It’s that time again. At many companies, the (sometimes painful) process of sustainability reporting is about to begin, if it hasn’t already. To make this process as smooth as possible, it is wise to get your “house” in order; to identify your wants and needs for this reporting year and decide on the key messages you want to convey to your key stakeholders.
Creating a Strategy
Having a sustainability reporting strategy in place will ease the process and allow you to collect the relevant data and information in a well-ordered manner. So, we thought it was a good time to offer a checklist of critical questions that help our clients get organized, and which can help you get all your ducks in a row for this next reporting season.
We recommend grouping your questions into six main buckets:
Management Support
- Is your management prepared to include challenges as well as successes?
- Have you developed sustainability objectives and targets?
- Is your management prepared to candidly report on progress of achieving these targets?
Report Audience
- Who is the audience(s) for the report?
- How will you consult with key stakeholders (such as investors, governments, key community groups, relevant NGOs, board members, shareholders, etc.) to understand their expectations of your report?
Materiality Assessment Process
- How mature is your reporting process and what is the approach to the materiality assessment you are prepared to take this year? These considerations include:
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- Level of internal and external stakeholder engagement: individual interviews, surveys, focus groups?
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- Level of leadership engagement: workshop including only corporate, or corporate and site leadership together or separate?
- Have you considered a double materiality process?
- Does your company have a sustainability/ESG strategy? If so, then it must be a key consideration as part of the materiality assessment.
Report Preparation
- Have representatives from the different functions and sites been identified as responsible for collecting and contributing relevant data?
- Who will be responsible for preparing the text and illustrations and issuing of the report; will it be done in-house or externally?
- Will the report be available electronically (pdf) and/or in print form?
- What is your review and approval process i.e., will you need time for the board committee to review and approve it?
- Will you have the report externally audited?
ESG Data
Have you determined the relevant metrics to be included in the report? The indicators in the report should be selected for importance to:
- The specific operation
- Headquarters
- External stakeholders
- Internal stakeholders
Do all your operations, be they headquarters or various sites, have a compatible set of indicators?
- Are units consistent across sites?
- Different operations may have different subsets of indicators that are relevant to their specific function in the organization
Can these indicators be readily transmitted to headquarters without adding work to different operations?
- Will you be using a shared (online) spreadsheet like MS Excel, or a cloud-based database?
Scheduling
- How will the preparation of the report be coordinated with the preparation of the corporate annual report?
- Have you provided enough time for internal reviews, graphical layout, and publication on the corporate website?
An Organized End Result that Clearly Communicates Your Commitment to Business Sustainability
By answering each of these questions, you’ll be covering the main bases that should be considered when compiling a thorough and informative report.
If any of these areas gives rise to incomplete information, reach out to us here at SOOP Strategies and we’ll be happy to discuss ways to extract the information you need to ease the process of sustainability reporting. You can reach us at info@soopstrategies.com.