Five steps to develop a sustainability strategy: Step five
You started by helping others understand and engage with your sustainability plans, to plotting out the stakeholders of your business, determining which factors affect you most, and putting that plan into action. Now, it’s time to see how well it works.
Measure its effectiveness – and report back
The “final” step of this process is reporting and measurement. This essentially enables you to measure that what you are doing is having an impact and adjust accordingly.
What many companies do wrong here is use their reporting as a means to display all the ‘good’ they have been doing over a certain period of time, in a huge glossy brochure with lots of pictures of smiling employees and customers.
Though demonstrating what has been done is important, these reports are an opportunity to engage with stakeholders and the wider community, showing the gaps and areas where not enough change has been made and get input on how to do better moving forward. This allows the strategy to evolve and be improved. Honesty is important as it allows the company to grow and create an increasingly more positive social and environmental impact. In an age of social media and leaks, you do not want to be found out “greenwashing” as this will cause irreparable damage to your brand and company reputation.
Currently there are a number of reporting standards which sustainability reporting can be aligned with, both broad such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the United Nations Global Compact.
However, what is important is creating a report which is easy to understand and which engages your stakeholders, enabling the further development of your sustainability strategy.
Participate in ICE365 and DigitalRG’s industry ESG survey
In order to understand the key issues on which the industry needs to focus, click here to do a personalised materiality assessment. This will be used as part of the ICE365 Materiality Matrix, in collaboration with DigitalRG, to create the most accurate picture of the ESG elements the gambling industry will prioritise in the year ahead.