From 2025, ESG (Environment, Social & Corporate Governance) reporting will be an authority requirement for companies with over 500 employees. This means that, in addition to the annual accounts, a report must also be submitted on the company’s objectives to reduce climate impacts, the work with social balance and, for example, equality in management and the board. From 2026, the requirement will also apply to companies with over 250 employees and a turnover of over 40 million Euro. From 2027, the threshold will be lowered again.
Goes for suppliers too
In order to be able to submit that report, the large companies must also have control over the ESG figures of suppliers and sub-suppliers. So if an electrician has to go out and install a heat pump at a large company, the electrician must have a handle on ESG.
It may sound bureaucratic and expensive, but in fact it is quite simple, and it can be used as marketing for the company:
– The biggest challenge is actually finding out what is important to your company and what can be measured. So you must have control over your data. But it is much more than just CO2, says Claus Madelung, senior business developer at Business Lolland-Falster.
The only limit to what can be included in the ESG report is the imagination. The requirement is that it must be measurable – just like with the financial accounts.
ESG is marketing
Claus Madelung mentions the auditing company Aage Maagensen as a prime example of how to prepare an ESG account:
– If you are a little bit smart, then you use it as marketing. I have bullied Thomas Henckel (CEO of Aage Maagensen, ed.) that their ESG report is much more marketing than ESG, but it is really effective, says Claus Madelung.
FemernReport naturally immediately calls Aage Maagensen, who is also mentioned in several other places when the conversation falls on best practice within ESG. Here, co-owner Tina Ørum Hansen confirms that there is good marketing in the ESG report:
Aage Maagensen had a good story
– After all, we are not subject to any legislation that requires us to report ESG. But we needed to demystify it. And we thought we had a good story to tell. So we have spent quite a few hours writing a lot of text. The ESG report can just as well be a communication and marketing task as a task for the bookkeeping, says Tina Ørum Hansen.
See Aage Maagensen’s ESG report for 2021/2022 here.
MSE makes it simple
The construction company MSE submitted its first ESG report together with its impressive annual accounts for 2022/2023. It is an excellent example that you do not need either a large communications department or an advertising agency to get started with ESG:
– It will probably get sharper with time. But the first time is always the hardest. I don’t yet know what we have to do differently, but we will continue to work on it, says Jan Sørensen, director of MSE.
See MSE’s ESG report for 2022/2023 here.
Keep an eye out for courses
At Business Lolland-Falster, they also experience great interest in ESG, and there is also good demand for the courses the organization holds on the subject. And it’s a good place to start, says Claus Madelung:
– Keep an eye out, for example, for our offer of ESG courses and information. The business houses will also offer a lot. And then it’s just a matter of getting started. ESG will not just become an authority requirement and a competitive parameter. It is already a competitive parameter. But a good bookkeeper gets it right in 95 percent of cases. And it doesn’t have to be expensive. I myself am responsible for the budget for Business Lolland-Falster’s ESG, and I don’t expect to spend more than DKK 10,000 on it, says Claus Madelung.
