Sophie, the Head of ESG at a manufacturing company, starts her day with a flood of emails from suppliers, each one providing inconsistent data on carbon emissions and labor standards. Just when she’s getting a handle on them to deliver an ESG report to investors, a new regulatory change or a complex sustainability metric throws her work off balance.
Welcome to the 21st century business landscape, where companies face increasing pressure to not just deliver strong financial performance but also demonstrate their commitment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles. For good reason, but it does require a certain level of understanding… and a reporting system:
- What is an ESG Report (key components)
- Why is ESG reporting so important today?
- ESG frameworks
- ESG strategy: How to report on ESG more effectively
- Turning your ESG strategy into a competitive advantage
What is an ESG Report?
ESG reporting has emerged as a critical tool for organizations to showcase their sustainability efforts and address the growing concerns of investors, customers, and other stakeholders.
An ESG report is a document that outlines a company’s performance and practices related to environmental, social, and governance criteria.
The key components of an ESG Report
The ESG report is designed to show stakeholders – investors, customers, employees, and regulators – how the company addresses these three critical categories of corporate responsibility and sustainable impact.
An ESG report can address different dimensions of these categories. And it can do so as broadly deemed necessary for stakeholders. The difficulty lies here: It takes very diverse data to summarize an ESG posture in a clear and accurate report.
Environmental
- Energy consumption and emissions: This includes data on a company’s energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions, and efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.
- Water management: Information on a company’s water usage, water conservation initiatives, and efforts to minimize water pollution.
- Waste management: Data on the company’s waste generation, recycling and reuse efforts, and initiatives to reduce waste.
- Biodiversity and land use: Details on the company’s impact on local ecosystems, biodiversity, and land use practices.
Social
- Employee well-being: Information on employee satisfaction, diversity and inclusion, training and development, and workplace safety.
- Community engagement: Details on the company’s philanthropic efforts, volunteer programs, and initiatives to support local communities.
- Supply chain management: Data on the company’s efforts to ensure ethical and sustainable practices throughout its supply chain.
- Product responsibility: Information on the company’s efforts to ensure the safety, quality, and sustainability of its products or services.
Governance
- Board composition and diversity: Details on the diversity, independence, and qualifications of the company’s board of directors.
- Risk management: Information on the company’s processes for identifying, assessing, and mitigating various risks, including those related to ESG factors.
- Ethics and compliance: Data on the company’s ethical standards, anti-corruption policies, and compliance with relevant laws and regulations.
- Stakeholder engagement: Details on the company’s efforts to engage with and address the concerns of its various stakeholders, including investors, customers, and local communities.
Every category is multidimensional, and the four bullet points for each listed here don’t cover the entire territory, at all. That’s why it’s useful to consider and assess the three categories individually, before bundling them together in a report.
And assessing starts with asking the right questions. To assess each dimension, you should consider multiple questions.
In the past, the direct focus for most companies was on financial performance, with little attention paid to their environmental, social, and governance impacts. However, this mindset has evolved significantly in recent years. ESG and growth go hand in hand.
Why? Because overall awareness about corporate impact on the world we live in has increased, also among most business leaders – believe it or not. On top of that, the incentives have shifted. A commitment to sustainability and social responsibility can positively impact a company’s financial performance in several key ways. To name a few:
- Risk mitigation: Sustainable practices reduce risks related to environmental disasters, regulatory fines, and reputational damage. By managing these risks proactively, companies avoid costly incidents and improve long-term stability.
- Cost savings: Efficient resource use (like energy and water conservation) and waste reduction directly lower operating costs. Over time, these savings contribute to a stronger bottom line.
- Market differentiation: Consumers increasingly favor brands that align with their values. Companies with strong ESG practices attract more customers, build loyalty, and boost revenue.
- Access to capital: Investors are shifting funds toward ESG-conscious companies, meaning better access to capital at favorable terms. A strong ESG profile can also improve stock performance, as it signals lower risk and higher resilience.
- Talent attraction and retention: Socially responsible companies are more appealing to employees, especially younger talent. Higher employee satisfaction and retention rates lower recruitment costs and increase productivity.
Of course, the foundational question is: “What truly constitutes being environmentally and socially responsible?”. Knowing how to answer it is a matter of being in touch with standards, frameworks, and regulations. Some examples of widely recognized ESG reporting frameworks and standards include the ones created by these institutions:
- Global reporting initiative (GRI): The GRI is a leading international organization that provides a comprehensive framework for sustainability reporting, covering a wide range of environmental, social, and governance topics.
- Sustainability accounting standards board (SASB): SASB develops industry-specific sustainability accounting standards to help companies disclose financially material sustainability information to investors.
- CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project): CDP is a global disclosure system that enables companies, cities, and governments to report their environmental impact, focusing on climate change, water security, and deforestation, to help stakeholders assess sustainability efforts and risks.
When selecting the appropriate reporting framework, it’s important to consider the specific needs and priorities of your organization, as well as the expectations of your stakeholders.
Many companies choose to align their reporting with multiple frameworks to provide a comprehensive and transparent view of their ESG performance. Often they consult with external ESG experts, who take on the task of assessing the company’s ESG posture.
How to build automated survey reports with Pointerpro
Here’s a quick introduction on how Pointerpro works, brought to you by one of our product Experts, Chris.
“We use Pointerpro for all types of surveys and assessments across our global business, and employees love its ease of use and flexible reporting.”
Director at Alere
“I give the new report builder 5 stars for its easy of use. Anyone without coding experience can start creating automated personalized reports quickly.”
CFO & COO at Egg Science
“You guys have done a great job making this as easy to use as possible and still robust in functionality.”
Account Director at Reed Talent Solutions
“It’s a great advantage to have formulas and the possibility for a really thorough analysis. There are hundreds of formulas, but the customer only sees the easy-to-read report. If you’re looking for something like that, it’s really nice to work with Pointerpro.”
Country Manager Netherlands at Better Minds at Work
The way an ESG consultancy would operate – given they typically hope to serve numerous customers at once – is to streamline their ESG reporting by connecting it to assessments they build. They then let their customers distribute to their network of suppliers and stakeholders who potentially impact their ESG posture.
Here’s a summary of the key steps of the ESG reporting process, whether you are consulting for customers or responsible for your company’s ESG reporting yourself:
1. Assess the current ESG performance
The first step is to conduct a thorough questionnaire-based assessment – or multiple assessments – of the current environmental, social, and governance practices. From questions about energy consumption, employee diversity, board composition, to any other relevant metrics.
The outcome of such assessments is what you could call a level of ESG maturity. The level of maturity is determined by a pre-defined scoring system in which numeric values are attributed to questions and their answer options. Pointerpro’s Product Director Bruno explains custom scoring in layman’s terms below (using financial risk assessment as an example).
2. Establish an actionable ESG report
For each forementioned level of ESG maturity, you should define a number of measurable and time-bound targets, that would allow the organization to move up to a higher level of maturity. These targets should be aligned with the overall business strategy and the expectations of stakeholders.
So, on one hand the ESG report should transparently describe the current situation to stakeholders – using different types of data visualization. On the other hand, it should reflect the steps to be taken to improve on the current situation.
With Pointerpro as an assessment tool, this becomes automated.
How? On our assessment platform you create report templates that incorporate conditional content of your choosing (texts, charts, visuals, etc.). Every time respondents complete your ESG questionnaire, Pointerpro’s assessment engine will generate a tailored report based on their diverse answers. A report can be based on answers from one single assessment, or it can be an aggregate report, based on the collected data from different assessments.
As our colleague Stacy would say: “These aren’t generic surveys.”
3. Keep stakeholders engaged with visual data
Once the full-blown, various ESG reports have been generated and shared with stakeholders (investors, employees, customers, suppliers, etc.), it’s recommended to keep them engaged. In other words, you want them to stay in touch with the progress that is being made (or not made).
A custom dashboard tool is the perfect way to create targeted views, depending on the stakeholder you’re trying to engage.
This transparency fosters trust and enables valuable feedback. It will help refine ESG goals and ensure they remain aligned with evolving expectations and regulatory standards.
If you’re able to streamline the ESG reporting process with a digitalized process, as described above, you benefit from three data-driven advantages:
- Accuracy: Thanks to the custom-score based assessment system you have a quantitative model. Many actors these days in the realm of ESG rely too much on (subjective) qualitative descriptions.
- Consistency: By digitizing the ESG framework or combination of frameworks into a questionnaire-based assessment, you enforce the same standards, whenever and whoever you decide to evaluate. Moreover, if you’re a consultant, serving multiple organizations, you build up a valuable benchmark database.
- Transparency: With reports and dashboards, you not only make the data available, you make them visual and understandable.
To turn ESG into a competitive advantage, integrate ESG goals directly into your core business strategy, ensuring that sustainability and social responsibility drive your operations and decision-making.
Use collected ESG data to make informed choices that reduce costs, mitigate risks, and uncover new opportunities for growth. Finally, communicate your ESG achievements transparently across channels to build trust, enhance brand reputation, and attract socially conscious investors, customers, and employees. By aligning ESG with business objectives, leveraging data insights, and showcasing your commitment, you’re on your way to transform ESG from a compliance requirement into a strategic asset.
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About the author:
Jeroen De Rore
As Creative Copywriter at Pointerpro, Jeroen thinks and writes about the challenges professional service providers find on their paths. He is a tech optimist with a taste for nostalgia and storytelling.
