Sustainability Report:
With schoesslers to CSRD conformity – and beyond
Compulsory sustainability report coming up: What companies need to know
What used to be a voluntary commitment will become mandatory from 2024 onwards: Companies will be obligated to reveal how sustainably they operate. And they will have to do so in accordance with EU’s new directive.
Background information: The EU Commission has decided to gradually extend the obligation to publish sustainability reports.
The Corporate Social Responsibility Directive (CSRD)
The CSRD aims to make sustainability just as desirable a corporate objective as profitability. For this reason, the sustainability report will in future be included in the management report in the same way as the financial report and will be externally audited. This also creates more transparency for investments in the EU: Which projects and companies are operating sustainably and therefore really worth promoting?
For companies, this means they must provide information on the extent to which they influence the environment and society, and how sustainability aspects affect the company’s business activities. In addition, they ought to define achievable sustainability goals for themselves that can be proven in their implementation.
The obligation to report on sustainability will already apply to certain companies as early as 2024 and will be extended to more and more companies in 2025 and 2026.
Please contact us if you would like to know whether or when your company is subject to the reporting obligation.
The new obligation replaces the so-called Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), which previously only affected a very limited group of companies. In addition, there were no uniform guidelines, so that in practice important information was often missing and the reports lacked in comparability.
The CSRD not only expands the group of obligated companies to include even small businesses, but also introduces EU-wide standards for the form and content of the reports. The mandatory nature or audit is similar to that of financial statements. The reports’ content will be audited according to specified standards (the ESRS and their taxonomy) by a qualified external body.
However, sooner or later every company will have to reflect on its sustainability in the future, regardless of the upcoming obligation by legislation, because the interest in this aspect of economic activity will continue to grow.
With our support you can be among the first in your industry to address the issue and demonstrate transparency, competence and future orientation.
Implementation is a process through which we can guide you
The responsibility for preparing the sustainability report is up to the management. In practice, however, the process needs input and commitment from other players at the management level, departments with CSR-relevant data, such as the legal department. Furthermore, interests of stakeholders must be included in the process.
Personnel resources, qualifications and concise time management are therefore required. Depending on the case, a company-wide strategy needs to precede this in which sustainability factors and goals are defined. These goals must be implemented and made measurable in figures. Both the data on the status quo and on the targets and their implementation are to be an integral part of the sustainability report.
schoesslers not only provides support throughout the process and in the preparation of the CSRD-compliant report. We also help companies to use the topics and contents which have to be processed and prepared for the report anyway in an appropriate and communicative way. This is our expertise.
The path to a sustainability report:
How schoesslers can help.
We have more than twelve years of experience in communicating B2B topics. Writing a sustainability report is also a communicative task. After all, the ultimate goal is to present the company’s performance and strategies in a concise and understandable way.
We coordinate and create your sustainability report.
This is how the process works with schoesslers:
Kick-off workshop: In an initial joint workshop, we will clarify the framework conditions of the guideline in relation to your company and create a roadmap of the process that is individually tailored to the needs of your company.
Needs analysis and data collection: Based on the initial input, we create a sustainability SWOT and support you in collecting the necessary data of your company in a structured way. This provides an initial overview of the status quo.
Analysis and prioritization of CSR topics: We calculate your carbon footprint for you, analyze the data you have collected, accompany you in the materiality analysis and can thus focus with you on the topic areas relevant within your company.
Definition of goals and measures: In close dialog with you and taking into account your fundamental business model and corporate objectives, we will work with you to derive sustainability goals that are suitable for your company and formulate them for both the official CSRD report and for your entire communication.
The final report: We prepare the CSRD-compliant sustainability report for you and with you, which becomes part of your management report. In addition, we prepare the report’s key content and objectives in additional formats already during the process so that you can use them for your communication.
Continuous support: schoesslers will continuously accompany you to further optimize your sustainability reporting processes, to stringently pursue and implement the defined goals and measures, and to easily meet the new obligations in the years to come as well.
“Do good and talk about it”
Implementation of your strategic Sustainability PR
This old PR wisdom still holds true. We accompany you not only in the preparation of your sustainability report but support you in positioning your company with regards to sustainability throughout the entire process. For companies that already produce sustainability reports or are already actively implementing measures, we can support you in creating a PR campaign to make your commitment visible and appealing.
Preparation of your company’s sustainability goals for your corporate website
Integration of the goals into the overall communication strategy
Development of thought leadership
Development of spokespersons on the topic
So, whether you are still at the beginning or already thriving sustainably: With schoesslers you get the communicative plus to your sustainability report on top. We look forward to hearing from you!