The Belgian Agility Survey reveals that only 73% of all companies actively work towards sustainability targets, either via an actual policy or resources that own a responsibility around the domain. However many companies will be forced to report on sustainability achievements and targets, as from fiscal year 2024.

In practice, a lot of companies are working on sustainability without structure or reporting. They don’t have a clear sustainability mission and strategy.

The biggest short-time challenge for many companies is data and the underlying processes to measure, steer and report. Unlike financial data which is often compiled in an ERP-system, ESG-data is being gathered all over the company. Moreover, ESG-data contains a large volume of data with more users involved and need for speed. 

The best way to start ESG-reporting is to start small and scale up progressively. 

• The first step is to outline sustainability commitments and establish appropriate governance and oversight.
• The second step is to define very clear ESG-goals with KPI’s that can be measured easily. 
• The third step is to build a strong governance and data process within the company. 
• The final step is to create a central database that collects all ESG-data by merging data from the existing databases. 

As a consequence a lot of companies are struggling to collect complete, accurate and auditable data.

The agility report shows that currently for only 37% of the Belgian companies, sustainability goes beyond carbon footprint measuring. However, it is important to take other parameters into account as well e.g. green revenue, energy consumption, employee turnover, board remunerations, diversity and inclusion,…

Sustainability is the practice of using all resources responsibly. This can be about social, human and intellectual resources but includes also natural, manufactured and financial resources. Therefore every organisation needs a corporate sustainability strategy to make sure the full scope of sustainability is covered. 

From the moment a company has defined its sustainability plan, it is important to integrate this plan into the business processes and systems. To make the strategy work, a company has to consider a number of options, being linking variable pay of board members to carbon reduction targets, energy efficiency and safety performance.  

In addition, it is very important to implement the right technology for tracking ESG figures. By leveraging analytics solutions or even advanced analytics, businesses will be able to detect patterns, benchmark with other competitors, increase internal control and facilitate auditability. 

This technology will also enable decision-making on 2 levels. 

• The first one is the strategic decision-making. By better understanding the relationships between sustainability and business success, top management can make decisions to leverage the strategic benefits of corporate responsibility. 
• The second one is the operational decision-making. By implementing technology f.e. into product development, a company can track the circularity of equipment and the life cycle management of materials in order to replace them with more sustainable materials.  

The decision-making can even be pushed to the end-user or customer.

• Companies need to realise that sustainability goes far beyond CO2 emissions. Sustainability is the practice of using all resources responsibly.  
• In order to maintain an agile way of working as a company, it is important to implement a sustainability strategy. 
• Companies need to overthink their sustainability goals and make sure they are measurable and trackable.