The ROI of Doing Good: How ESG Is Redefining Value Creation and Business Performance

Beyond Financial Metrics: The New Definition of Value

In today’s market, value creation extends far beyond traditional financial metrics. Investors are demanding credible ESG performance, regulators are enforcing sustainability disclosures, and public stakeholders expect transparency and accountability.

As a result, ESG is no longer a siloed, perception-driven exercise. It is now strategically embedded in business planning, delivering measurable value across financial, regulatory, and competitive dimensions.

Following “The Cost of Silence”, we now turn to its counterpart: what do companies gain when they actively integrate ESG principles into value creation strategies?

Importantly, ESG action does not replace traditional growth strategies — it enhances them. It’s not about sacrificing profit for purpose, but about revealing latent value that has always existed. ESG forces companies to see value creation as a dynamic, systemic process linked to environmental, social, and governance factors rather than isolated performance levers.

Environmental considerations uncover operational inefficiencies; social factors align with talent and culture; governance underpins disciplined, data-driven execution. Recognising and measuring these connections is key to translating ESG integration into tangible business performance.

Traditional vs ESG-Aligned Value Creation

1. Unlocking Long-Term Value by Tackling Hidden Inefficiencies

Traditional operational strategies aim for maximum efficiency through cost-cutting and automation. While these drive short-term margin gains, they can also erode long-term resilience by overlooking systemic inefficiencies and dependencies.

An ESG-aligned approach broadens the view — analysing how energy, water, materials, and labour are sourced, consumed, and wasted across the value chain. This exposes hidden costs and vulnerabilities that traditional accounting often misses, such as emissions hotspots, energy losses, and supplier risks.

By addressing these inefficiencies through energy audits, waste assessments, and supply chain analysis, companies can reduce costs while improving resilience to resource and climate risks. A UNDP study found that organisations mitigating climate-related supply chain risks achieved measurable gains in both economic and environmental performance.

Anthesis has helped clients realise this dual benefit:

• Unlocking £1.8 million in energy savings for JLL.

• Reducing 17,550 kg of annual food waste for Righteous Gelato without major capital investment.

• Supporting 3,500+ suppliers through Tesco Exchange’s circular supply chain platform to cut waste and production costs.

This demonstrates that efficiency and sustainability are no longer opposing forces — they are mutually reinforcing pathways to lasting value.

2. From Efficiency to Engagement: Purpose as a Performance Driver

Traditional approaches to talent and culture often rely on extrinsic motivators — KPIs, performance reviews, and financial rewards — to drive productivity. While effective to a point, they overlook the deeper human drivers of engagement and innovation.

An ESG-aligned culture builds intrinsic motivation through purpose, inclusion, and shared values. When employees see their work contributing to meaningful environmental or social impact, they show greater commitment, creativity, and collaboration.

Research from Great Place to Work shows that purpose-led organisations consistently outperform peers in revenue growth, innovation, and employee engagement.

Rather than asking only what people deliver, leading organisations ask why they choose to contribute — and design programs that connect everyday work to real-world impact.

Anthesis has supported such transformations, including:

• Developing a purpose platform for the Billington Group, engaging 2,000+ employees — with over 90% purpose-driven within six months.

• Enabling Yorkshire Valley Farms to achieve 3.4x higher social media engagement through a purpose-driven business model.

The result: a culture that turns purpose into performance.

3. Technological Enablement: Turning ESG Data into Competitive Advantage

Technology has long been a lever for operational efficiency and growth — and now it’s also becoming central to governance and sustainability.

Traditionally, ESG data was collected for compliance reporting. Today, forward-thinking companies use digital ESG systems to generate actionable insights, streamline reporting, and monetise their sustainability capabilities.

ESG technology is evolving from a cost of doing business into a source of differentiation and new revenue.

Anthesis enables this shift through digital solutions such as:

• Anthesis Mero, implemented across 300+ Grupo Éxito stores for ESG data collection.

• Anthesis RouteZero, helping companies track and document emissions transparently.

• Supporting Belu Water to demonstrate carbon neutrality under PAS 2060.

• Developing Reckitt’s Sustainable Innovation Calculator, completing life-cycle assessments in under 30 minutes across 700+ products.

Companies that embed ESG into their digital strategy early can monetise sustainability data, enhance reporting efficiency, and meet growing market expectations for transparency.

4. Redefining Market Growth Through ESG

Traditional growth focuses on scale — new products, geographies, or acquisitions. But in today’s environment, markets reward authenticity, responsibility, and resilience as much as size.

An ESG-aligned strategy reframes markets as ecosystems of stakeholders — regulators, communities, investors, employees, and consumers — each influencing access, pricing, and brand trust. Strong ESG performance reduces risk while enabling premium pricing, market access, and investor confidence.

Consumers increasingly prefer brands with verifiable sustainability credentials, and investors reward companies with stronger ESG performance with higher valuation multiples.

Anthesis has helped clients capture this advantage, such as Energy Capital Partners (ECP), by delivering UK plastic waste market assessments and ESG regulatory analyses to inform sustainable expansion strategies aligned with long-term value creation.

5. Realising the ROI of ESG

Companies that identify how ESG amplifies their existing value levers — and design initiatives around measurable outcomes — are best positioned to deliver financial returns and positive impact.

An effective ESG strategy:

• Translates sustainability principles into measurable initiatives

• Aligns them with core business priorities

• Embeds sustainability into everyday decision-making

At Anthesis, we help organisations model the financial ROI of ESG, build robust business cases, and implement programs that drive both performance and impact. For organisations unsure where to start, Anthesis provides actionable, scalable, and measurable ESG strategies that transform sustainability from compliance into a competitive advantage.

Conclusion: Doing Good Is Good Business

ESG is not a separate agenda — it is the new language of value creation. Companies that act now to embed ESG into strategy, culture, technology, and growth will not only meet stakeholder expectations — they will shape the next era of business performance.