Accountability, Transparency, and Disclosure
Description
The company comprehensively (not selectively) discloses its sustainability performance data, ideally in raw form (in addition to any curated content) to support independent analysis and comparison, where feasible. The company is transparent in its data sources and data collection and analysis methods and aims to provide data that lends itself to comparability across and beyond industries. In addition to social, environmental, and human resource data, corporate data disclosure should also include statistics on executive compensation (and wage ratios between executives and the median and lowest paid workers), corporate tax data and other payments to governments, and data on the company’s political contributions and lobbying expenses.
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Resources
Sustainability Goals Database
Are you designing new goals or interested in benchmarking your goals against leading practice? To help advance progress in setting credible goals, we will maintain a public goals database containing leading sustainability goals and commitments set by large companies globally. Search by issue, company, industry, goal type, or SDG target.
If you are aware of goals that take a credible approach that should be featured in our database, please let us know.
Position Database
Is your company interested in taking a public position on an ESG issue?
To help companies develop strong, clear positions, we will maintain a public database containing leading positions articulated by large companies globally.
Our governance guide outlines how companies should articulate their positions, and we have applied this criteria to the positions featured in this database.
Developing Position Statements on Sustainability Issues
There is growing pressure among companies to link social and environmental limits to corporate strategy and goal-setting. However, the result is often a lengthy document that fails to make strategic connections between specific issues and their implications on business decision-making. We developed this guidebook to help you articulate a concise and transparent board level position on key environmental, social, and governance issues. Drawing upon in-depth analyses of over 4,000 board position statements; over 200 interviews with CEOs, directors, and board chairs; and concepts outlined in our series on the Road to Context, this guidebook provides a checklist for crafting a contextual board position statement and includes examples from a range of industries and global settings.
ESG Disclosure Handbook
As ESG reporting requirements evolve, many companies find themselves struggling to provide forward-looking, investor-grade information. This guide from WBCSD provides a 3-part structured process for selecting and structuring inputs during the ESG reporting decision-making process. For practitioners involved in corporate disclosure activities, this handbook directly addresses many of the most common questions that Boards of Directors and other executives have about ESG disclosure.
Five Steps to Good Sustainability Reporting
This report from BSR draws on features from notable reporting standards and frameworks - including GRI, SASB, and the TCFD - and presents a five-step process for effective disclosure. While the first step in couched in materiality, from which leading companies are moving beyond, steps 2-5 will be particularly helpful for first-time reporters to better evaluate and understand their audience and the presentation and formatting of their report.
A Guide to Traceability: A Practical Approach to Advance Sustainability in Global Supply Chains
Traceability is an important part of developing a sustainable value chain. Part II of this guide from the UN Global Compact can help you to familiarise yourself with the three main approaches to traceability: Product Segregation, Mass Balance, and Book and Claim. Part III offers practical guidance on implementing traceability. The guide also includes an annex that lists the most relevant traceability issues and actors for ten common commodities.
The Accountability Framework
This framework from the Accountability Framework initiative (AFi) features twelve core principles for building, strengthening, and supporting ethical supply chains. These principles serve as a guide for companies and others in setting, implementing, monitoring, and reporting on effective goals and commitments on deforestation, ecosystem conversion, and human rights in ethical supply chains. AFi has also developed operational guidance to help you put the core principles into practice; a self-assessment to help you with benchmarking your goals, policies, and practices against the framework; and other related tools and guides.
Due Diligence and Transparency Legislation
This brief from Re:Structure Lab can help you to better understand key requirements for strong and effective human rights due diligence legislation and practices to address the business drivers of forced labour along the supply chain. The brief explains how governments can use mandatory human rights due diligence as a key tool - alongside broader legal reforms - to drive wide ranging changes to business practices along end-to-end supply chains. It also explores government solutions that companies can support, such as human rights due diligence legislation and transparency legislation reform.
Social Auditing and Ethical Certification
This brief from Re:Structure Lab can help you to better understand the shortcomings of private tools and schemes intended to detect, address, and prevent forced labour, as well as how these flaws can be addressed. The brief explores how social auditing and certification can be regulated and reformed to eradicate forced labour, and maps out the ways monitoring tools would need to change to play a meaningful role in promoting labour standards.