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At a conference last year, a sustainability lead from a professional services firm made a remark that stayed with me. “We’ve done everything on our ESG plan,” they said with a mixture of pride and frustration. “We’ve published the report, written the climate action plan, run staff initiatives… and yet the Board still feels like nothing has really changed.”
Many sustainability practitioners will recognise this moment where activity is visible with reports, targets, campaigns, and committees. But it feels incomplete because sustainability isn’t yet influencing decision-making, governance, or strategy.
This gap between intent and integration is precisely what a sustainability maturity assessment is designed to diagnose.
Instead of asking whether activity exists, maturity frameworks assess how embedded and improvable an organisation’s sustainability systems are. A recent assessment carried out for a mid-sized UK professional services firm illustrates how this distinction can play out in practice. Sustainability professionals may recognise similar dynamics inside their own organisations.
Maturity frameworks originate in management science. In a sustainability context, maturity describes the journey from isolated initiatives to integrated organisational capability and the desired outcomes such as increased revenue, reduced carbon footprint and better market positioning.
Progression typically moves through five stages:
• Ad hoc – activity is isolated
• Defined – processes exist but are inconsistently applied
• Stable and repeatable – systems are embedded and standardised
• Embedded and assured – sustainability is integrated into governance and decisions
• Optimised – processes are continuously improved.
An organisation at level two (defined) may have strong intentions and committed individuals driving progress. What it lacks is sustainability embedded into the systems, incentives and decision-making routines that shape everyday behaviour.
This distinction proved important in our case study.
We worked with a mid-tier professional services firm over a three-month sprint to undertake a maturity assessment. They found that while initiatives had been established, they were still not seeing the market return or revenue response expected from embedding ESG more firmly.
The assessment examined sustainability across leadership, governance, people capability, value chain relationships, operational management, information systems, and market positioning. Evidence was gathered through interviews, survey responses, and document review.
The firm’s overall maturity level was assessed as level two: defined. The score did not reflect a lack of effort. The organisation had already taken several steps. It had published an ESG report, developed a climate action plan and fostered a strong culture around staff wellbeing. Early ESG-related client services were also emerging.
However, structural limitations were revealed. ESG responsibility sat with a voluntary internal group rather than formal leadership accountability. There was no dedicated budget. Data was gathered intermittently and rarely integrated into management reporting. ESG services represented only a small share of overall revenue.
Sustainability activity existed but it was often isolated and relied upon heroics. Recognising this reframed the challenge. The issue was not commitment. It was operating model integration.
An important element of the assessment was linking organisational capability to commercial opportunity. For professional services firms, the greatest sustainability impact often lies in client services rather than internal operations.
Market analysis undertaken during the assessment suggested that the UK ESG professional services market is currently worth around £4.9bn, with projected growth of approximately 11.4% annually to 2030, reaching around £8.3bn.
For this firm, capturing even a proportionate share of this market would represent a substantial opportunity compared with current ESG service revenues.
When leadership examined this comparison, the discussion shifted.
The gap between ambition and performance was not a marketing issue; it reflected the absence of organisational systems capable of supporting scalable ESG services, and without firm-wide ESG literacy, clear service propositions, governance oversight and credible internal sustainability systems, growth would remain dependent on a handful of motivated individuals.
In this context, maturity became a precondition for commercial credibility.
The maturity assessment deliberately looked beyond initiatives, reporting and compliance to examine the broader organisational system. This included leadership structures, operational management, information systems, supply chain relationships, and market positioning.
This wider perspective revealed issues that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Procurement policies lacked sustainability criteria. ESG data was collected but not used in performance management. Client-facing teams had limited training to identify sustainability opportunities, reducing confidence in engaging clients. Even areas such as pension investments had not yet been assessed for sustainability impact.
These findings reframed sustainability from a series of compliance and reporting exercises into a question of organisational design.
The assessment identified around 40 opportunities for improvement. Rather than presenting these as a checklist, they were organised into a three-phase programme:
Phase one: foundations
Establishing governance structures, a sustainability management system, materiality assessment, and core data infrastructure.
Phase two: capability
Strengthening staff training, supplier engagement, and clearer ESG service propositions.
Phase three: growth
Activating market opportunities and scaling services once the organisational infrastructure was in place.
This sequencing has proved important. Many organisations attempt to expand ESG services before establishing internal governance and capability, which can expose credibility issues.
In this case, the initial focus centred on clarifying board accountability, embedding a sustainability management system aligned with recognised standards, integrating ESG metrics into management reporting and delivering firm-wide training. Seen this way, maturity acts not only as a diagnostic tool but also as a staging framework for change.
The most significant outcome of the assessment was psychological. Before the assessment, internal sustainability discussions often revolved around enthusiasm versus cost. Sustainability was seen as the domain of a small group of committed advocates and a cost centre.
While management were initially disappointed with the maturity score, ongoing discussions around the evidence and future direction helped clarify their role in progressing up the maturity ladder and put theory into practice.
Leadership discussions moved toward governance clarity, capability development, process repeatability, and market positioning. Sustainability ceased to be the interest of “the passionate few” and instead became an operating model question. This shift enabled more constructive executive engagement.
Regulatory and reporting requirements will continue to expand. However, compliance alone rarely creates organisational capability. Capability emerges when sustainability becomes part of the organisation’s architecture. When it is governed, measured, resourced, and integrated into decision-making.
For practitioners leading sustainability programmes, the lesson is often less about generating new initiatives and more about strengthening organisational infrastructure. Governance clarity, management systems, capability development, and decision-making routines determine whether sustainability becomes embedded or remains dependent on heroic individual effort.
In maturity terms, this is the shift from defined activity to embedded practice. For the firm in this case, the assessment did more than generate recommendations. It clarified how sustainability needed to function internally for ambition to translate into impact.
For sustainability practitioners, maturity frameworks offer something equally valuable: a way to move the conversation beyond good intentions and toward the organisational systems that deliver real impact.
Leve two organisations are not failing at sustainability – they often show strong intent and visible activity. The challenge is consistency and integration. If several of the indicators below apply, maturity may be plateauing:
Reliance on a few committed individuals
Progress depends on one partner, one manager, or a small voluntary working group. When these individuals are unavailable, initiatives stall as responsibility is not distributed across the organisation.
Reporting without informing decisions
ESG reports or carbon inventories are produced, yet the data is seldom referenced in board meetings, investment decisions, or performance reviews.
No ringfenced budget or formal targets
Initiatives compete with other priorities for time and funding, and objectives remain high-level rather than measurable.
Inconsistent behaviours across teams
Practices vary between offices or teams suggesting policies are present but not fully embedded.
ESG services lack structure
There is interest in developing sustainability services, but no firm-wide training, structured service catalogue, or sales approach.
Level two is often where ambition begins to outpace infrastructure. Moving beyond it requires embedding sustainability into governance, capability, and performance management.
Mark Hedges CEnv MISEP is founder and managing director of Cala Sustain Ltd.
