Best Practice Environmental Social and Governance Reporting
Corporate responsibility is emerging as one of the most important political, cultural and business issues of our time. From the corporates perspective it increasingly pervades everything they do from their strategic decision-making to their underlying processes and ultimately external engagement/reporting.
This report builds on the Report Leadership publication 'Tomorrow's Reporting Today' and provides practical ideas on how companies can communicate to key stakeholders the value of their company's Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy and performance.
Traditionally, ESG matters have been reported in a stand-alone 'sustainability report', if at all, with little alignment to the organisation's core strategy. Sustainability reports are also mainly in narrative form, without explanatory graphics, and include limited disclosure of the financial impacts of specific sustainability activities. However, PricewaterhouseCoopers' global research tells us that the capital markets have been sceptical of governance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability reports, and have not used the information to any great extent when completing their analysis and recommendations.
It appears that while companies are providing additional information, they are not explaining its medium to long-term value effectively to their key stakeholders. The report illustrates how additional financial and narrative information about a fictitious company's (Generico) delivery of its environmental, social and governance strategies - both now and in the future - might be included in the annual report.
The proposed reporting framework is based on four key principles:
- Clear alignment to corporate strategy
- Long-term targets and measurement of performance
- Transparent reporting against ESG milestones
- Quantification of returns from enhanced ESG reporting
If you have any feedback or comments on this publications and the ideas set out for addressing what is a rapidly evolving area of corporate reporting please e-mail us at
