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4 reasons to implement sustainability reports in your company

As a management and communication tool, sustainability reports reveal the company’s performance in economic, environmental, and social areas, allow to know the impact on stakeholders and help assess improvement opportunities.

All the companies that are currently seeking to stay successful and positioned among their stakeholders have the great challenge of contributing and making their contributions known for sustainable economic, social, and environmental development.

Many already understood this several years ago, and that is why sustainability reports are a part of their business strategy and continuous improvement. In fact, about 82% of the companies at a global level improved their sustainability reports between 2014 and 2018, according to a report from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

If your company wants to be more sustainable today —and therefore more profitable in the long term— it must begin to report its actions. The reasons? We will tell you right here:

1. Clarify the company’s strategy

While preparing sustainability reports, you make the exercise of measuring the impact of your operations, make them known and visualize what to maintain or redirect in the company’s current strategy to move towards more sustainable development.

For example, if your company is having a negative impact on the neighboring communities and that is specified on the report, it makes room for modifications to the business strategy in order to transform that aspect and act better towards the environment.

2. Improve communication with stakeholders

For a few years now, companies have found in sustainability reports an ally to communicate their management to the respective stakeholders, creating trust, a more personalized interaction, as well as growth and development opportunities.

In fact, with this tool, companies have managed to connect transparently with collaborators, neighbors, suppliers, public institutions, NGOs, and customers, who according to a survey carried out by Unilever in 2017  33% of them prefer to acquire products from companies that have a social or ebvironmental purpose and make it own..

3. Achieve long-term profitability

Companies that report their environmental, social, and governance practices have more sustainable operations and, generate higher profitability and market value improvements over time, as shown by a survey from BCG consulting company.

In addition, one of their advantages is that environmental, social, and governance aspects have become highly appreciated factors by investors and they directly affect the organization’s future financial health.

In fact, a Harvard research assessed several companies for 18 years and showed that the ones that  took care of the aspects above had a 46.4% increase in the value of their shares compared to the companies that did not look after these aspects, as stated in the publication from consulting company PwC.

4. Manage risk more effectively

If you report your sustainability initiatives, you are doing the internal job of identifying and organizing all the processes of your business, which allows you to prevent and manage sustainability-related risk factors in the best possible way.

In addition, by reporting you can identify business opportunities, consolidate competitive advantages, and acquire a powerful management tool. Moreover, 61% of the companies feel that the annual report adds value to their organization and strategy, as stated in Deloitte’s Sustainability Trends study.

How to prepare a Sustainability Report?

If you are interested in starting to report, seek advice from experts so they can help you:

  • To include management tools in your company with which you can measure the compliance of sustainable goals with updated information.
  • Elaborate a sustainability document with an integrating vision that reveals the business’ true value proposal, beyond purely economic or financial aspects.

Start reporting now!

Sustainability reports are an innovative tool to improve your company’s annual management, foresee potential crisis, strengthen credibility with the environment, and benefit society as a whole.

Its implementation and the launch of an organizational sustainability culture will only bring benefits for every area in your company, particularly today, where society’s demands invite us to be concerned and involved in sustainable development.

Learn the benefits of investing in business sustainability 

Download this guide to achieve an effective sustainability strategy!

Learn more about how to create new value for your business with sustainability reports

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