Environmental protection is more critical than ever, as businesses and individuals alike recognize the urgent need to combat climate change and preserve natural resources. As part of this global effort, measuring ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance has become an essential tool for assessing and improving corporate sustainability. In this article, we’ll explore what ESG entails, methods businesses can use to become more sustainable, and how Cutover is contributing to this mission.
What is ESG?
ESG – short for Environmental, Social and Governance – is a set of standards measuring a business's impact on society, the environment, and how transparent and accountable it is. ESG is the umbrella term for a company’s non-financial reporting aimed at managing risk and impact. It holds businesses accountable and to a higher standard and provides valuable assessment and measurement exercises for environmental performance.
Making business more sustainable
There are a number of ways that organizations can work to increase sustainability, including but not limited to:
- Offsetting their carbon footprint
- Assessing suppliers for sustainability to ensure the whole supply chain is as sustainable as possible
- Measuring social value to go beyond just the carbon footprint and assessing the impact on and value to communities and society
- Having a forward-looking view on future potential risks and building strategies around these
Cutover’s commitment to environmental responsibility and social impact
We’re committed to both reducing the environmental footprint of our organization and making a meaningful difference to both our team and the communities we serve. Here are just some of the more recent ways we have worked towards those goals:
The Cutover Human Skills Program
Launched in 2024, our Human Skills Program provides over 10 hours of training to all members of the Cutover team, covering critical topics such as inclusion, unconscious bias, and leadership development.
Inclusive policies
Also in 2024, we implemented even more inclusive workplace policies, with input and feedback from across the team, covering areas such as menopause, pregnancy loss, and enhanced parental leave.
ESG initiatives
As of this year, Cutover has an ESG Working Group, tasked with providing leadership and strategic direction for our sustainability efforts. Below are some of the outcomes of working towards our ESG goals so far.
Cutover’s carbon-positive ratio
Cutover creates approximately 711.8 tCO2e annually and enables clients to save an estimated 2,000-5,000+ tCO2e annually, leaving a carbon-positive ratio of 3-7x more emissions saved than created.
How Cutover drives carbon reduction
Three times faster cloud migrations
Research suggests that cloud migration delivers 80-96% carbon reductions, and Cutover Migrate is estimated to reduce dual running periods by 50%, leading to a typical impact of 1,600 tCO2e per migration project.
50% faster disaster recovery
Cutover Recover helps to eliminate wasteful emergency resource provisioning and optimizes resource utilization during disasters, leading to an impact of approximately 10-50 tCO2e per IT disaster event avoided.
30-70% release efficiency gains
Cutover Release enables optimal cloud resource utilization and reduces computing waste through automation, helping to multiply the carbon benefits of cloud adoption.
Next steps: Measuring emissions values
The next step in measuring and optimizing the environmental impact of Cutover is measuring our scope one, two and three emissions. These are defined as:
- Scope 1: Direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by Cutover
- Scope 2: Indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling consumed by Cutover
- Scope 3: All other indirect emissions that occur across the value chain, including those from suppliers, business travel, product use, and waste
These measurements will be verified by an independent third party and help to form the basis of a carbon reduction plan with the goal of achieving carbon neutrality in the future.
Find out more about our commitment to ESG.