You already hire veterans. The hard part is showing it in a way your board, your investors, and your rating agencies will accept. A line that says "we support veterans" does nothing in an ESG or sustainability report. Reviewers want a number, a method, and a source.

Veteran hiring belongs in the social pillar of your report. That is the "S" in ESG. It sits next to workforce diversity, employee turnover, and pay equity. Most companies leave it out because they are not sure where it fits or how to back it up.

This guide walks you through it. Where veteran hiring lives in the "S." How the common reporting frameworks treat workforce data. What metrics to disclose. And how to back every claim with real numbers instead of feel-good language. I will not tell you a framework requires a veteran metric it does not. When the framework is silent, I will say so and point you to its own site.

Where Does Veteran Hiring Fit in the "S" of ESG?

ESG breaks into three pillars. Environmental covers things like emissions and water. Governance covers board structure and ethics. Social covers your people and your community.

Veteran hiring is a social-pillar topic. It is part of how you build and treat your workforce. It sits in the same group as workforce composition, diversity, hiring practices, and retention.

One trap catches a lot of companies. Veteran hiring is not the same as your veteran-hiring tax strategy or your compliance filings. Those matter, but they are not the ESG story. The ESG story is about your workforce and your impact. If you are a federal contractor, your VEVRAA work supports the data, but the report itself speaks to a different reader.

One more framing point. ESG reporting is about material topics. A topic is material when it affects your business or your stakeholders. For most companies, workforce quality and access to talent are material. Veteran hiring is a clean, defensible piece of that story. It shows you can reach a skilled talent pool that many peers miss.

If you also run veteran hiring as part of a broader inclusion effort, you can tie the two together. We cover that angle in our guide on veteran hiring as a diversity and inclusion strategy. The ESG report and the inclusion strategy share data, but they answer different questions.

How Do Reporting Frameworks Like SASB and GRI Treat Workforce Data?

You do not have to invent a reporting structure. Two widely used frameworks already shape how companies disclose workforce data. Both are worth knowing at a general level before you write a single metric.

What Does SASB Cover?

SASB standards now sit under the IFRS Foundation. They group sustainability topics into dimensions. One of those dimensions is human capital. Human capital includes a category often described as employee engagement, diversity, and inclusion.

SASB is built to be industry-specific. The exact topics and metrics depend on your sector. The framework does not publish a standalone "veteran hiring" metric. So do not claim it does. What it does give you is a home for workforce-composition and hiring-practice data. You can read the current set on the SASB Standards site and find the dimension that fits your industry.

What Does GRI Cover?

GRI is the other framework you will see most often. Its employment standard, GRI 401, asks for data on new hires and turnover. Companies report those numbers with breakdowns like age group, gender, and region.

GRI does not require a veteran breakdown by default. You can read the standard yourself on the GRI Standards site. But the structure GRI uses is exactly the structure you want. If you can report total new hires with a breakdown, you can add a veteran line to that same table. You are not bending the framework. You are adding a category that matters to your business.

You may use one framework or both. Many companies map their data to more than one. The point for veteran hiring is the same either way. Both frameworks give you a place for workforce data. You decide to make veterans a visible category inside it.

What Veteran Hiring Metrics Should You Disclose?

Pick metrics you can pull from real systems. A small set of solid numbers beats a long list you cannot back up. Here are the ones that hold up under review.

Start With Hires and Headcount

The two cleanest numbers are veteran new hires and veteran share of workforce. Report the count and the percent. A percent without a count is easy to question. A count without a percent has no context. Give both.

Veteran status comes from voluntary self-identification. You cannot force it. So your number is a floor, not a ceiling. Say that in the report. "Based on voluntary self-identification" is a one-line note that protects your credibility.

Report the same number the same way each year. If you change how you count, say so and explain why. Investors track trends, so a stable method matters more than a perfect one. A messy year-over-year comparison loses trust faster than a modest number does.

Add Retention When You Can

Retention is a strong number because it shows quality, not just volume. If your veteran turnover runs lower than your overall rate, that is worth disclosing. It tells investors your veteran hires stick. If you do not have clean retention data yet, leave it out this year and build it for next year.

Describe the Program, Not Just the Result

Numbers tell readers what happened. The narrative tells them how. A short paragraph on your sourcing channels, partners, and goals adds context. It also sets up next year's comparison. Keep it honest. If a goal slipped, say so and explain the fix.

How Do You Back Veteran Hiring Claims With Real Data?

A claim is only as good as its source. ESG reviewers, investors, and rating agencies all ask the same question. Where did this number come from? If you cannot answer in one sentence, the number is weak.

Your veteran data should trace back to a real system. That usually means your HRIS or applicant tracking system, plus your self-identification records. The self-id process is the same one federal contractors use to invite applicants to identify as protected veterans. We break that down in our guide on how to track veteran status legally.

If your company files the federal VETS-4212 report, you already collect related workforce data. That filing is a separate legal requirement, but it can serve as a cross-check for the numbers in your ESG report. We cover the filing itself in our guide on the VETS-4212 report. Use it to sanity-check your ESG figures, not to replace them.

When you need an outside comparison, pull from a real source. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes data on the veteran labor force. Government data carries weight with reviewers. A blog post or a vendor claim does not.

How Do You Set Veteran Hiring Goals for the Report?

Disclosure without a goal reads like a snapshot. A goal turns it into a story with a direction. But a goal you cannot hit is worse than no goal at all. So set targets you can actually reach.

Start with your own baseline. Pull last year's veteran hire rate and share of workforce. Set a target that moves the number up by a realistic step. Do not borrow a peer's target. Their pipeline, locations, and roles are not yours.

For a method on setting numbers you can defend, see our guide on realistic veteran hiring targets. The same logic that works for a TA team works for a board-level goal. Pull the baseline first. Then commit to a step you can fund and staff.

See the difference. The strong version has a number, a trend, a method, and a target. A reviewer can check it. An investor can track it. That is what makes a social-pillar disclosure real instead of decorative.

If you want to compare your veteran hiring against peers in a defensible way, we wrote a method for that too. See how to benchmark veteran hiring against peers before you publish a comparison claim.

Where Does the Talent Pipeline Come In?

A reporting goal only works if you can fill the roles behind it. You cannot disclose growth in veteran hires if you cannot find veterans to hire. The report is the scoreboard. The pipeline is the game.

This is where BMR fits. BMR runs a veteran candidate pool that gives you a steady source of military talent. Two facts matter for your planning. The pool adds over 1,000 new veteran profiles every month. And it is built on more than 60,000 resumes. That is a fresh, growing supply you can source against year over year.

A pipeline like that does two things for your ESG story. It lets you set a real target instead of a hopeful one. And it gives you the volume to back the number you disclose. You report what you hire. You hire from a pool you can count on.

To make veteran hiring a line in your sustainability report next year, you have to source the hires this year. Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and build the pipeline your disclosure depends on. Learn how to hire from BMR's veteran talent pool.

Putting It Together

Veteran hiring earns its place in the social pillar of your ESG report. It shows you reach a skilled talent pool and you treat your people well. The frameworks already give you a home for the data. SASB has its human capital dimension. GRI has its employment standard for hires and turnover.

Disclose a small set of numbers you can back up. Veteran new hires. Veteran share of workforce. Retention if you have it. A short program narrative. Note your method, name your source, and keep your evidence. Set a goal off your own baseline, not a number you cannot defend.

Then make sure the pipeline can carry the goal. The report tells the story. The hiring makes it true. Build the pipeline first, and next year's disclosure writes itself.