These days, there are various other areas that businesses need to pay attention to, apart from their key operations. One such area is corporate sustainability. Many business owners acknowledge and recognise that sustainability is a long-term goal that will determine a company’s business model and propel the company forward. From driving change to increasing business efficiency, there are various reasons why businesses should embrace corporate sustainability.
Therefore, for businesses to receive certifications and attract investors, reporting sustainability data has become essential.
What is sustainability reporting?
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines sustainability reporting as an evaluation of a company’s overall economic, environmental, and social implications. Simply put, it is the disclosure of ESG goals and the communication of a progress state towards achieving these goals.
With sustainability reporting, businesses can measure, understand, and communicate their economic, environmental, social, and governance performance, since this type of reporting helps to highlight the company’s commitment to corporate sustainability.
The importance of sustainability reporting
In almost every choice made by a corporation trying to stay in business, financial reporting is taken into consideration. When it comes to your company’s long-term viability, sustainability reporting is just as crucial. Businesses can no longer afford to “go with the flow” when it comes to sustainability – it is essential to consider sustainability while making decisions.
When done frequently, sustainability reporting lifts your company’s sustainability strategy from a “nice-to-have” to a crucial consideration for essential business choices.
1. Builds trust among stakeholders and customers
In today’s society, it is not enough for an organisation to simply make claims about their corporate sustainability plans and procedures. There is an increasing need and demand for businesses to provide credible and tangible demonstrations of their level of corporate sustainability.
Therefore, in the corporate setting, sustainability reporting is a crucial component to enhancing a business’s environmental initiatives and its relationships with investors and customers to be in line with stakeholders’ demands for accountability and transparency. With accountability and transparency comes trust, and businesses that prioritise sustainability reporting will undoubtedly thrive.
2. Better risk management
A business’s performance can be measured using sustainability reporting, which will help to reduce any future business-related risks.
An organisation can use sustainability reporting to concentrate on risk identification and ranking, giving internal reporting, external disclosure, and transparency top priority. Essentially, sustainability reporting enables businesses to be open about the many risks and opportunities they face in addition to assisting them in understanding their impacts.
3. Provides a clear overview
For many organisations, corporate sustainability may seem like a difficult objective to achieve because there are various aspects to consider. Sustainability reporting enables you to better accomplish your objectives and establish more concrete plans for the future by offering accurate data and insights at a glance. By providing a clear overview of the status and progress of your sustainability efforts, confusion and unnecessary downtime is eliminated, which also boosts operational efficiency.
Conclusion
Now that you have learned about some of the many benefits that sustainability reporting brings to businesses, we have come to the ultimate question – how do you go about effective sustainability reporting for your business?
If you are looking to learn more about sustainability reporting, consider enrolling in the 2-Day Professional Certificate in Effective Guide To Sustainability Reporting course offered by Aventis Learning Group. This ESG training course will allow you to learn how to produce an ESG Performance & Sustainability Report that is of the highest quality. Moreover, this IBF-funded course will shed some light on how you can implement these guidelines into practice and give your company that competitive advantage.
For more IBF-funded courses, feel free to browse our extensive collection of courses. Additionally, we also offer a range of in-person, virtual and online courses with certificates in Singapore. Aventis Learning Group is a multi-award-winning corporate training solutions provider that is committed to supporting the professional development of working professionals with our selection of high-quality courses.
To learn more, feel free to get in touch with us by filling up the contact form here.
