Engaging Stakeholders Program
SustainAbility’s Engaging Stakeholders Program provides a unique forum for businesses to leverage investments, and develop best practice in sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement.
Today, stakeholder trust is not just ‘nice to have’. It is about achieving competitive advantage and license to operate in an ever more informed, socially conscious society. For corporations, trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.
Stakeholder trust and confidence in the world of business has suffered severe blows in the wake of corporate malpractice. Improved transparency and accountability can help restore this trust. Reporting and stakeholder engagement provide businesses with opportunities by building reputation and brand equity, creating market differentiation and value, and improving staff recruitment and retention.
SustainAbility’s Engaging Stakeholder program was developed in 1995 in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme. Our objective was to create a group of leading companies that would drive new standards in transparency and accountability and pave the way for the rest of the corporate world. Today, our mission remains as critical as ever.
Benefits
Consulting and Feedback
Members particularly value the Program’s one-on-one coaching and consulting which provides them with the opportunity to improve the efficiency and performance of CSR-related activities. A dedicated liaison from SustainAbility works with each member, providing a window into SustainAbility’s expertise in stakeholder engagement and reporting, and providing ad hoc consultancy throughout the year.
Members gain access to the Learn from the Leaders database. This online, searchable database contains hundreds of best practice examples of sustainability reporting and library articles related to trends and issues in sustainability reporting. This tool provides incredible gains in the productivity of reporting teams.
Each year, members receive feedback on their sustainability report. Members choose the type of feedback most relevant to their reporting needs:
- The Pre-Publication Review gives invaluable expert guidance and headline feedback to enable fine-tuning and learning for the future.
- The Report Benchmark rigorously identifies strengths and weaknesses in current reporting and highlights areas of focus for strategic improvement. It is based on SustainAbility’s time-tested methodology and is compared to the result of global surveys in reporting quality.
- Other focused Strategic Analysis provides in depth evaluation of specific issues. It is especially geared towards those members that do not formally publish a sustainability report.
Member Interactions
In addition to consulting and reporting support, members also gain access to a unique network of peers dedicated to sustainability.
Autumn Workshops are held in the Americas and Europe each year. Run over two days, the workshops are dedicated to encouraging membership companies to debate current challenges and share recent innovations with their peers. Recent topics have included: issue identification and prioritization (materiality), mainstream communication channels, engaging employees and customers, implementation of the GRI G3 Guidelines, novel approaches to assurance and the paradox of reporting on innovation.
Spring Roundtable
More focused and issue-specific than the autumn workshops, the Spring Roundtable brings together expert insight and provocative thinking on an emerging challenge for engagement and reporting. Questions recently addressed include: “How to engage mainstream investors?” and “What is the new business case for sustainability reporting?”
Virtual Seminars provide succinct hour-long discussions on a specific topic. These seminars provide opportunities for Member Companies to explore timely issues and challenges. It is also the medium by which SustainAbility provides customized presentations of its most recent independent research reports and publications.
Member Surveys explore practical questions related to reporting and stakeholder engagement. They provide practitioners with insight on peer initiatives as well as a rough benchmark against which they can gauge their own activities. Recent surveys include “The Nuts and Bolts of Non-Financial Reporting” and “Stakeholder Engagement – Behind the Scenes.”
Current Members
Members become part of a group of business leaders who have a serious commitment to becoming leaders in the fields of stakeholder engagement, sustainability reporting and sustainability as a whole. The following link will take you to a list of current members.
Program members are able to access information such as roundtable proceedings and accompanying presentations via the Engaging Stakeholders members area of the SustainAbility website.
For further information and membership costs, please contact:
Jean-Philippe Renaut
Engaging Stakeholders Program Manager
Tel +44(0)20 7269 6928
renaut@sustainability.com
