According to a study on non-financial reporting published at the conference on Sustainability and ESG held at the Europa Institute in Zurich, most of those major corporations that now have a duty to publish climate information stated that they had significantly underestimated the effort involved in this new form of reporting. The information they needed was not available and they had to make do with estimated figures; a strong desire to belong to the acceptable middle rankings had led them just to “stick to the rules”. At the same time however, reporting requirements relating to climate and sustainability are becoming significantly stricter, particularly within the EU.
.
As a Swiss SME with too little revenue and too few employees to meet the statutory requirement for reporting, you might assume that none of this applies to you. However, there is a constant increase in the pressure to publish the relevant climate and sustainability information, even though Swiss SMEs are rarely affected in a direct way by the various regulations. On the one hand, this burden comes from lawmakers, but pressure is also being asserted ever more explicitly by consumers and key customers. The latter will themselves depend on significantly better sustainability data in the next reporting season at the latest, and they will be demanding this information from their suppliers.
.
Small and medium-sized enterprises are now facing a dilemma in this respect for the very first time. The wide range of regulations and certificates makes the relevant requirements very difficult to assess. SMEs inevitably wonder how they should proceed and what requires their attention. The systems used by major corporations to certify their own sustainability efforts are often unsuitable for SMEs, or they demand too much effort and generate excessive costs.
.
The solution
CRIF’s internationally-recognised Synesgy sustainability platform offers a quick and cost-efficient way for SMEs to illustrate their sustainability efforts with the necessary evidence and transparency. The platform supports the recording of replies within the system and, once the questionnaire has been completed, it creates an ESG score that can be used as the basis for a graphic depiction of the key indicators. The concluding assessment produced by Synesgy provides the business with a score and a certificate that can be downloaded directly from the platform and integrated into the company’s own website. The Synesgy certificate complies with the internationally-recognised standards and is valid for one year.
