+44 (0)20 3326 7333
EVORA Deutschland
EVORA Italia

Posts

Communicating COVID-19 impacts through Sustainability Reporting

/in , /by

With market uncertainty pervasive and belief in business deteriorating, using the annual sustainability report to restore confidence with all stakeholders is more important than ever.

Your next report will need to provide a clear, trustworthy narrative, detailing specific insights on how the pandemic has impacted on your sustainability strategy, business model, risks and stakeholder commitments.

Sustainability frameworks enable companies to provide reasonably comparable and useful information. However, no such template exists to compare how companies have responded to COVID-19.

EVORA have been making in-roads in accounting for the COVID crisis in our reporting for clients since March, learning more with each report, and share key areas below to consider during your next round of reporting:

1) Controlling the content

COVID-19 has impacted people in many ways. Employees may have experienced challenges adapting to a new way of working; property managers dealing with a whole new set of procedures and protocols to follow; tenants juggling the ‘return to work’ safely and local communities may have experienced unexpected environmental and social impacts.

By including a COVID-19 one-off section in the report; the opportunity may be missed to communicate the impacts of the pandemic in a more nuanced way, tailored to the different stakeholders affected. Instead, it will be more authentic weaved in specific messaging throughout the sustainability reporting, where relevant, through the voice of the affected stakeholder, for example a direct quote from an employee or a tenant.

We also encourage the simplification of the message – avoiding jargon, cliches and overly technical language, and, instead, using straight-forward, clear and concise language.

2) Mapping what is material

Materiality assessments inform meaningful sustainability communications, enabling companies to identify sustainability issues that are important to both their stakeholders and to business success. Used to their full potential they can help shape company strategy, galvanise internal functions and gain senior buy-in, as well as uniting disparate teams and processes.

As society deals with the pandemic, materiality assessments should be reassessed to better integrate sustainability into business strategy and to explore the relationship between a company’s impacts on a sustainability issue and the impact of that issue on the business. 

3) Dealing with the data

The shift to homeworking presents a unique challenge. Companies will be demonstrating a reduction in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions in line with the reduction of office building energy consumption.

This presents several possible issues for the reporting company:

  • Any movement in reported emissions could mask the impacts of any genuine reduction activities
  • Distortion against targets set
  • Justification may be required for smaller energy reductions than others in the sector, or anticipated, because they have seen a lesser impact from the pandemic, for instance through keeping offices open, with higher ventilation requirements, rather than closing buildings completely.
  • Emissions have not been eliminated, rather they have been relocated to employee homes beyond the company’s direct control. Some might argue that the decrease in commuting related emissions makes up for this. In order to provide a credible comparison of year on year performance, quantifiable homeworking emissions should be considered for recognition.

Our initial response is to always explain data with fully contextualised narrative.

4) Shift to online-first

We recommend an online-first approach for corporate sustainability reporting. This enables the audience to more easily search, navigate and locate information. This format can enhance storytelling – enabling more in-depth features and linking direct to other relevant documents.

Stakeholder scrutiny of how organisations are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic is bringing heightened attention to the importance of corporate transparency on sustainability issues. EVORA design reporting strategies for organisations, enabling them to apply frameworks, communicate meaningful sustainability outcomes and impacts to key stakeholders and use reporting as a tool to improve sustainability performance. Get in touch with the EVORA reporting team today.

Sustainability Report Post-COVID-19

/in , /by

As COVID-19 coincided with our spring peak reporting season, our reporting clients have had to consider adjusting their reports to suit. Despite the focus on the 2019 reporting calendar, many have chosen to acknowledge COVID-19 within the introduction or even a dedicated full chapter, allowing stakeholders to considerately judge the effectiveness of the organisation’s response.

This crisis has also placed an emphasis on social criteria. We have observed more reports focusing on the treatment of employees, suppliers, and relationships with local communities. Changing stakeholder priorities means that organisations are increasing attentions on social issues to demonstrate responsiveness to the highest priorities at the present time.

We perceive next year’s reporting to be the most changed by the disruption has caused. Accordingly, EVORA is developing aspects of reporting, including:

  • Re-examining materiality assessments to ensure the true identification of sustainability issues that are important to both stakeholders and business continuity.
  • Presenting further disclosures, to provide effective insight into an organisations COVID-19 response.
  • Continuation of reporting on standard, year-on-year ESG data and performance, which will allow readers to evaluate the organisation’s resistance to shocks.
  • Backing data with contextual explanations. We perceive that there will be significant reductions in environmental performance data reported, such as energy and travel. This fall in carbon emissions will undoubtedly accelerate the attainment of sustainability goals. However, this distortion will require a full narrative with expectations for future trajectory.

Stakeholder scrutiny of how organisations are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic is bringing heightened attention to the importance of corporate transparency on sustainability issues. EVORA design reporting strategies for organisations, enabling them to apply frameworks, communicate meaningful sustainability outcomes and impacts to key stakeholders and use reporting as a tool to improve sustainability performance. Get in touch with the EVORA reporting team today.

EVORA continues to partner with you through COVID-19

/in /by

The COVID-19 outbreak is impacting all of us and has understandably disrupted the operations of all markets and businesses globally.  We are clearly all very concerned for our families, friends and colleagues in what are very difficult times and we want to extend our sincerest and heartfelt wishes to everyone.

Our commitment to our colleagues and customers remains our utmost priority.  We are continuing to work closely with all our customers on their sustainability programmes and are doing everything we can to communicate clearly and swiftly with everyone.  Our business remains strong with wonderfully committed teams and a robust capital base that enables us to continue to operate as a true long term partner, remaining extremely focused on delivering sustainability outcomes to our clients that help our people and our planet.

Business Continuity in a time of disruption

We have robust contingency plans in place to protect the health and safety of our people and our clients to allow us to continue operating with as little disruption as is practical in these very exceptional circumstances.  EVORA invoked full remote working conditions from the 16th of March and our core knowledge of Health and Wellbeing practices has allowed us to fully transition to flexible and remote working with the minimum of disruption.  Has it been plain sailing?  No, of course not and it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise, but we continue to be delighted and indeed humbled by the steadfast commitment of all our teams and how they are supporting our clients with passion, drive and good humour.

Since our inception we have always encouraged flexible working practices and we continue to invest in our infrastructure in support of this.  We absolutely believe that our flexible and highly connected culture will continue to allow us to operate with a minimum of impact to our commitments to you and the programmes we are supporting.

We have temporarily closed all our offices and stopped all business travel and are continuing to make alternative arrangements through phone and video conferencing to enable us to stay connected with everyone and we continue to remain available through our normal phone and email channels and will keep our social media feeds regularly updated.

We look forward to continuing to partner with you as we all navigate our way through COVID-19.  Please do take care, stay safe and our thoughts are with you all.