SASB, ISO, IIRC, IASB, GRI, CDP, CDSB, TCFD, SDG Compass… corporations are requested to report on their sustainability efficiency in a reputable and significant means. In any other case, there’s a danger of complaints, for instance for “deceptive industrial apply”. Above all, there’s the danger of not involving their stakeholders in an important reflection on their potential to adapt and combine in a world underneath ever-increasing environmental and social constraints.
I’ve labored on a few hundred sustainable growth studies for the previous fifteen years, in Europe, the USA, Brazil and Asia. I’ve at all times been positively shocked by the best way the train has change into extra skilled, and by the power of many corporations to take the time to offer ever extra dependable and clear data. Nevertheless, in dialogue with many stakeholders, consultants and college students, I’ve at all times needed to cope with quite a few sceptical feedback on the relevance of those studies, full of fine will and constructive data and too usually overshadowing important topics.
I got here to a easy conclusion: was it higher “earlier than”? I keep in mind the citizenship studies of some corporations within the Nineties. The International Reporting Initiative, the materiality efforts of SASB, the GHG Protocol or legal guidelines akin to Sarbanes-Oxley or Dodd-Frank in the USA have significantly standardized and normalized the standard of the knowledge offered in these studies. The great growth of social media additionally makes it simpler at the moment to cross-reference data offered by an organization with the perspective of related skilled communities or stakeholders: it turns into tough to disseminate allegations that may be simply contradicted in two clicks on the internet…
The standard of sustainability studies at the moment is, in the long run, the story of the half-empty or half-full glass:
- Half-full glass: regulatory strain, the emulation created by the dynamics of stakeholders questioning studies and the great growth of social media make it potential to entry a lot better high quality extra-financial data at the moment than it was 10 or 15 years in the past.
- Half-empty glass: vigilance should be maintained. Sustainability stays a younger self-discipline: non-financial data made public could be improved to proceed to achieve relevance and credibility
10 inquiries to Nurture a Credible and Significant Sustainability Reporting Strategy
Thus, to write down a sustainability report that creates belief and serves as a car for dialogue, listed below are some inquiries to ask
1) A Sustainability report is a instrument for dialogue
Briefly, what makes it essentially totally different from an promoting spot is {that a} good sustainability report should current an method in a humble means, revealing that the corporate has ample maturity to know the principle social, societal and environmental challenges it faces, with out attempting to make folks imagine that it has full management over the options. The sustainability report is a instrument to share an method and supply it to constructive criticism from skilled communities.
2) Identification of precedence subjects
Along with an extended assortment of initiatives in all instructions, the sustainability report should current the subjects that the corporate intends to handle as a precedence due to its potential to affect these main dangers and alternatives. This method is also known as “materiality”, and is changing into extraordinarily widespread. The report ought to present data to know the multi-stakeholder consultative course of that recognized precedence points, particularly to keep away from any course of that’s too consanguineous and doesn’t use the collective intelligence lever offered by a multi-stakeholder session.
3) A forward-looking imaginative and prescient crossed with previous data
A superb sustainability report ought to make it potential to know a proactive and bold imaginative and prescient, resolutely oriented in direction of the longer term, supported by sustainability goals that undertaking the corporate in direction of 2025 and even 2030. The supply of reporting to analyse efficiency over the previous yr (and earlier) ought to make it potential to provide credibility to the achievement of the longer term imaginative and prescient: is the corporate on a very good enchancment trajectory? What has it been capable of be taught from previous initiatives, permitting it to refine its achievement of future goals?
4) Mixture of overview of insurance policies in addition to how they’re applied
Does reporting present data on each insurance policies and their implementation, suggestions and corrective actions? It’s helpful to know, for instance, that there’s a code of conduct or an anti-corruption coverage. It’s also important to know how these processes are applied, the operational difficulties encountered, incidents and patches put in place to cut back dangers or enhance the dissemination and adoption of practices throughout the group.
5) Mixture of firm huge information in addition to illustrative case research
Does reporting present information protecting an total scope, or does it concentrate on anecdotal data? It’s at all times attention-grabbing to find a case research or a pilot undertaking. It’s subsequently important to know how a case research is illustrative of an total method, or just corresponds to an area and pilot initiative. In that case, it’s important to know the approaches envisaged to generalize a pilot undertaking in a corporation.
6) Comparable data
Is the knowledge offered by the corporate introduced in a means that facilitates comparability with different corporations? Totally different requirements are helpful for offering comparable data.
7) Good Information. Dangerous Information
Does the reporting embody excellent news in addition to dangerous information? That is at all times a tough level, however important to provide credibility to a reporting method. Nobody within the sustainability group frankly expects to search out corporations with an ideal command of complicated topics. Quite the opposite, if the sustainability report is to play its position as a instrument for dialogue, it’s the firm’s accountability to share difficulties and encourage skilled readers to contribute concepts and constructive criticism to assist the corporate make progress on usually actually tough topics.
8) Consistency of sustainability and non sustainability data
Does the proposed sustainability reporting talk with the corporate’s publicly out there parts coping with total technique and monetary reporting? It’s at all times shocking to have a sustainability report that reveals, for instance, how important the R&D effort for clear applied sciences is; and if you take a look at the knowledge offered by the identical firm on R&D, you don’t discover a line on renewable vitality…. If sustainability is certainly a strategic theme for the corporate, then the devoted report should current data that’s in step with what different useful items (human assets, finance, R&D…) must share. In any other case, there’s a dissonance that raises suspicions….
9) Granular entry to data
Does the CSR report use the functionalities provided by the Web (granular entry to data, social media, and so forth.)? The idea of the PDF report, which is a replica/pasted copy of the net content material of the sustainability report, is totally outdated and nonetheless stays very robust in 2018…. A superb sustainability reporting method should use the functionalities of the net to concentrate on a PDF of important, comparatively everlasting and strategic data (enterprise profile, precedence points, imaginative and prescient and goals, key efficiency indicators, and so forth.), whereas the net interface should present entry to further data for these wishing to discover a topic in better depth (downloading further data, thematic web sites, and so forth.), have interaction in dialogue by way of a weblog, cross-reference the views (uncensored, however probably average) of stakeholders, combine and stay along with social media akin to Twitter, Fb or Linkedin
10) Uncensored cross-referenced view of stakeholders
Giving the ground, even when it is extremely important, to stakeholders who’ve their very own imaginative and prescient on the topics addressed by the sustainability report, is approaching the reality and its multifaceted complexity. That is opening up dialogue, in addition to stimulating the kind of collective dynamics wanted to search out the related options. For instance, I’m nonetheless too usually shocked by the dearth of a commerce union voice on social points.
It’s by actively engaged on these ideas that corporations can keep away from any danger of accusations of deceptive practices. As a instrument for dialogue, the sustainability report is credible due to its potential to reveal a necessity for collective intelligence, making it potential to cope with complicated points, pushed by a humble and constructive method pushed by the corporate with the networks of consultants and stakeholders (or their representatives).
Writer of a number of books and assets on enterprise, sustainability and accountability. Working with prime determination makers pursuing transformational adjustments for his or her organizations, leaders and industries. Working with executives enhancing resilience and competitiveness of their firm and merchandise given their local weather and human proper enterprise agendas. Join with Farid Baddache on Twitter at @Fbaddache.
