As companies continue to focus on Social Impact, Sustainability, Diversity, and Well-being, many are turning to ESG Reporting Software to help them better track their results and grow their programs. Historically, corporate ESG solutions focused on regulatory and financial reporting on carbon emissions. However, employee engagement is a crucial component of creating more impactful ESG programs.
Here we'll explore the top 7 ESG software solutions to help you engage your employees and achieve your ESG goals in 2023 and beyond.
What is ESG Software?
ESG Software helps companies measure, track, and report on their ESG performance. This can include everything from monitoring carbon emissions to tracking supply chain sustainability to measuring employee engagement.
Historically, these solutions have focused on the output of sustainability programs, only addressing the “E” of ESG.
As ESG evolves to a more holistic business strategy need to begin engaging employees to improve outcomes and become a best-in-class organization.
Why is employee engagement important for ESG?
Engaging employees in ESG initiatives like DEI, Sustainability, Social Impact, and Well-being drives real change from the ground up and results in better outcomes for your strategic ESG goals.
Employees are the front lines of your company's operations, and their actions can significantly impact the company's overall performance.
7 ESG Software Solutions for Employee Engagement in 2023
- WeSpire
- WizeHive
- Affirmity
- Climate Club
- CyberGrants
- Benevity
- VirginPulse
WeSpire
Best-in-class organizations are taking a holistic approach to their strategy, integrating all facets of ESG into their strategy and WeSpire was purpose-built to do just that.
Our unified user experience (UX) ESG software engages employees across all ESG functions including DEI, Sustainability, Social Impact, Employee Giving, and Employee Well-being.
WeSpire is robust enough for global Fortune 500 ESG teams while staying user-friendly for single-person departments and mid-size businesses. This allows you to choose as many or as few channels to support new and existing programs and match your budget.
The management panel gives ESG managers oversight of all channels, campaigns, activities, events, users, and reports.
WeSpire provides admins with several tools to build employee engagement around ESG:
- Gamified engagement platforms with social media-like UX for employees
- Custom campaigns with 500+ ready-to-launch templates for quick implementation.
- Unmatched customer service with real-world ESG engagement experience to help develop strategies & tactics.
- DEI & ERG management platform
- Employee Carbon Management & employee Scope 3 reporting
- Giving & Volunteering campaigns with matching & grants management
- Wellbeing platform to ensure employees are staying healthy and active
WeSpire’s upgraded ESG reporting feature, powered by Tableau, brings all engagement data including Scope 3, ERG Participation, Giving, etc from your employee ESG initiatives into one place and can be easily exported or synced to your ESG reporting software. WeSpire’s customer success team will develop custom integrations for your data reporting needs.
WizeHive
If you are managing giving, volunteering, and grants at a government, non-profit, or higher education organization, WizeHive’s Zengine might be for you.
While more focused on the “S” of ESG, WizeHive’s tools are purpose-built to increase donor and application engagement and streamline the processes between foundational giving, grant applications, reviews, and awards.
WizeHives’ Zengine covers several charitable use cases including
- Grants Management
- Emergency Relief Fund Management
- Scholarships Management
- Awards Management
- Internship & Fellowship Management
- Accreditations Management
- Employee Giving & Matching
- Employee Volunteering
WizeHive also offers a plugin engine for a more custom experience. Zengine’s plugin architecture allows users to create small custom tools to accomplish specific goals.
Affirmity
Affirmity is another unified UX SaaS platform that ties together all things DEI including Affirmative Action, EEO-1, and ERGs, along with other inclusive culture and regulatory compliance tools.
Compliance teams who need to audit and update their diversity reporting to regulatory bodies frequently will find value in a tool like Affirmity to bring together all diversity data and engage employees to improve outcomes.
Affirmity’s core tools on their platform include
- Enterprise Affirmative Action Program Software
- Affirmative Action Plan Automation Software
- Complete Resource Center Software
- EEO-1 and VETS 4212 Reporting Software
- Pay Equity Analysis Software
- Employee Resource Group Platform
Affirmity also offers diversity training support including in-person and virtual workshops. They are an HRCI Approved Provider & SHRM Recertification Provider.
Research shows that required diversity training can actually be harmful to hiring and pay equity outcomes. Affirmity’s end-to-end DEI platform combats that with its unified model that fosters employee engagement through ERGs.
Climate Club
Through its product, Climate Club is turning individual employee action into collective change for a better planet and ultimately helping businesses build resiliency. They are 100% focused on the “E” of ESG, and more specifically on tracking and reducing Scope3 emissions to reach net-zero goals.
Climate Club’s platform gives companies the ability to translate net zero goals into action by engaging employees across teams with a unified approach.
Their technology helps companies create actionable sustainability plans at scale, provides real-time performance across departments, and integrates accurate data for compliance and reporting.
Climate Club’s tools are purpose-built to track and reduce employee scope 3 emissions in
- Business Travel
- Commute
- Purchased Goods & Services
- Events & Conferences
- Hybrid & WFH workplaces
Climate Club’s data enables companies to map emissions down to the individual employee level to determine where the most effective improvements can be made. Clearly outlined, data-driven goals also create personalized roadmaps for employees, furthering the chances of engagement and success.
CyberGrants
CyberGrants is a leading grant management, employee giving, and volunteering platform used by corporations who consider philanthropy to be a core business mission.
Its platform puts resources into the hands of your NPOs faster and gives you the tools to gain efficiencies for funding the causes your organization supports. And brings all of your philanthropy together in one, synergistic environment.
CyberGrants’s solutions cover the end-to-end needs of corporate philanthropy including
- Grant Management
- Employee Engagement
- Volunteerism
- Disaster Relief
- Disbursements
- Insights & Reporting
The unique “FrontDoor” feature also allows NPOs to create a profile with your company. CyberGrants vets the organizations by working with the IRS Business Master File and other global databases to guarantee the nonprofit meets the charitable standards of your organization.
Disbursements on CyberGrants are made streamlined by their own Donor Advised Fund (DAF), which reduces administrative needs.
Benevity
Benevity’s platform is built for the “S” in ESG, with features that include Volunteering, Giving, and ERGs (Benevity calls the “Affinity Groups”).
Engaging employees in your organization’s corporate purpose is the core functionality of this platform. Benevity’s Micro-Actions allow you and your employees to create and choose from a variety of small, positive actions that can add up to big social, personal, and business impacts.
Benevity’s ESG software for employee engagement has 4 core capabilities:
- Volunteering
- Micro-Actions
- Giving
- Affinity Groups
They recently introduced their affinity groups, taking their platform beyond philanthropy and social impact and into the DEI space.
Benevity’s other solutions include grants management for community investment and customer engagement with a public-facing microsite that allows your customers, clients, partners, and the public to donate to vetted nonprofits.
Virgin Pulse
Employee well-being is often overlooked in the early stages of the ESG strategy, but is vitally important to your organization’s success.
Virgin Pulse understands this and its platform is built from the ground up to help employers support the health and well-being of their people. Virgin Pulse’s engagement engine will kick-start healthy habits and help your people stick to them using a gamified user experience, AI-driven tools, and a robust resource library.
Their engagement and activation tools include
- Health + Wellbeing
- Benefits Navigation
- Care Management + Coaching
- Marketplace
- Rewards + Incentives
- Intelligent Multi-Channel Outreach
- Health CRM
Virgin pulse also features a 3rd-party app marketplace allowing you to pick and choose from benefits and well-being solutions that integrate into a single-platform member experience.
Additionally, Virgin Pulse’s predictive analytics can predict excessive emergency room use, pre-diabetes risk, and non-compliance at the individual level, reducing healthcare risk in your organization.
Which ESG Software Solution is best for your organization?
We may be a bit biased here at WeSpire but if you’re looking for an end-to-end employee engagement solution that encompasses all aspects of the ESG journey then you don't want to miss out on checking out our ESG Impact Engagement Platform.
If your team is not ready for a full solution then let us help you build your ESG program one piece at a time.
You choose as few or as many channels as you need to get your team started or to support a full ESG strategy.
Book a demo here and see if WeSpire is right for you!