When sustainability reporting season is around the corner, many Corporate Sustainability practitioners are hard at work preparing for the big time of the year - the release of the company’s Sustainability Report. It should be a time to be thrilled and proud, but for many, it’s a truly stress-free period. Luckily, there are things you can do to make the process a little smoother and more enjoyable, and we've gathered three sustainability reporting tips to achieve that.
Download the guide about Sustainability Reporting in Worldfavor and learn how to fast-track into a smooth reporting process.
Challenges with Sustainability Reporting
As sustainability reporting requirements have increased, frameworks to support standardization have advanced, and companies’ maturity and ambitions in the field have evolved - the workload connected to preparing the sustainability report has skyrocketed. Corporate Sustainability teams are spending more time than ever chasing information from other business units and external providers, manually aggregating data, double-checking, validating, and filling gaps. Not to mention, producing content and coordinating with various internal and external resources for the actual publication process.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to avoid ending up in this overwhelming chaos year after year (or avoid it in the first place). Let's dive into our sustainability reporting tips to get a more enjoyable reporting experience.
Sustainability Reporting tips #1
Build a Sustainability Reporting Process with Minimal Person Dependency
The sustainability reporting process may have professionals worried that it's dependent on one or a few persons in the organization, and express feelings like: “I would have no idea what to do if (Person X) would leave from here”. Building a process that makes information and processes less dependent on a few persons, distributing the responsibility and the access to information, will reduce stress, administration load and the risk of the consequences should key persons go absent. It will also result in much better traceability of the data.
For those of you who are responsible for, or a part of, your companies sustainability reporting process, and have faced the challenge of person dependency, let us introduce how you can take actions and developed the situation. Learn how to fast-track into a smooth sustainability reporting process by downloading our guide 'Sustainability reporting in Worldfavor' and take your sustainability reporting to the next level.
Sustainability Reporting tips #2
Make Sustainability Reporting more than just a Report
An extreme amount of effort is spent to complete a sustainability report, so why not make more out of that work and simplify it at the same time. Systematically reviewing and reporting your company’s sustainability metrics and progress more than once a year, keeping it alive, will help you in many ways. It is more engaging for your stakeholders such as employees and customers to continuously follow your progress. It will simplify your own work to have regular documentation of progress, making the load less heavy and more distributed over the year instead of bulking up once per year. And finally, reporting your work more often will help you analyze how you are progressing regularly and take actions earlier to improve your impact.
One way to get started with collecting and analyzing your sustainability data is to start using a software to automate the process. In this field, we've got you covered. Deep dive into how the reporting process could be smoother and time-saving by downloading our guide 'Sustainability reporting in Worldfavor'.
Sustainability Reporting tips #3
Focus your Sustainability Report on what’s Material
Quality over quantity is true also in sustainability reporting. Focus your sustainability reporting on the aspects that are most material for your organization, where your organization has a considerable impact and which your different stakeholders find important. An extensive sustainability report requires more efforts, so make sure you adapt it to the scope that you organization can handle now, and plan for meaningful additions next year.
These are three elements to start developing a healthier, risk-free and enjoyable sustainability reporting experience in your organization, and for you to be able to focus on the actual impact that you are there to achieve - not wasting your time and energy on the administration around it. Being stuck in overwhelming reporting doesn’t help the world - or your organization for that matter - a tiny bit, and it doesn’t make you and your colleagues full of energy to pursue impact.
If you are reporting for the first time, maybe even a bit behind schedule, don’t worry. Sustainability reporting doesn’t have to be overly complex. Focusing on the material aspects and setting up a smooth process for gathering and documenting the most important information will take you a long way. Creating a systematic process from day one will help you a lot both today and in the coming years.
Want to know how Worldfavor’s digital platform can help you get a systematic and stress-free sustainability reporting process? Downloading our guide 'Sustainability reporting in Worldfavor' to get started.
"Worldfavor's tools for advanced sustainability reporting secures our high level of transparency and quality of data in a very good way"
- Pär Larshans, Chief Sustainability Officer at Ragn-Sells.
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