Find out where your business stands on ESG, and what to fix first

What is an ESG assessment for a small business?

It is an honest look at how your business performs on environment, people and governance, the three areas that make up ESG. For a large company that can mean months of consultants and data requests. For an SME it should mean answering sensible questions about what you already do, then seeing clearly where the gaps are.

Most people look for one at a particular moment: a public sector bid with a sustainability section, a customer’s supplier questionnaire, a funding round with an investor who asks about ESG, or a grant form. In each case the questions are broadly the same, and it is far more comfortable to find your gaps yourself first.

What does the assessment cover?

The questionnaire runs in five plain-English phases: company profile, environmental, social, governance, and targets and plans. Anything that does not apply to you is skipped.

Environmental. Your carbon footprint, calculated to the GHG Protocol with the official UK government conversion factors. It covers heating fuels, vehicles, plant fuel and refrigerants in Scope 1, electricity and EV charging in Scope 2, and the Scope 3 sources a small business can measure, such as travel, commuting, homeworking, waste, water and deliveries. You get totals by scope, emissions per employee and energy use in kWh.

Social. Headcount, women in the team, leavers, diversity monitoring and your gender pay gap if you know it. Whether you pay the Real Living Wage or National Living Wage, the benefits you offer, training days and budget. Health and safety, including written risk assessments, your policy, incidents and lost-time incidents. Harassment policy, community activity and charitable giving, data protection and ICO registration.

Governance. Your code of conduct and what it covers, from anti-bribery and conflicts of interest to whistleblowing and data security. Your environmental policy and its commitments, how you manage ESG risk, who owns ESG, board make-up, any fines, and certifications such as Cyber Essentials, ISO 14001 or B Corp. Supplier due diligence, a modern slavery statement, and your payment terms.

Targets and plans. Any previous footprint, whether you have a carbon target such as net zero or a percentage reduction, your baseline and target years, and your priorities.

How is each practice marked?

Every social and governance practice gets one of five statuses: established, developing, not in place, not applicable, or unknown.

That is more useful than it sounds. “Developing” captures the very common small-business position of doing something informally without having written it down yet, such as a team that checks suppliers but has no supplier policy. “Not applicable” stops you being penalised for things that make no sense at your size, like a gender pay gap figure for a three-person firm. “Unknown” is an honest answer you can come back to.

Do you get an ESG score?

No, and if you searched for an ESG score that may be surprising, so here is the reasoning.

Scores and ratings are built to compare large listed companies with each other. Apply that to a ten-person firm and you mostly measure how much paperwork it has, not how well it is run. A low number with no explanation also tells you nothing about what to do on Monday morning.

ESG Now does not score or rank you against other businesses. You get a status for each practice, a carbon footprint in tCO2e with the working shown, and a clear record of what is in place. That gives a customer or investor the facts they actually need, and it gives you something genuinely comparable: your own results next year. Moving from “developing” to “established” on a handful of practices, and showing a lower footprint per employee, is a far stronger story than a number out of 100.

If a buyer specifically requires a third-party rating, our guide to EcoVadis for small businesses explains what that involves. The assessment here gives you most of the evidence those platforms ask for.

How do the gaps become an action plan?

Alongside the shareable report, you get a private, prioritised action plan that only you see. It lists your priorities in order, the data gaps worth closing (such as swapping an estimated energy figure for a real bill next year), and any policies worth adding next, such as an environmental policy or a code of conduct if you do not have one.

That turns a gap analysis into a short to-do list. Many small firms find the first few items take an afternoon each, and each one turns a “not in place” into “established” before the next tender or investor conversation. For more ideas, see ESG quick wins for small businesses and our ESG checklist for SMEs.

How long does it take?

A sole trader at home typically finishes in 10 to 15 minutes, a small team in co-working in 15 to 20, an office-based SME in 20 to 30, and a business with vehicles or premises such as a shop or workshop in 30 to 45. Answers save as you go, so you can pause to check a policy or find a bill.

Your first assessment is free, with no card needed. Start your ESG assessment and know exactly where you stand by the end of today.