Three things you need to do differently with your next sustainability report

Most 2024 sustainability reports have been published, and the weary teams who got them across the finish line have had a good nap. And now it’s time to start thinking about next year’s report. 

Given ERM’s long, deep experience with sustainability reporting, given the political and economic moment we’re in, and given some new data we will be revealing during climate week, it’s time to seriously pivot the approach most companies take to reporting before the next cycle. Here’s why and how: 

1. Stop just talking about the outputs; start talking about the outcomes, too. It’s great that you refreshed your materiality study, it’s cool that you made progress on your GHG emissions reduction target, and it’s certainly relevant that you’ve refreshed or set new goals. But, in this moment, your executives and investors are much more interested in the business impacts. How much money did your sustainability actions save the company over the last year? How much money did they make the company? What new market share was gained, what competitive advantage was earned, or what business strategy was achieved? What costs, fines or regulatory challenges did you avoid? How many employees were retained because of sustainability? How much money did that save in recruiting costs or how much money did it make in increased productivity? It’s not enough to say what you’ve done; you need to say what it means to the company. Sustainability cannot be charity, and it certainly shouldn’t just be compliance. There is a big opportunity for sustainability to be a driver of cost savings, business growth, product innovation, product sales, employee recruitment and reputational advantage. After all, nearly 25% of a company’s value can be directly tied to its reputation. 
2. Generate an ROI on your reporting investment. Our own Annie Longsworth wrote a post about this a while back: It’s estimated that the average company spends 1,660 staff hours to produce a sustainability report. Most companies then relegate all of that effort to a .pdf that sits on a website and is rarely read by anybody other than raters and rankers, some investors and a handful of prospective employees. This is a problem. You’re counting on the people you most want to be influenced by all that you’re doing for people and the planet to actually make an effort to find your report and wade through it to find what pertains to them. You know that’s not going to happen. Instead, you need to identify who those audiences are, learn what outputs and outcomes matter most to them, and craft a communications strategy for reaching them in the channels where they consume information. In other words, meet them each where they are with what they want to hear instead of expecting them to make the effort. Without that, you really are not getting a return on your investment.
3. If you’re a supplier, ensure your reporting and ensuing comms speak directly to your largest customers. We won’t be publishing all of this data until next month during NYC Climate Week, but we’ve just completed a proprietary survey of business-to-business buyers in the U.S. and Europe. We learned that the vast majority (over 75%) say that knowing a company is a leader in reducing its environmental impact would “somewhat/greatly” improve their opinion of that company. More specifically, over 75% say that companies that are leaders on environmental impact reduction are well-run companies that stand behind their products, over 80% say sustainability has indeed been a tie-breaker when choosing between suppliers, and over 50% can think of a time when their company has paid more for a product they considered to be better for the planet. For all these reasons, you want to make sure you are viewed as a company with tight sustainability goals and accomplishments that meaningfully contribute to the better management of your company. Your report — and a comms effort — are the right places to start. 

ERM creates over 100 reports a year, and ERM Shelton works with many clients to drive ROI for those reports through the comms strategies and executions I’m talking about here. Let us help you put these three directives into action and deliver real business value for your reporting. There’s nothing more important for those of us working in sustainability today.