Adobe's Kati Kallins shares 2024 ESG trends in tech

Quick Connects are brief but beneficial conversations Mike conducts with leaders in sustainability and ESG about a variety of sustainability strategy and communication topics. Watch the video recording of the conversation or read the transcript below.

The tech sector has had a rough go over the past year, as many companies found themselves cutting budgets and letting people go. While tech companies arguably have it “easier” when it comes to addressing the “E” in ESG — many of their environmental impacts are limited to the energy used to power data centers or their offices — they often stronger with the “S” when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, gender pay parity and other issues. 

With all the changes happening on the regulatory front around ESG, tech companies might be struggling with how to approach their reporting and communication strategy moving into 2024. To get a better understanding of the ESG landscape in tech, I spoke with Kati Kallins, lead for sustainability at Adobe. 

Mike Hower: Hey everybody. I'm here with Kati Kallins, lead for sustainability at Adobe. Thanks for being here today, Kati.  

Katie Kallins: Thanks for having me. 

Mike: All right. So I know you just made a big move from Facebook or Meta over to Adobe. And you've got lots of experience in the tech sector and at the intersection of tech and sustainability. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about the trends that you're seeing in tech sustainability communications, and any other pearls of wisdom you can bestow on us. 

So the first question is: what are some of the sustainability communications trends that you're seeing in the tech industry in 2023 and moving into 2024?

Kati: I think that there are the traditional ways of communicating about sustainability that many of us know — CSR reports, ESG reports and the like. But increasingly where I'm seeing a lot of interest and new value from an audience perspective is around your platforms. 

Right. So, Facebook and Meta, clearly there is an Instagram channel that we created that was just focused on sustainability. Adobe has a bunch of social platforms. In a previous role, I was at Google and their sustainability website is also beautiful. But really thinking about where your customers are and where the interested clients and employees are already taking in information about what your company does and putting more and more sustainability content there. So, not just bridging it to the traditional channels, but looking at how your company is talking about its work more broadly and infusing that with more sustainability and ESG language.  

Mike: That leads me into my next question: how does Adobe communicate sustainability to its stakeholders? And maybe could you talk a little about who your stakeholders are and how you engage them?  

Kati: Definitely. Yeah. So we have our CSR report, which is available on our website, along with a lot of key information about the work that we've been doing. We also recently just put out a white paper about our sustainability work around product work, which is, you know, I think the next step of this, a lot of organizations started operationally. 

And now we're thinking again around alignment of product — both from a client perspective,  how are we helping clients reduce their greenhouse gas emissions — but also how do we integrate sustainability and climate into our various product suites? So, from a client facing perspective, that stuff is still pretty technical, but we're going to more sales meetings. We're reaching out to more interested folks. You won't be surprised to hear that some of our most excited clients are based in Europe. So, that's where we're doing. Engagement right now, and there's also a ton of regulation coming in. So it's kind of a nice pairing of work. That's been in the way for a long time, but also looking at where there are opportunities to partner.

And then, you know, some other key stakeholders that are important to note. Investors, right? We love those data tables at the back of our CSR reports, and we did our first webcast this year, specifically with our ESG IR teams to talk a bit more into the weeds about what we're doing around all things related to CSR.

And I think when we talk about employees and clients and customers more broadly, those are very large stakeholder groups. So, meeting them where they're at. We have some employee groups that are highly active, but then also thinking a bit more about customers and the tools. And how we can integrate that with other social campaigns and. And we just launched our Create Change campaign, which is around giving Tuesday.

And so there's a lot of great work that our company is doing, and I think other companies are doing to really sink how we think about social impact and sustainability. Unfortunately, I think they often get seen as separate objectives, but they're all about a kind of purpose-driven business. So, that's something that I'm really excited to continue to do more of. 

Mike: The talk about terminology has come up a lot, even with my conversations and with my clients. I’m curious what you think about where the term “ESG” is going to be headed next year. ESG has been used interchangeably with sustainability — do you think ESG is going away or what's going to be happening on that front?  

Kati: I do not think ESG is going away. I think that what we need is a little bit more clarification about what we say when we talk about ESG. Earlier this summer, I started a podcast with a colleague called Engaging ESG, and we had one whole episode talking about what we mean when we say ESG. And I think some of the political blowback and fear that some corporate leaders have about ESG is founded and, you know, real political pressure, but that is often talking about ESG investments, which are important, but are actually fundamentally different than ESG strategy, which is good business and just has to do with managing a company to reduce risk. 

And so I think more than saying, “is it time to throw the ESG in the recycling?” and so to speak, I would love if we could have a little bit of a clarification where when we talk about ESG investment versus ESG strategy, I think that will help everyone else who's coming along, especially with all this incoming regulation to understand the differences, because they're basically completely different fields that we're using the same word for. And so it makes sense that folks are confused and they're kind of conflating the two. 

Mike: That is super helpful. I haven't heard anybody make that distinction between the two different fields of investment and strategy.  

Kati: Yeah, there's clear linkages — like maybe saying that they're not related is a bit too flippant. But I think that it's one way of doing business, which is looking at what are your priority topics, and what are your stakeholders interested in. Materiality —many of us are familiar with that concept — which just is good business, we can't do all ESG topics. And then there's thinking about these pension funds and these larger investors that are trying to take in ESG factors — that also have a whole rating system unto themselves, which is a whole other kettle fish that we don't need to go into right now — but has been seen as potentially problematic.

It's unfortunate to think that a strategy for thinking about how to prioritize what to focus on within a company around ESG gets conflated with pension investments — where at the end of the day, they're separate sectors.  

Mike: You mentioned the regulations coming out of Europe and California. I know that's top of mind for many sustainability professionals right now. How are you approaching that going into 2024 and what advice would you give companies? 

Kati: Yeah. I would say we definitely have eyes wide open. We are familiar with managing regulations across our global company offices and jurisdictions. So, that's nothing new. When we think about other organizations trying to understand the breadth and depth of this, I would say we're all learning together.

So if you feel overwhelmed, welcome to the club. I would say another best practice is really trying to build relationships — if you haven't already — with your legal team, with your policy teams, because it's likely that they do monitoring efforts about incoming regulation for other parts of your business. At Adobe, we're really fortunate. I came into the company just four months ago, and we already have such strong relationships with these teams. And so we're regularly talking with them and other kinds of our peers, because there is a lot of incoming regulation. I think it's something that we've been asking for.

Quite frankly, Adobe is a member of Ceres, which is a group you're probably familiar with in terms of helping to support climate action legislation. It's one thing to say yes. We need more regulation. We need governments to be helping pull everyone along. It's another thing where the rubber meets the road and maybe the policy language isn't super clear or the dictation of what's being asked of companies is not super clear. 

But as someone who started her career in policy — my first job was at the EPA — I know that that is just kind of how, how policy goes, right? You're writing this legislation to try to impact broad swaths of society and of different parts of the economy, and it's not necessarily going to be the best version, maybe the first time. But I'm excited to see the new regulations coming out of California and also Europe because I think it's rising the tide for all boats. 

Adobe is a company that has been working on sustainability for decades, and not all companies are there, and not all industries are there, and rather than kind of. Shaming and blaming. If we all are looking at the same level of regulation and accountability that will really help move us towards a climate resilient future together. 

Mike: What advice would you give companies that are either just starting out on their sustainability communication journey or a little further along? What are some pointers that you've learned in your career so far running these programs? What would you tell them? 

Kati: To go back to something we discussed earlier around this big bucket of ESG — and to be clear, I'm talking about the strategy bucket — it is likely that within your company, you have some social impact programs, some diversity and inclusion programs. Hopefully, you have all of those and I would look to those teams and see how they're communicating that work.

I think oftentimes sustainability can get super technical with greenhouse gas accounting and is thought of as just this different bucket. But if we can move into this broader perspective around purpose-based business, hopefully you can look to other teams and other organizations within your larger company to see how it is being done? 

Well, you know, a classic comm strategy, which I'm sure you're familiar with, Mike, is how do we tie it back to the company mission values and how they talk about themselves and if you can link that for rather employees or that's really going to help them understand what you're prioritizing and why. And then start talking with other teams that do purpose-based work within your organization. Understand what's worked for them. It might not be a cookie cutter approach, but then you can start to build best practices. And what I also find is that helps from an executive buy in perspective because you can remind them of how this is something familiar, right?

There's so much happening in the world of ESG and sustainability right now. I think it's really easy for folks to feel super overwhelmed and whenever you can tether them to existing purpose-based comms or programming with you and your company, draw that to company wide goals and the like that can help them see the familiarity and that kind of all rowing in the same direction — and then hopefully you're able to start to build a collaborative relationship with those other teams within your company as well. 

Mike: All right. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much, Kate, for these really helpful insights.  

Kati: Thanks for having me. Take care.