Environmental, Social & Governance

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy is creating new challenges and opportunities for leaders to create sustainable, inclusive growth. Successful companies are implementing ESG strategies that increase financial, societal, and environmental impact as well as ensure long-term competitiveness. Achieving bold ambitions requires understanding current state performance and sector trends, managing diverse stakeholder interests, valuing risks and opportunities, and setting distinctive and measurable goals that build capabilities and broaden impact.

McKinsey brings a unique approach to ESG focused on value creation that involves benchmarking, strategy development, initiative design, program execution, investor and external communications, and reporting. Our capabilities are bolstered by unique, data-driven, and proprietary solutions supporting clients throughout each ESG journey. Our approach combines expertise of what drives values and impact within sectors, and our domain and social expertise stretches across ESG dimensions, such as sustainability, net-zero, culture and talent, diversity, equity, and inclusion, economic development, public health, education, and future of work, among many others.

What we do

Identifying value-creation opportunities

We diagnose current ESG positioning and evaluate performance by leveraging our proprietary ESG benchmarking tools, business value-at-stake (downside and upside), and rapid materiality assessment of ESG issues across stakeholders.

Differentiating strategies

We help create an integrated ESG strategy by setting aspirations and designing specific ESG initiatives, including business case and implementation considerations. The strategy encompasses learnings from peer benchmarking and best-in-class examples, as well as gathering input from interactive workshops.

Building execution capabilities

We support capability building for all employees, executives, and the board; establish an operating model to deliver on ESG goals, which includes incentives and talent needed, and build infrastructure for tracking and reporting progress.

Designing engagement strategies

We develop communications strategies internally and externally, support partnerships across external reporting, including investors, ESG standards, and ratings agencies.

45+

tools and assets across sustainability and ESG topics

700+

experts and practitioners globally dedicated to ESG across sectors

200+

clients have worked with us repeatedly on three or more ESG projects in the last three years

Examples of our work

Driving ESG strategy and transformation to launch operational and investment initiatives

We delivered an ESG transformation for a major European bank to enable ESG into core business and operations, involving senior leadership and entire organization. The core business approach included new ESG-focused products, a process for risk management, credit governance, and ESG screening for investments. Operational initiatives addressed employee well-being, procurement efforts, and philanthropy. The impact included over €150 billion invested in ESG funds—which was 60 percent of its total assets under management—€90 billion in energy-transition loans, and €25 billion in social loans.

Working with organizations to assess ESG performance, identify value creation opportunities, and build organizational capabilities

We partnered with a large Southeast Asian conglomerate facing pressure from investors, employees, and customers to develop an ESG strategy and roadmap. We evaluated current performance on over 25 ESG metrics at enterprise and business-unit levels, completed rapid materiality assessments with key stakeholders to identify priority ESG themes, and quantified value-at-stake for top ESG issues. This revealed an EBITDA upside potential of up to 33 percent and less than 28 percent of an EBITDA downside risk. We also conducted over 20 capability building sessions, including ESG masterclasses for executives and manager-level ESG upskilling.

Identifying new business building opportunities, designing targets for ESG, and developing roadmaps for execution

We supported a materials producer in North America in its ambitious end-to-end strategic shift toward ESG by partnering with the CEO and executive team to build an integrated ESG strategy. We benchmarked current performance, identified new business opportunities in recycling, and assessed decarbonization opportunities. The analysis enabled a detailed implementation roadmap for more than $1 billion in new business around circular economy and entry plan, 20-40 percent additional green-electricity sourcing potential, and 10 to 15 percent Scope 1 carbon-emissions reduction by 2030.