People, Prosperity, and Long-Term Value: Why the TISFD Framework Matters
July 28, 2026
Businesses rely on workers, communities, institutions, and broader social systems to operate effectively, innovate, and grow. Yet organizations have often lacked consistent ways to understand how their activities affect people, or how those effects flow back into business performance.
As climate change, technological innovation, demographic shifts, and evolving workforce expectations reshape economies, that gap is becoming more consequential to close. Leaders are being asked not only how they create value, but also whether that value creation is sustainable, broadly shared, and capable of supporting long-term prosperity.
The Council for Inclusive Capitalism was founded on the belief that business success and societal prosperity are inseparable. Markets function best when they create opportunity, foster broad participation, and maintain public trust. Understanding the relationship between business performance and people-related outcomes is central to effective decision-making, risk management, and long-term resilience.
Building the Foundation for Better Decision-Making
Over the past several years, the Council has explored how major economic transitions affect people and how companies, investors, and policymakers can help ensure those transitions strengthen resilience and prosperity.
This work began with the Just Transition Framework for Company Action, developed with Boston Consulting Group and a group of global companies to help businesses support workers and communities through the transition to a low-carbon economy. More recently, the Council’s work on financing the just transition has focused on how financial institutions can mobilize capital in ways that support both economic competitiveness and positive social outcomes.
The Council has also examined broader questions related to economic participation and ownership, including how more people can share the benefits of growth and value creation. Most recently, through its work on AI and the Future of Work, the Council has explored how organizations can successfully integrate technological innovation and human talent as complementary drivers of long-term performance.
Across these efforts, a common theme has emerged: people are not external to business performance. Workers, consumers, communities—and the wider systems they depend on—influence productivity, innovation, resilience, and economic growth over time.
Introducing the TISFD Beta Framework
It is against this backdrop that the Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD) was established.
Launched in 2024, TISFD brings together businesses, investors, labor organizations, civil society, policymakers, and academic experts to develop a common framework for understanding and disclosing people-related impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities. The Council for Inclusive Capitalism is proud to serve as a founding partner with key Council members serving on the Steering Committee including CalPERS, WBCSD, Shift, and UNDP.
The release of the beta framework (Version 0.1) marks an important milestone in the initiative’s development. Building on lessons from climate and nature-related disclosure efforts, the framework seeks to improve consistency, comparability, and decision-usefulness while aligning with existing reporting approaches such as ISSB (International Sustainability Standards Board), GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), and ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards).
Like TCFD and TNFD before it, the framework is organized around four pillars: Governance, Strategy, Impact and Risk Management, and Metrics and Targets. Together, these pillars provide a practical structure for organizations to understand how people-related issues influence business performance, how those issues are governed and managed, and how progress can be measured over time.
Rather than creating an entirely new reporting system, the beta framework is designed as a building-block approach that can complement existing disclosures and management processes. It also recognizes the growing interconnections between people, climate, nature, and economic resilience, encouraging organizations to consider these issues in a more integrated way.
Looking Ahead
Better information alone will not solve complex social challenges, but it can help decision-makers identify risks earlier, allocate capital more effectively, strengthen accountability, and build more resilient business models.
Over the coming 18 months, TISFD will continue refining the framework through consultation, pilot testing, and stakeholder engagement, with additional iterations expected before publication of the final framework in 2027. The consultation window on the beta framework closes July 31, and feedback can be submitted at framework.tisfd.org.
For the Council, this work reflects a broader commitment to advancing practical approaches that strengthen both business performance and societal prosperity. As the framework evolves, the focus will increasingly shift from framework development to implementation, measurement, and real-world application.
To explore these issues further, the Council spoke with TISFD Executive Director Simon Rawson about the importance of people-related disclosures, the development of the beta framework, and what comes next for the market actors this framework is designed to serve.
Simon Rawson is the Executive Director of the Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD), a multistakeholder initiative developing a global framework to help businesses and investors understand, manage and report on people-related sustainability issues. He previously served as Deputy Chief Executive of ShareAction, a responsible investment NGO. Other prior roles included at McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy, where he helped build the firm’s social responsibility function, and as a diplomat for the British government.
Across climate change, AI, demographic shifts, and changing workforce expectations, businesses are navigating profound transitions. Why is now the right moment for a framework focused on people?
Every major economic transition reshapes not only markets but societies too. AI, climate change, demographic shifts and geopolitical pressures are all affecting people and transforming work, livelihoods, communities and access to opportunity in ways that can deepen inequalities and weaken economic resilience.
Yet markets remain far less equipped to understand people-related risks. Businesses ultimately depend on people to operate, innovate and grow, and on stable societies and economies to succeed. A framework focused on people is therefore essential to helping businesses and investors to understand and navigate these transitions.
Many companies already disclose workforce, human rights, and other social information. What gap is the TISFD Framework designed to fill that existing reporting doesn’t address?
Companies are collecting and reporting more people-related information than ever before, but it is often fragmented, siloed within organisations or just focused on compliance. As a result, boards, executives and investors still lack a clear view of how people-related impacts and dependencies can affect business performance, resilience and long-term value.
TISFD aims to close this gap by providing a coherent framework that builds on existing standards and makes people-related information more comparable and decision-useful, while reducing reporting burden for businesses. Crucially, it also helps organisations understand how inequality can create system-level risks by weakening the societies, economies and financial systems on which businesses and investors depend.
How can better information about people help companies, investors and boards make better decisions, and what would you say to a leader who sees this as a compliance exercise rather than a source of strategic insight?
Better information helps companies and investors understand how their activities affect people, where businesses depend on people and how those relationships can create risks and opportunities. It can show, for example, how issues affecting workers, consumers and communities can translate into business risks and opportunities through their effects on productivity, supply-chain resilience, and consumer demand, respectively.
This is why people-related information should not be viewed simply as a compliance exercise. Used effectively, it can help boards, companies and investors anticipate risks, identify opportunities and make better decisions about strategy, capital allocation and risk management. Better decision-making is the purpose — disclosure is just the output.
| “People-related information should not be viewed simply as a compliance exercise. Better decision-making is the purpose — disclosure is just the output.” — Simon Rawson, Executive Director, TISFD |
TISFD builds on lessons from frameworks such as TCFD and TNFD. What did you learn from those efforts, and where does TISFD intentionally take a different approach?
TCFD and TNFD demonstrated the value of a clear and familiar structure linking governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. TISFD builds on that architecture so people-related issues can be integrated into established business and reporting processes.
At the same time, TISFD recognises that people, climate and nature are deeply interconnected and cannot be considered in isolation. Climate change and nature loss affect people, while business responses to these challenges can create both positive and negative social outcomes. TISFD therefore helps organisations understand these connections, while also addressing inequality as a potential system-level risk.
Like TNFD, we’re also working with businesses and financial institutions, actively building momentum in the market to demonstrate the demand and support for people-related disclosures. In addition, TISFD has the important voices of labour and civil society embedded in our governance.
The Beta Framework is now open for consultation ahead of its planned final release in 2027. What kinds of practical feedback are you most hoping to receive during this consultation period?
In this first beta version of the framework we present conceptual foundations and core disclosure recommendations — so we are keen to seek market feedback on those elements. We are particularly interested in whether the Framework is clear, useful and workable in practice. The consultation is an opportunity to test the Framework against real-world experience and ensure that its next iteration responds to the needs of both preparers and users.
We will share a summary of feedback received and we plan to address it, but comments or quotes will not be attributed to individuals or organisations without prior permission. So I would encourage everyone to share as much or as little as they can, in the spirit of open, iterative development. The consultation window closes July 31 — feedback can be submitted at framework.tisfd.org.
Looking ahead five years, if TISFD achieves what you hope, what will have changed — not just in corporate reporting, but in how companies and investors understand and act on the relationships between people and long-term value creation?
Success would mean that people-related considerations are no longer treated as peripheral to financial and strategic decision-making. Businesses and investors would routinely assess how they depend on people, how their decisions affect different groups, and how those relationships influence long-term performance and resilience.
We would also see greater recognition that inequality and social instability can create risks beyond an individual company, affecting markets, economies and investment portfolios. The ultimate goal is not simply more disclosure. It is better decisions: decisions that strengthen businesses while contributing to more resilient societies and economies on which sustainable value creation ultimately depends.
| About TISFD The Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD) is a multistakeholder initiative launched in 2024 that brings together businesses, investors, labor organizations, civil society, policymakers, and academic experts to develop a common framework for understanding and disclosing people-related impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities. The Council for Inclusive Capitalism is a founding partner. |
