Businesses create both internal and external  impact. Inwardly, companies impact their own employees, investors, and financial viability while simultaneously implicating the external environment, consumers, and society. Knowing what matters to your company allows you to understand and assess your stakeholders’ priorities and choose sustainability initiatives with the most impact. Without defining what is material to your business, it is challenging to make corporate governance, risk management, or strategic planning decisions. Strategic planning, often called a materiality study, will determine the environmental, operational, and financial boundaries of impact as determined by your stakeholders’ input. It will also set you up to build sustainability metrics and goals that resonate with your investors, consumers, supply chain, and employees.

The first step to mapping out where you want to go is gauging where you currently are. Our team will begin by evaluating your existing environmental, social, and governance policies and procedures to establish a baseline. From there, we will determine the most critical stakeholder perspectives to collect. Stakeholders include individuals within your organization and external to your organization. Internal stakeholders to consider include leadership, plant managers, department heads, supervisors, etc. External stakeholders can include suppliers, customers, and the local community. Our team will help you determine the best methodology for feedback, whether a survey, forum, webinar, or all-day event.

Gathering this data will bring understanding to a variety of values and perspectives within your company. It will allow us to perform a gap analysis between your current efforts and your stakeholders' aspirational visions. Our team will help you create an implementation plan to guide your company forward in sustainability efforts that will significantly impact your organization.

• Prioritize sustainability efforts
• Clear picture of the values and concerns of all stakeholders
• Unified vision and understanding within company
• Define measurable steps for improvement

Client Profile
Global leading pharmaceutical company

Before Foresight
This company wanted to pursue sustainability work on a greater scale but needed assistance to prioritize and strategize its efforts. Historically, they chose initiatives based on assumed value to their stakeholders without collecting any concrete feedback. Looking to invest further in ESG work, they decided to conduct a Materiality Study to create an actionable, strategic direction.

After Foresight
Our sustainability experts began by baselining this company’s current ESG efforts. We then gathered members of the C-Suite, upper management, and a team member from every department in the company and facilitated an all-day sustainability visioning event. At each person’s spot at the table was a placement which featured their baseline ESG data for easy reference. Together, this cross-sectional representation of the company created an ideal vision for where the company would be in the future. We gathered feedback on which ESG areas they valued most and those most neglected. In the intersection of their current efforts, ideal vision, and strongest felt-needs emerged their strategic plan. Our team synthesized the event’s feedback and provided the management team with an action plan that prioritized endeavors with the maximum ROI for their stakeholder.

Frequently Asked Questions

Our team will help you assess your goals and determine the appropriate scope for your study. This can include internal metrics from departments, management, and team members or external data from your community, supply chain, and consumers.

It can range from $10,000–$50,000, depending on the scope of surveying.

An internal materiality study takes 3–4 months to complete. If external surveying is involved, it typically takes 6–8 months.