Reporting standards
About the data
Why is this important?
When more companies use the same reporting standards, non-financial data becomes easier to compare due to standardization.
Context:
There are lots of national and international standards that companies can use to organize and report their non-financial data. Most standards provide guidance and a methodology for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data.
Each standard puts a different emphasis on materiality – that is what data is relevant or significant for a company to disclose. By identifying the most commonly used standards, we can better understand which materiality perspective is currently dominant.
Methodology
You will likely find this information at the beginning or the end of the report, or in an appendix.
Search the document using the abbreviations of the different standards, such as:
- GRI
- SASB
- IFRS
- CSRD
- ESRS
- etc
Companies might use several standards for their reporting so make sure to check for all options and select as many answer options as apply.
Note: It is not sufficient when a company has been rated by one of the standards providers. For instance, if they have been rated by CDP that does NOT qualify as them using CDP in their reporting. You need to see them really using the standard in the methodology of their own reporting.
Note: For the IFRS standards (developed by the ISSB) only IFRS S1 (general sustainability disclosures) and IFRS S2 (environmental) would be relevant standards that apply to non-financial data.
Add in the comments on which page number you found the standard(s) that the company uses.