Measuring Your Company’s Impact: How to Make the Most of Sustainability Reporting Frameworks

Abstract

The world’s leading companies are looking beyond their financial performance to more holistically understand their impact. Through the many tools of corporate sustainability reporting, more and more companies are measuring, managing, and reporting on their environmental, social, and governance performance. As corporate sustainability reporting has grown, it has also evolved. It is moving beyond a company’s four walls and looking to better understand the organization’s entire value chain map, and its full impact on the economic, social, and environmental factors that are relevant to multiple corporate stakeholders. This chapter explores the evolution of corporate sustainability and social impact measurement, starting with the foundations of reporting. It examines tools that companies and other organizations can use to measure and manage their impact better, with a focus on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Ultimately, it will provide companies and organizations with a path for how to measure and manage social and environmental impact so that they are well equipped to address the associated risks, and to identify strategic opportunities for positive social impact.