What does sustainability reporting entail and how it helps businesses grow?

In the 21st century, it is not enough to just say that our organization is sustainable and we are doing a lot for the environment and society. It does not work anymore, Increasingly all businesses and corporates are being asked to establish and demonstrate the sustainability strategy of their company as well as performances through credible and tangible evidence including performance data. There could be different ways to demonstrate companies sustainability commitment and the practices, however, the most common way is to demonstrate the same through publishing the sustainability report. Companies are seeking services of sustainability reporting consultant to prepare their sustainability reports, GE3S has been assisting several of its clients in preparing sustainability reports for years now.

Do we need to follow a guideline or a prescribed pathway to prepare a sustainability report? Not at all, however, there are several guidelines and standards that have been developed to assist companies in reporting on sustainability issues. This is because several companies do not have enough capacity to understand what is important for reporting, collect data and report in a proper manner. Global reporting institute - GRI Standards are one of the most widely used sustainability reporting standards across geographies and sectors. GE3S is a sustainability reporting consultant assisting its clients to prepare sustainability reports in accordance with the GRI standards.

Following a guideline make it quite easy for a company to develop its sustainability report as it provides information on what kind of assessment should be undertaken before collecting data. how to choose the right disclosure that should be included in the report. Who should be consulted, how the data should be collected and how it should be reported. the guideline also further provide information on how we can get assurance done for your report. Therefore, more than 90% of companies are following one or the other sustainability reporting guidelines to publish their sustainability report. As mentioned earlier GRI leads with more than 90% of the companies choosing to go ahead and apply GRI standards while they are publishing their sustainability report. GE3S is recognized as a leading sustainability reporting consultant in the GCC region.

Do many people also wonder if sustainability reporting is the only way to put their sustainability performance in public space? The answer is simple no we don't need to always publish report there are many companies who are digitizing the information. which means the information is put on a digital platform for eg: on a website, or a webpage instead of report.

There are hundreds of organizations today that are developing their own sustainability report either through their own team member or by hiring a sustainability reporting consultant. Sustainability reports could be long or short. we have seen reports of 8-10 pages and also of 100-200 pages. The length of the report does not matter what matters are the content and also what stakeholders are looking for in the report. GE3S recently exhibited its services as a sustainability reporting consultant at Alleem water and energy congress.

The companies are also going ahead with verification of the sustainability report by a third party, this is called assurance as well. Once the companies have prepared their sustainability report, put all the data in the report and it's ready to be uploaded in the public space, just before that the report to is sent to an auditor or a verifier who goes through the data and also consults all the evidence available with the company and provide an assurance statement which mentions that the data or the claims made in the report are actually true. This adds another layer of the confidence in the report and also provide

stakeholder a sense of comfort that the report has been reviewed by someone else and therefore contains information that is legitimate. GE3S is a sustainability reporting consultant and has prepared sustainability reporting for several companies and has also provided assurance services as a third-party verifier.

Please feel free to contact Mr. Vishal Kumar @ vishal.kumar@ge3s.org or call @ 045897399 for further information on sustainability reporting.