How Bain’s sustainability efforts put it in the top 1% of rated companies
How Bain’s sustainability efforts put it in the top 1% of rated companies
After several years at gold, Bain earned a platinum rating from the sustainability organization EcoVadis, putting it in the top 1% of companies rated. This is the story of how the Bain Sustainability team achieved that rating, largely by spotlighting work already underway as a result of Bain’s longstanding commitment to sustainability, employee wellbeing, and responsible business conduct.
These teams each played a crucial role in the rating
While the Sustainability team led this project, the effort was companywide. Every team and office played a part, whether in helping Bain implement better risk controls, assessing vendors for their sustainability practices, or implementing leading equitable labor policies.
These teams each played a crucial role in the rating
While the Sustainability team led this project, the effort was companywide. Every team and office played a part, whether in helping Bain implement better risk controls, assessing vendors for their sustainability practices, or implementing leading equitable labor policies.
-
Finance
Bain’s Sustainability team sits partly within finance and manages Bain’s efforts to coordinate and report on climate, social, and governance initiatives. They received help from the Procurement team, which pursues a certification each year to verify its ethical behavior. Procurement also instituted a new survey to evaluate suppliers’ practices as they relate to the environment.
-
General Consulting
While consultants weren’t involved in this project directly, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues are a growing concern for all Bain clients. Bain has an entire Sustainability & Responsibility practice dedicated to helping companies navigate ESG.
-
Legal/Risk
The Risk team has built out an extensive process for managing Bain’s overall risk on environmental and social topics, ensuring Bain always operates with the highest ethical standards.
-
Talent Management
Bain’s HR teams were crucial in building the company’s credibility with the ratings organization EcoVadis, which looks at labor practices and management engagement with ESG-related issues. Bain has always received high marks in labor due to the talent management team’s ongoing work. In addition, the DEI team has done extensive work on creating a more inclusive and equitable organization.
-
Technology Solutions Group (TSG)
Bain’s TSG information security team was considering pursuing the International Standards Organization (ISO) certification for information security management, ISO 27001. When told it would contribute to the ratings project, they gave it greater priority and completed it ahead of schedule.
Background
Bain’s commitment and effort toward addressing climate change is decades old. The company has been carbon neutral since 2012 and has run on 100% renewable energy since 2020. Bain offers pro bono consulting work for leading environmental NGOs and maintains 55 “Green Teams” across its global offices to implement local initiatives to reduce its carbon footprint, in addition to global initiatives. In 2022, Bain’s carbon impact was net negative.
Bain also helps its clients make similar commitments and those clients were increasingly requesting to see Bain’s sustainability disclosures before hiring the firm. “The number of requests has increased as our clients grow savvier about environmental requirements,” says Casey Stelmach, Sustainability Practice Manager. “They're also a useful transparency check for us—they force us to ask, ‘Are we still leading in responsibility?’”
Casey is in charge of overseeing the annual disclosure process. She knew that lots of good progress was happening across the company, which wasn’t being factored into its current scores. In 2022, she set out to uncover and report on all of it.
The plan
Casey’s background is in environmental engineering, and prior to Bain, she worked for a Boston-based energy efficiency startup. She moved on to a career as a consultant at Bain, but when a role opened to work on sustainability, she leapt at it. “Climate issues are a moral imperative these days,” says Casey. “It’s impossible to ignore the realities. This is a massive, existential crisis. I wanted to play a role in helping companies and corporations be responsible citizens.”
And one doesn’t have to go into sustainability like Casey to help. “Our sustainability work goes well beyond the Sustainability team,” she says. “There are lots of roles that contribute to ethics, governance, labor, operations, and more where you can play a part.”
Casey began reaching out to other teams as the ratings deadlines loomed. There were two major ratings organizations and conventions for them to consider:
EcoVadis, which ranks companies on their overall ESG performance. It looks at environmental impact, labor, human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement. Bain was already at the gold level.
CDP, originally known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, ranks companies on their sustainability performance. Bain had earned an A- for the past three years.
Both EcoVadis and CDP evaluate companies’ maturity in sustainably managing their operations and their entire supply chains. None of the factors they judge upon are quick wins. “These are not boxes you can simply check,” says Casey. The only way for Bain to improve its rating was to have already made significant progress in these areas—which, luckily, it had.
Questions:
-
In which categories was Bain already doing well?
-
Where were Bain’s biggest opportunities?
-
What relevant work was already happening across Bain’s offices?
-
What could each sustainability-adjacent team contribute?
The approach
HR and labor have always been the bedrock of Bain’s ratings with EcoVadis, so Casey began there. She discovered that a mental wellness initiative in the London office had spread across Europe and become a program known as B.E.S.T., which Bain was now rolling out globally. That, in addition to Bain’s longstanding fair labor practices and many projects by the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team, buttressed Bain’s score in that area.
Next, Casey looked into Bain’s procurement function, which evaluates the company’s suppliers. The procurement team completes a certification each year known as CIPS to ensure it’s behaving ethically in all those relationships. Recently, they’ve also implemented a supplier assessment survey to evaluate all suppliers on ESG practices, and in particular, their environmental practices. Procurement had also implemented sustainable procurement and supplier diversity policies a few years prior.
Meanwhile, the operations and sustainability teams were implementing carbon budgets on internal travel, to reduce unnecessary expenditures and build dashboards to make everyone throughout the company aware of their office’s carbon spending.
Casey led her team to gather all the information and submit it to both EcoVadis and CDP.
The results
In 2022 Bain earned a platinum rating from EcoVadis. It maintained its A- rating from CDP, while increasing some scores within, like an A in supplier engagement. “It’s a big achievement to have made platinum,” says Casey. “Yet what earned us platinum this year would only get us gold next, which means we must always be doing better. It’s vital to remember we do these things because they're part of our True North principle—because they are the right thing to do. The score is a good reminder, and nice for transparency. But it’s about much more than that."
platinum rating from EcoVadis
rating from CDP, including an A on supplier engagement
functional teams involved (HR, Legal, Risk, IT, DEI, Procurement, Further)
