Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives are firmly established as important sustainability frameworks. Across regions and industries, there’s widespread acceptance of their impact and the need to align with them.
Alongside CSR and ESG, regulations and standards for sustainable practices and reporting are rapidly evolving.
Within sustainability reporting, three key priorities shape the current landscape:
Keeping up with fast-moving legislation
Both with new and updated standards and legislation. Currently, there are more than 600 sustainability standards, frameworks, and initiatives that are in use.
Navigating a fragmented landscape
Standards can differ between regions and industries. Often each has their own definitions, metrics, and materiality assessments to be aware of.
Effectively gathering and verifying decentralized data
Sustainability information by its very nature is drawn from various sources. For those in charge of gathering, analyzing, and reporting on this, it is a sizable undertaking.
Turning reporting priorities into opportunities
There is a wealth of opportunity within the sustainability reporting space for organizations to access. To unlock them, new tools and solutions can provide tangible business outcomes that can distinguish organizations from their competition.
Sustainability Reporting Assurance (SRA) is a powerful solution that builds trust with customers and stakeholders, accelerates sustainability progress, and can unlock new opportunities. Let’s explore what SRA is, and how you can harness these benefits for your organization.
Exploring Sustainability Reporting Assurance
As a definition, SRA is intended to provide certainty around the disclosure of an organization’s claim on its impact, goals, and performance against globally recognized standards. It’s the use of an independent, respected body to analyze the reports generated for sustainability, and provide assurance to the wider market, audience and stakeholders. The assurance process addresses four key areas: inclusivity, materiality, responsiveness, and impact.
For instance, over half of consumers reported they would boycott brands if its sustainability claims were found to be misleading. By using an independent body for assurance, these issues are avoided through a transparent, trusted approach.
Confident decision-making
SRA streamlines the collection and analysis of the data you need, and then verifies its accuracy. This means a reduction of non-compliance risk across regions and industries. In addition, it enables you to make clear, data-driven decisions for your longer-term sustainability goals, while consistently measuring the performance of your strategies.
Building trust and enhancing reputation
In a recent BSI survey, 74% of those asked said they are more likely to trust a business’s environmental claims if they can provide evidence of verification or certification to validate their claims.
Assurance from an established and independent body signals to internal and external stakeholders that they can trust your sustainability efforts. This leads not only to an increase in brand loyalty from ESG-conscious customers, but also added interest from investors; with 70% believing strong ESG practices lead to higher returns. In turn, these effects of heightened trust all serve to boost your reputation.
Opportunity acceleration
Nearly all companies recognize the impact of sustainability practices on their long-term corporate strategies, with 85% of leaders reporting that they see sustainability as an opportunity to create value.
SRA allows you to enter new markets and new industries with increased confidence through efficient processes, verified data, and expert knowledge of specific frameworks. Looking to the future, longer-term resilience is also strengthened by more robust data that create the foundations for future-facing plans.
Driving sustainable value through independent assurance
With sustainability’s growing importance and evolving landscape, seizing the opportunity to assure your sustainability claims can make a substantial impact.
With a respected, independent assurance process in place, your sustainability reporting builds trust, bolsters compliance, attracts new investment, and accelerates growth.
As your partner in progress, we can help you create a competitive advantage and accelerate sustainable growth with our SR solutions.
Wherever you find yourself on your sustainability journey, we can help support you with our SRA approach.
