Identify Your ESG Priorities With A Materiality Assessment
SCS Consulting helps you engage with your stakeholders and prioritize the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues that are most relevant to the success of your business.
Priorities That Fit Your Organization & Meet Stakeholder Expectations
SCS Consulting realizes the importance of a materiality assessment and how it is critical in prioritizing sustainability efforts within your organization, meeting external stakeholder expectations and ESG regulations. Our experts help benchmark to peers and top ESG performers, engage with your stakeholders and estimate relative impacts. ESG topics are evaluated for their potential impact on society and the environment along with the financial risks they pose to organization itself (double materiality).
How SCS Helps with Your Materiality Assessment
SCS Consulting leads the materiality assessment process, performs the heavy lifting, and leverages its expertise, so you can focus on running your business. Critical steps in the materiality process include:
- Leveraging industry expertise, reporting framework guidance (GRI, SASB, TCFD) and research to identify potentially material topics and indicators
- Mapping and directly engaging with stakeholders
- Designing stakeholder surveys and collecting and analyzing insights to refine stakeholder preferences
- Measuring relative impacts using global and regional indicators
- Gathering data through research and finalizing the assessment report
Our Process
Materiality is useful to any organization as it provides a framework for decision-making and a roadmap for sustainability strategy deployment. SCS carries out materiality assessments in line with the most up-to-date Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards and guidance. In addition, our double materiality approach meets the requirements of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) to ensure the organizations’ impacts on people and the planet are prioritized along with the financial risks of ESG issues to the organization itself. With SCS’ deep sustainability expertise, professional acumen, and tools that streamline the process our team can efficiently identify areas of focus most relevant to your organization. A typical materiality process includes:
- Understanding business and industry risk areas, operations, regulatory requirements, and stakeholders
- Identifying a list of potential ESG indicators through peer benchmarking, alignment with reporting frameworks and ESG rating agencies
- Custom stakeholder engagement, often with unique approaches for different audiences
- Collecting quantitative and qualitative data
- Development and review of recommendations
- Finalized materiality assessment and double materiality grid
- Presentation of materiality results to management with recommendations on improving ESG performance
- Additional advisory hours to help organizations set baselines and targets for the prioritized ESG topics
Choosing SCS as Your Materiality Partner
More nimble than the Big 4 and more experienced than pop-up ESG consultancies, SCS Consulting Services is built on more than three decades of sustainability industry excellence and an unwavering commitment to scientific rigor, credibility, and transparency.
As a pioneer and leader in the assessment and certification of operations across a variety of industry sectors, SCS leads you step-by-step through the materiality process making it hassle-free and results-focused.
Why Is a Materiality Assessment Important?
The insights gained from a Materiality Assessment directly guide sustainability strategy and climate goals. With the information in the report, companies can highlight their areas of risk, guide communication and produce valuable dialog with stakeholders – all leading to a program that resonates for your organization. Across all industries, organizations leverage Materiality Assessments for many reasons:
- Helps organizations focus on what’s most important to stakeholders
- Highlights insights that can drive an organization’s sustainability strategy and enable meaningful reporting
- Helps companies manage risks and opportunities
- Helps a company prioritize where time, resources and money should be focused
- Facilitates engagement around sustainability initiatives
- Facilitates stronger communications of key sustainability metrics to both internal and external audiences