Workiva’s survey of 1,300 in-house professionals worldwide (representing organizations across sectors) involved in their companies’ ESG reporting and strategy revealed these key US-specific takeaways (100 respondents) (all data below are US-specific unless stated otherwise):
- More than three-quarters of companies (77%) have appointed someone internally to an ESG-specific role to oversee their reporting and initiatives, compared to 68% globally.
- ESG reporting is still new to most companies, with 70% of respondents indicating they began formally reporting ESG, climate/sustainability or CSR data, within the past three years. Of those, nearly 40% commenced ESG reporting in the last one to two years (on par with the global average).
- Respondents identified these top three opportunities generated by ESG reporting to date: better insurance or credit agency engagement (80%), reduced long-term risk (79%), and strengthening of partnerships (79%).
- More than two-thirds of respondents (68%) indicated that their organization is underprepared to meet their ESG goals and future regulatory mandates, compared to 63% worldwide.
- More than 70% of respondents (compared to 49% globally) said that their organization has outlined actionable steps and measurable goals to track their improvement on environmental issues.
Globally, respondents identified calculating GHG protocols to measure their companies’ Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, carbon accounting, and communicating corporate value to address investor/stakeholder needs, as their companies’ top three challenges for ESG reporting.
SASB is the most widely-used or consulted ESG disclosure system or framework (34%) worldwide, followed by the CDP (30%), TCFD (29%), GRI (27%), UN PRI (25%), and UN SDGs (25%).
See Workiva’s release and additional resources on our Sustainability page.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!