avoiding unnecessary printing; these can all enhance your credibility as a leader of an ESG program. “Any sustainable change starts with a culture and mindset shift,” Jay tells Tom.
RESOURCES
Tom Fox’s email
Jay Rosen | LinkedIn
Welcome to the Great Women in Compliance Podcast, co-hosted by Lisa Fine and Mary Shirley.
Today Lisa speaks with Ann Sultan, Partner and Practice Lead for the Europe-Caucasus-Asia Practice Group at Miller & Chevalier. Ann helps multinational companies build their compliance programs and conduct global investigations to support their anti-corruption, anti-harassment, and anti-discrimination objectives.
Ann has spent most of her career in law firms and talks about how she built her practice and career, noting how the support of more senior women at Miller & Chevalier was impactful in her career growth. Lisa and Ann also discuss the topic of diversity as a regulatory issue, and how the NASDAQ guidance on this topic and the UK FCA statements make this even more clear.
Ann also contributed to “Sending the Elevator Back Down: What We’ve Learned From Great Women in Compliance,” (CCI Press 2020), and Lisa and Mary will be guests at the Seven Elements Book Club on May 11 on Zoom to discuss the book. Please message them if you would like to know more.
Are you attending Compliance Week’s annual conference? The GWIC team of Lisa, Tom, and Mary will all be speaking and look forward to saying hello to listeners of Compliance Podcast Network listeners in DC!
Corporate Compliance Insights is a much-appreciated sponsor and supporter of GWIC. You can subscribe to the Great Women in Compliance podcast on any podcast player by searching for it and we welcome new subscribers to our podcast.
Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.
Attorneys and professors in law David Snyder and Sarah Dadush join the podcast to discuss the role of contracting in ESG, how a conventional approach to writing contracts may not be the best choice, which issues are fixed, and how accountability should be on both the buyer and supplier.
▶️ Contracting for ESG with David Snyder and Sarah Dadush:
Key points discussed in the episode:
✔️ Supply chains are doing enough for ESG compliance. David Snyder and Sarah Dadush aim to combat this with more effective measures.
✔️ Policies remain unimplemented if they aren’t in the contract. Having a supplier code of conduct written with the assistance of a business lawyer isn’t enough to create change.
✔️ Working at an oil refinery helped David Snyder learn the true culprit – organized crime. He wanted human and environmental efforts to be treated the same way as product manufacturing.
✔️ ESG can impact both consumer and investor decisions. The California Supply Chains Transparency Act pushed for full disclosure directed at the customers.
✔️ Focusing only on forced labor leaves out other problems.
✔️ Traditional approaches to contracting ESG don’t work, Sarah Dadush says. Not only does it aggravate human rights risks but also increases the company’s chances of legal violations.
✔️ David Snyder emphasizes the importance of risk as part of supply chain management and compliance obligations. Lawyers should also play their part in handling clients properly instead of resorting to risk shifting.
✔️ Contracts don’t fix all supply chain issues. It all boils down to supply chain resilience. A weaker foundation puts companies in greater danger, especially in times of difficulty like the COVID-19 pandemic.
✔️ Buyers should be responsible when exiting contracts. Contracts have been misused at the height of the pandemic, and consumers are now urging businesses to be accountable for their shortcomings.
David Snyder was appointed professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law in the fall of 2007 and was appointed director of the Business Law Program in 2008. During 2021-2022, he also holds a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute (Florence). He graduated summa cum laude from Tulane University Law School in 1991, and he has been a professor of law at Tulane, Indiana (Bloomington), and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He has been a regular visiting professor at the law school of the University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) since 2012, and has also been a visiting professor at the University of Paris 10 (Nanterre La Défense), Boston University, and the College of William and Mary. In addition, he has taught summer courses at the University of Mainz (Germany). After graduating from law school, Professor Snyder served as a law clerk to the Honorable John M. Duhé Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and subsequently joined the D.C. firm of Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells). In 2014 Professor Snyder was awarded a MacCormick Fellowship during which he delivered the annual Wilson Memorial Lecture at the University of Edinburgh.
Sarah Dadush’s research lies at the intersection of business and human rights. Her scholarship explores various innovative legal mechanisms for improving the social and environmental performance of multinational corporations. She directs the Law School’s newly-established Business & Human Rights Law Program and co-leads an ABA Business Law Section Working Group that has developed a comprehensive toolkit for upgrading international supply contracts to better protect workers’ human rights.
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Do you have a podcast (or do you want to)? Join the only network dedicated to compliance, risk management, and business ethics, the Compliance Podcast Network. For more information, contact Tom Fox at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.
Tom Fox is back for a new episode of The ESG Report. He’s joined by Professor Karen Woody, and they go inside the SEC to take a look at the process and procedure, as well as the arguments made against the recently proposed rule around ESG.
The Proposal Process
“These rules aren’t just picked from the sky,” Karen explains. There are a number of people at the SEC who come together to devise these rules, with a lot of time being spent working through the proposal process. After the rule is written, the public has 60 days to comment on it, and once this period ends, the SEC takes these comments under advisement to promulgate a final rule.
Challenging the Dissent
Karen points out that in the past, there has always been dissent whenever a rule was proposed in the SEC. However, the recent presence of dissent at almost every turn in the commission has created what feels like a very political space that – according to Karen – isn’t doing anyone any favors.
A major argument that was raised is that promoting rules about climate does not lie within the SEC’s scope of authority. Karen disagrees; she states, “It would be hard to find an industry that won’t be touched by a climate event,” citing the many corporate sectors that would be negatively affected should a climate emergency occur.
Another big point of issue was that investors don’t care about ESG. To rebut this, Karen brings up the Conflict Minerals Regulation, and how it is the perfect counterpoint to ESG. ESG is an investor-led movement, because people do want to know how green companies are.
Challenging a Final Rule
The procedure of challenging an SEC rule once it becomes final differs depending on where the challenge comes from. “The SEC is its own mini country,” says Karen, because they write and enforce their own rules, and the commission has its own court with an appointed administrative law judge. She explains the legal process that is involved with filing a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission should one wish to challenge a final rule, which involves answering to their administrative law judge, and eventually to an Article III court.
RESOURCES
Tom Fox’s email
Karen Woody | LinkedIn | Twitter
