Strategy
A solid sustainability strategy gives you a framework for managing your most significant social, environmental and broader economic issues.
StrategyWhen we work with you on developing or refining your sustainability strategy, we typically start by looking at how you identify and manage your material issues. This pivotal process typically culminates in the drawing up of a Materiality Matrix that maps sustainability issues onto business objectives, and helps you pinpoint your strategic priorities.
Materiality
Materiality assessments inform a robust strategy and enhance the credibility and effectiveness of sustainability reporting. They support companies in aligning resources and attention to those issues that matter the most. Its importance in ensuring effective management of the environmental and social risks and opportunities that face companies is emphasized by: the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) who has placed materiality at the center of its GRI G4 reporting guidelines; the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and other leading standards.
While our approach and insight adopts best practice, it is also highly tailored to each client need and culture. We work with the some of the largest and leading global companies to assess material issues and drive the development and execution of their sustainability strategies.
Some of our clients use materiality to identify and manage risks and opportunities, others use the process to inform communications strategy and sustainability reporting. In each case, we tailor the materiality process to meet the specific objectives of our clients and deliver efficient solutions to generate the greatest value.
Benchmarking
Are your business units and major facilities around the world demonstrating implementation of global policies and delivering the performance you expect? We can help you find out through our framework for internal benchmarking of sustainability performance. We can provide a detailed analysis of the levels of engagement and embeddedness of management arrangements for sustainability issues across operations and business units. This approach, successfully applied with a range of multinational companies, delivers an independent assessment to enable companies to achieve consistent standards of management globally.
Through visits to operating units and interviews with local management, we evaluate sustainability management against criteria that reflect the material issues for the organisation and its industry. We then produce a report that benchmarks operating units, and makes recommendations for company-wide and local improvement, often drawn from examples of best practice uncovered during our work. In this way, operating units can learn from one another.
At a corporate level, we can also provide benchmarks of sustainability reporting, benchmarks of targets and levels of performance, and benchmarks that analyse the different management approaches to specific sustainability issues taken by a range of other companies. Please contact us to discuss your specific requirements.
Other strategy services
We also support our customers with a range of other services including:
• Independent assessments of sustainability management arrangements;
• Executive briefings on specific issues, trends and sector developments;
• Analysis of governance structures, risks and opportunities arising from new developments, mergers and acquisitions.
