Sustainability reporting reveals your company's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals and your progress towards these goals. It is a tool for your company to share and become transparent about its environmental and social performance and impact on the public.

There is growing demand from companies to be transparent about the environmental impacts and sustainability efforts not only by customers but also by stakeholders and investors. Therefore, voluntarily preparing and sharing sustainability reports is essential for companies to communicate their ESG goals and efforts transparently to anyone interested.

Having a sustainability report where you transparently and voluntarily share all your sustainability efforts and environmental and social impacts will make you trustworthy among customers and investors. A detailed and well-prepared sustainability report will undoubtedly empower your corporate reputation and consumer confidence. Also, sustainability reporting will help you increase employee retention and loyalty and improve access capital by meeting employee expectations and driving more interest to your company.

Sustainability is a broad and comprehensive topic, so sustainability reporting requires well-defined steps and a plan before diving into it. Here are 4 key steps of sustainability reporting: 

1. The first step is simply setting your goals with sustainability reporting; defining your aim will lead you to figure out what performance goals, metrics, and indicators you need for your report. 

2. Once you are done with the first step, it is time to get in touch with the related bodies and departments in your company to collect data. At the data collection stage, it is better to involve all the parties related to the metrics you've set to reduce the risk of trouble in data collection and to have robust data to prove your efforts. 

3. After collecting comprehensive data, you should evaluate it carefully to get a baseline and have an objective view of your current performance and areas for improvement. Critical analysis is the key when it comes to the data evaluation stage. This data analysis method will also highlight the areas you need to improve on and increase your reliability.

4. Lastly, state your conclusions in a way that is easy for people to follow. However, in addition to sharing what good your company is doing, critique and come up with solutions for your not-so-environmentally friendly practices. 

Sustainability reports are used by various stakeholders, including investors, civil society, accountants, academics, governments, and sustainability reporting practitioners.

A sustainability report is valued and interpreted as a sign of credibility by stakeholders. It also helps you to engage employees, build trust with the public and improve your reputation. Even though the external benefit of sustainability reporting gets emphasized, it also makes your decision-making processes more efficient, reduces risk across your supply chain, reduces waste, and brings significant cost savings to your company.

A sustainability report is a document that discloses your company's negative and positive impacts on the environment, society, and economy. However, how you present matters. While preparing a sustainability report, ensure you represent your company fully from its story and values to employees and customers. In addition, make sure that these are included in your sustainability report: 

• -A statement from your CEO focusing on your company's vision or ambition for sustainability

• -Your company's sustainability strategy with clear goals and targets

• -Your company's governance structures and processes

• -Easy to follow overview of key indicators you've set for the report

• -Stories that inspire your company's sustainability effort

• -Real people's voices about the company's environmental impact, including your employees and customers

• -Clear, assuring, and achievable plan for future improvements

Intengine harnesses over a decade of extensive supplier data and analytics expertise to drive your Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives. Intengine eValuater is a SaaS product built on top of the Intengine eco-business directory, to allow lead buyers to communicate with and aggregate data from their supply chain. You can utilize Intengine eValuater, Networking and Reporting tool to manage, connect and communicate with your supply chain for reporting and data analysis.