The benefits of using a materiality assessment to identify your biggest sustainability risks and opportunities, and how to bring your employees and customers on the sustainability journey with you. By Vanessa Thompson
With increased awareness around sustainability and more demand from customers, businesses are now seeing sustainability as a strategy they can no longer ignore. Sustainability can be complicated and challenging; there is a lot of complex and conflicting information. One of the biggest challenges is knowing where to start.
Author and management consultant Peter Drucker once said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” To be able to set goals and action changes in your business, you need a clear picture of what social and environmental initiatives you already have in place. Start by mapping out or completing a materiality or risk assessment*. This helps to identify the most ‘material issues’ and the importance each of these has to your business.
A materiality assessment will help to expose any potentially damaging risks you face, and the urgency with which you need to tackle them. Prioritising these issues becomes easier when you have identified what is most important, and the ‘easy wins’ become clearer. The option to get external help at this stage will help give you a clear, unbiased look at these issues and help identify possible opportunities you might not have spotted.
The assessment is a strategic business tool that will give you information to inform your strategy and advise what you need to report on. When starting the assessment, you will need to cover social, environmental and business values, and conduct interviews with key employees and stakeholders. It is important to consider all areas, as one can often affect another. Social issues include the transparency of your supply chain, gender equality and diversity, living wages, staff training, working hours and codes of conduct. Environmental issues include waste, pollution, energy and water use, responsible chemical use and packaging. Business values to consider are your purpose, philanthropy and policies around corruption and bribery.
