The sustainability reporting journey for every organisation will be unique and different in many ways. However, organisations must achieve some milestones as they mature on the sustainability reporting front.
These milestones play an essential part in the execution of the organisation’s sustainability reporting strategy and are crucial to assessing its performance against its set goals and objectives.
The typical phases on the sustainability reporting journey include organisations having no form of reporting to then providing strictly only regulatory required reporting on non-financial information to then providing sustainability reporting based on regulatory requirements periodically and then the use of sustainability reporting standards or frameworks to subsequently reporting using frameworks and standards more regularly with international bests practice including assurance.
Therefore, an organisation’s reporting strategy should set clear targets for when the organisation should achieve specific milestones and ensure accountability. The reporting landscape on sustainability is fast evolving, and organisations cannot afford to be complacent about their reporting maturity.
A critical milestone on the sustainability reporting journey is meeting the expectations and demands of regulators.
For example, regulators across many countries have set the roadmap for IFRS sustainability disclosure standards, which organisations must apply from specific dates.
Therefore, organisations must include the milestone of readiness in their journey to ensure compliance with the regulations in the jurisdictions in which they operate.
Another milestone for organisations to consider on their reporting journey includes ensuring they have all the resources required for reporting. These include human and financial resources that will drive the sustainability agenda from a business standpoint and the information disclosed and reported to stakeholders.
Also, organisations must have a milestone on when the information and data required to report on their material sustainability matters successfully will be made available continuously to meet the information needs of external and internal stakeholders.
As part of this process of information and data, organisations must review their processes and policies, including developing internal audit programmes around the sustainability data, to build confidence and trust with their stakeholders.
Achieving these milestones is critical to positioning sustainability as a value add, not just a compliance burden to organisations that further demonstrates the business case for sustainability to stakeholders.
