ESG reporting: how to make it engaging for stakeholders

"sustainable reporting" is one of the main issues facing companies and organisations today. Very often, however, the information available to companies is fragmented, because everything revolving around sustainability - from regulations to indicators - is constantly evolving and almost every country in the world tends to adapt international directives to its own context. A striking example is the Sustainability Report or Sustainability Report, a tool that companies and organisations can use to communicate transparently their activities and their performance on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Although there is no universal obligation to prepare a sustainability report, many countries have non-financial reporting guidelines that are binding for certain categories of companies.

The regulation on reporting has evolved a lot in recent years, with a new directive recently issued by the European Union: the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which replaces the old Non-Financial Reporting Directive of 2016, where the obligation only concerned large companies with more than 500 employees that constitute public interest entities (listed companies). The new CSRD Directive, which will have to be received within 18 months by all member countries, first of all changes the name of the report from 'Non-financial' to 'Sustainability', but the most important change concerns the extension of the obligation. With the directive published on 16 December 2022 in the EU Official Journal and entering into force on 3 January 2023, mandatory reporting will touch just over 10,000 companies indirectly, but will reach more than 120,000 companies in Italy. The subject of reporting will therefore become a crucial issue for a large number of companies.

Making the sustainability report transparent for stakeholders will be a major challenge for companies. While it is true that the obligation will allow comparison because we will have comparable and standardised data from the various companies, we cannot forget that the sustainability report, thanks to this legislation, will increasingly become an accounting document along with the balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. This means that, over time, this document may become less comprehensible for all stakeholders. If companies want to continue to communicate to the public, they will therefore have to find communication tools that allow some information to be taken from the financial statements, but that are suitable for a less technical use. Probably in the future, best practices of new sustainability report communication tools will emerge, depending on the target audience to which one wants to report.

In many companies today, the sustainability report and related activities fall under various corporate functions, from marketing to external relations, from finance to communication. Most often, companies have appointed a profile in one of these functions to take ownership of the report and the various activities: the Sustainability Manager. From the point of view of corporate governance, with the requirement of sustainability reporting, questions arise about the role of the Sustainability Manager and the activities that will be delegated to him. The sustainability strategy will have to be integrated with the reporting process, but it is important to ensure that sustainability does not simply become a subjugation of regulatory compliance and that it is a central element in the company's approach towards social and environmental responsibility.

Sustainability Reporting: What changes with the new CSRD Directive? How does it affect corporate obligations? How can the sustainability report be made more usable for stakeholders? To answer these questions, and more, we launched the project Pillole dall'Oasi: la Digital Academy by 3Bee for Sustainability Professionals, realised in collaboration with Neutralia and Italian Tech Academy. A course composed of 12 modules dedicated to training on topics related to business sustainability, with the involvement of 23 experts from the world of research, innovation, business and finance. An opportunity not only for training, but to join an exclusive community to receive monthly updates on news from the world of sustainability. Do you want to make your commitment to protecting the environment tangible and ensure the best training for your employees?