ESG Target Operating Model

The increasing regulatory requirements as well as the higher expectations and transparency demands of the capital market and investors require significantly more capacity and skills than are currently available in most companies.

Existing organisational and reporting structures are often not sufficient to manage and operationalise ESG requirements in a targeted manner and therefore require adjustments to the organisational structure, governance and processes.

These need to be redefined in order to ensure efficient and compliant cross-functional collaboration. Clear roles, responsibilities and new working models are required. Skills and an understanding of ESG are usually not fully available and need to be built up gradually.

The requirements of the CSRD in particular mean that companies have to deal with more and more information from different parts of the organisation. A technology-supported solution is therefore required to determine the KPIs and for the associated reporting.

The ESG Target Operating Model provides a framework and a defined procedure for taking into account the corporate strategy and business model with regard to ESG requirements and defines the future orientation of processes within the following dimensions:

• Role: Mission / Vision / Purpose, ESG ambition level and maturity, strategic goals and roadmap
• Governance: organisation of committees and boards, integration into the corporate governance structure, reporting channels
• Organisation: organisational structure, management, tasks and responsibilities (RACI)
• Processes: Goals and KPIs, process re-design, activity split
• Technology: Benchmarking, technical requirements, data models and ESG tool selection
• Employees: ESG in corporate culture and change management, skills development (training and enablement), empowerment and ESG community