5 questions to enhance your next sustainability report

By Barb Brown and Sarah Corrigan

What do corporate responsibility practitioners do during July and August?  Vacation? We hope, for a couple of weeks, anyway.

But for many, summer is also the ideal time of year to step back and evaluate current and best practices for environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures. If your organization is considering reporting non-financial information next year, the summer months are prime time to begin planning.

Given major marketplace shifts within corporate reporting, evaluating your approach to reporting is particularly important this year. Organizations currently face transparency demands from multiple angles, including increasing requests for information from customers and investors, and the growing need to incorporate ESG principles into supplier management.

To read the full article please visit our monthly column Shift Happens on GreenBiz.com.

Pittsburgh flexes its sustainability muscle

By: Mike Wallace and Jared Robbins

Back in 2011, one of the world’s largest certified Global Reporting Initiative trainings to date took place in Cleveland, drawing nearly 200 business students and college seniors from 14 colleges in Ohio.

The event, held at Cleveland State University and hosted by consultancy BrownFlynn, revolved around a theme that has grown in importance since then: Developing sustainability capacity within a geographic region.

Around the country, cohorts of cities and various regional allies are tackling sustainability through a variety of mechanisms.

The Pittsburgh region exemplifies one strategic approach to regionally tackling sustainability issues.

To read the full article, please visit our monthly column Shift Happens on GreenBiz.com.

How to engage your investors on ESG issues during proxy season and beyond

By Mike Wallace and Sarah Corrigan

Spring brings a new proxy voting season, as shareholders exercise their right to raise issues of importance to company management, the board of directors and fellow shareholders. In recent years, the number of shareholder proposals devoted to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have increased at a fast pace. While institutional investors may not be involved in the majority of these proposals, companies should note that institutional consideration of ESG practices has grown significantly.

Last month, the Sustainable Investments Institute, Proxy Impact and As You Sow teamed up to publish their annual guide to proxy season, Proxy Preview 2015. This preview reveals that shareholders have filed 433 resolutions regarding ESG issues (excluding traditional governance proposals) through the middle of February, a slight uptick since the same time last year.

Of those proposals, the greatest proportions pertain to the environment and corporate political activity, at 27 percent and 26 percent, respectively. Many shareholders have withdrawn proposals as the result of corporate action, typically aided by discussions between the filing shareholder and the company’s investor relations team.

To read the full article please visit GreenBiz.com.

Why you should answer the new CDP climate questions

By Cora Lee Mooney and Sarah Corrigan

The 2015 CDP Climate Change questionnaire contains two new unscored questions, and many companies are in the process of determining whether to answer them.

For practitioners who recognize that the value of sustainability reporting lies in the process, this decision should be easy. These practitioners understand that the stages of the reporting process — stakeholder conversations, data collection and response writing — all contribute to refining their company’s sustainability strategy.

CDP highlights the importance of this strategy formulation by launching its two new questions within the Strategy (CC2) section of its questionnaire. This year, responding organizations are asked whether they have an internal price on carbon (CC2.2c) and whether their board of directors would support an international agreement between governments on climate change (CC2.4).

To read the full article please visit GreenBiz.com.

Top 3 reasons to take your sustainability report online in 2015

By: Jennifer Griffith, Senior Design Consultant

Increased transparency and external reporting are essential for companies. Yet, getting stakeholders to read a company sustainability report and derive value from it is one of the biggest obstacles for corporate responsibility reporting. When done right, online reporting helps to overcome this challenge. Online CR reports are more accessible, engaging and measurable than stand-alone print reports.

1. Report Accessibility

Offering your sustainability report online and supplementing it with additional formats for a variety of readers is the best way for stakeholders to have maximum accessibility to it and thus, greater opportunity to read it. A stand-alone print report limits its accessibility by virtue of its medium; the report is only available to the number of people less than or equal to the printed quantity, and only those who can physically get their hands on it.

In addition to offering your report online, several other supporting formats expand readership.

To read the full article, please visit GreenBiz.com.

The Environmental Employee Engagement (EEE) Roadmap

Engaging employees in the environment is good for business and the environment. BrownFlynn collaborated with TD Bank and the Environmental Defense Fund to create an Environmental Employee Engagement (EEE) Roadmap, enabling others to benefit from the development and implementation of TD Bank’s successful EEE program. Read the whitepaper here!

2014 Staff Retreat and Community Service

Another year, another staff retreat come and gone this week with time for reflection and energizing momentum. We shared good conversation, good ideas, good food and good fun as we planned for the future and took part in some community service – not too shabby for two days! Here are some of the highlights through photos…

ESG research firms are looking at your company…are you ready?

By Mike Wallace, Managing Director, and Sarah Corrigan, Associate Consultant

Early autumn brings the unveiling of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices as companies all over the world learn whether they have what it takes to be recognized on one of the preeminent sustainability indices.

When any award is announced, the first question is typically “Who won?” The second is “Who decided?” In the case of DJSI, the answer to the first question includes a list of 16 companies that have made the list each of the last 15 years. The answer to the second question is RobecoSAM, an investment firm based in Zurich, Switzerland, that specializes in sustainability investing.

Research firms specializing in environmental, social and governance analysis are experiencing a growth in the demand for their services as investors and other influential users become more attuned to the utility and availability of such information. Such firms provide investors (both asset owners and asset managers) with the tools and data to compare and contrast ESG performance of companies across sectors and regions. Quantitative metrics and consolidated scoring allows these comparisons to be made in real time, a feature favored by investment analysts who don’t have time to read your latest sustainability report cover to cover. Considering the growing number of PRI Signatories and CDP Signatories, the experts analyzing such ESG performance information quickly are multiplying.

To read the full post please visit GreenBiz.com.

Sustainability reporting evolving as a management tool

By: Darrell Delamaide

An improved reporting process is helping companies identify gaps in their sustainability practices, which, when closed, can lead to big savings

The latest guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), issued less than a year ago, are turning sustainability reporting into more of a management tool and less of a marketing exercise.

The new version, called G4, introduces a whole set of guidelines on governance and places the emphasis on prioritizing which actions of the organization have a truly significant impact on the environment and society.
The focus is more on ‘how’ the report is produced, rather than on ‘what’ it finally says. In other words, it is designed to engage the organization from the C-suite on down in managing the impact rather than putting out a checklist of indicators.

This was the message in a training session with high-level government officials (including several procurement officers) conducted in Washington on April 23 and 24 by BrownFlynn, a sustainability consulting firm and the first US-certified GRI training partner. This training was conducted in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development at WBCSD’s US offices.

To read the full article in Corporate Secretary magazine please click here.

U.S. shareholders break a record in environmental and social resolutions in 2014!

This week’s 2014 Proxy Review Webinar reinforced the leadership role shareholders are playing in influencing companies to address their environmental, social and governance (ESG) impacts.

According to Heidi Welsh, Executive Director of the Sustainable Investment Institute, U.S. shareholders are breaking records in the number of social and environmental proposals filed in 2014 (417 as of February 14!).  The most active proposal filers in 2014 have been SRI groups (31%), pension funds (24%) and religious groups (17%).  The issues addressed include political activity, environment (climate change and energy), sustainability and diversity.  The increase in discussion of political activity relates to a changing context, as shareholders are interested in companies’ political spending and lobbying and whether or not these activities align with their stated corporate responsibility objectives.  Where companies devote their time and money in political activity can leave a lasting mark; as Timothy Smith, Director of ESG Management at Walden Asset Management, said, “the power of the purse in influencing elections and public policy is real.”

One interesting trend is that shareholders now have a systemic view of corporate responsibility topics. Andrew Behar, the CEO of As You Sow, discussed the interconnectedness of environmental and social issues and how shareholders no longer view these issues in isolation.  For example, Behar described how corporate political spending relates to energy policy, which relates to climate change, which relates to water and agriculture, which relate to human rights.  In addition, shareholder requests for sustainability reporting disclosures are expanding in focus, from purely environmental efforts to more social topics and supply chain issues.  These findings mirror those highlighted in the State of Green Business 2014, as companies are “integrating social issues into their sustainability programs” and seeing “how improving lives makes good business sense.”

What are the key takeaways for companies?

• Environmental and social issues are of growing interest to shareholders, increasing pressure on companies to demonstrate management of these issues.
• Shareholder engagement is an invaluable tool for risk management; often, shareholders raise environmental and social topics early, which helps companies consider what topics they should address now and in the future.
• Shareholders are looking for transparency and accountability, particularly related to political activity.  Companies will need to evaluate how their current reporting practices meet the needs of shareholders.  Many will turn to the Global Reporting Initiative G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines for help in determining what topics to prioritize. This is accomplished through materiality assessments which provide an outline for companies to organize and prioritize their corporate responsibility objectives, performance, governance and management approach.

I look forward to seeing how shareholder environmental and social resolutions evolve, how companies respond, and what corporate responsibility best practices emerge throughout the rest of the year.  How will your company address shareholder concerns and engage with shareholders in 2014?

By Brittany VanderBeek, Analyst