Successfully Integrating BRSR to Meet Your Organization's ESG Disclosure Goals Benchmark Gensuite ESG June 23, 2022 Climate change demands immediate attention, and the private sector is at the forefront of climate action! Organizations across the globe are actively communicating their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics to meet regulatory obligations and investor, consumer, and stakeholder demands. The Indian business environment is evolving to reflect these principles, with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) having made it mandatory for the top 1000 companies by market capitalization to report their ESG metrics from the FY 2022 –23. In this spirit, the SEBI has outlined the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) format to allow companies to communicate their ESG disclosures. We’ve outlined how to successfully integrate BRSR and meet your organization’s ESG reporting goals. How Can You Successfully Integrate BRSR in Your Organization? From collecting data across multiple sources to communicating it to the public, here’s how to successfully integrate BRSR into your organization’s processes. 1. Digitization is the Key to Establishing a Seamless Process from Collecting BRSR Data to Communicating It! BRSR demands organizations demonstrate their commitment to sustainability by reporting quantitative and descriptive non-financial parameters. The truth of sustainability management is that these parameters shift across your business sites and operations. For instance, groundwater withdrawal may be a metric relevant to one of your business sites, while it may be redundant to another. This calls for customizing metrics across your sites. Manually combining varying enterprise-wide data into a single BRSR report can waste both time and resources. Digitization can quickly resolve these issues, allowing you to customize your metrics at the site level and easily combine enterprise-wide quantitative and descriptive data to produce an elegant ESG report. 2. Analyzing Your BRSR Data is Key to Implementing a Long-Term Sustainability Strategy Your ESG report is incomplete without a robust sustainability strategy in place. Remember that BRSR is not simply a mandate to report your sustainability metrics but also to demonstrate to the government, investors, consumers, and other stakeholders that your organization is making genuine progress in helping mitigate climate change. In a 2021 survey of consumers in the US, Brazil, the UK, Germany, and India, 83% said that companies should actively be shaping ESG best practices. Hence, your BRSR performance is under scrutiny, and a sustainability strategy will help you enhance your performance. To support your sustainability improvement, opt for digital tools that can help you analyze your long-term performance so that you can revisit and adjust your sustainability strategy and improve metrics that matter to you. Opt for comprehensive tools that help you combine and visualize both quantitative and descriptive data over the years, giving you the clarity needed to make critical decisions. 3. Adopt a Flexible Solution to Report Across Global ESG Formats All organizations’ stakeholders are different, and demands for ESG disclosures may vary from data on environmental impact to gender equality. The reporting format you adopt must use language that your stakeholders can understand. For instance, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework is frequently used by organizations that aim to transparently disclosing their impact on people, the planet, and sustainable development to global stakeholders. On the other hand, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) enables organizations to communicate with investors about how sustainability issues affect their enterprise value. The good news for organizations is that these reporting bodies do not work in silos but collaborate to provide holistic ESG reporting solutions to organizations. BRSR is just as flexible and is characterized by interoperability. Suppose your organization is aligned with an ESG reporting format such as the GRI, SASB, or Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). In that case, BRSR has made provisions to cross-reference the ESG metrics in your annual report or sustainability disclosures. In this complex ESG landscape, digital solutions that support multiple reporting frameworks are the best tools to help you integrate BRSR. Such a system allows your organization to effectively communicate with investors, governments, consumers, and other stakeholders. 4. Incorporate Sustainability into All Your Business Processes Reducing environmental impact is the need of the hour, and organizations’ ESG efforts should be directed at reducing carbon emissions and contributing to the journey toward net zero. Danielle Fugere, President & Chief Counsel of As You Sow, a non-profit foundation that promotes environmental and social corporate responsibility, said, “If you don’t set ambitious targets if every decision in your organization is not geared toward achieving net-zero targets, you will make insufficient progress.” Integrating sustainability into your organization’s strategic decisions is crucial in climate history. Corporate sustainable strategies can also help you enhance your reputation, create brand value, attract talent, and meet multiple stakeholder demands. When you view sustainability as integral to your organization’s strategies and decisions, collecting, analyzing, and communicating your BRSR metrics becomes a seamless process. Integrate Comprehensive Digital Solutions to Communicate Your BRSR Metrics and Enhance Sustainability Management Reporting your BRSR metrics, managing enterprise-wide sustainability data, and driving sustainability performance can be challenging. Digital solutions can empower sustainability leaders to streamline management, saving time and resources. Explore Benchmark ESG’s comprehensive suite of digital sustainability management and reporting solutions that help you collect and communicate your BRSR, GRI, CDP, and other sustainability metrics, in addition to helping you boost your organization’s sustainability performance. Contact us to learn more. - Share on Facebook Share on X
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