Vision Core · Responsibility · Module

Disclosure

What the organisation states publicly about its sustainability impacts, commitments and progress, and the evidence standing behind each of those statements.

The idea

How it works

This module is sustainability-specific. Statutory accounts belong to financial reporting in Finance, and what each stakeholder group is told in general belongs to reporting under Stakeholders. What sits here is the sustainability statement and every public environmental or social claim, whether it appears in that statement, on a product or in a campaign.

Several frameworks shape the format — the GRI Standards, the ISSB’s IFRS S1 and S2, and in the EU the CSRD with its ESRS. Which ones apply, and from when, is a legal question that changes and is mapped in Compliance. The durable discipline beneath all of them is the same: every claim should be traceable to evidence the organisation holds, and the statement should report on what the materiality assessment found, including where progress is poor.

Working with it

In practice

  1. 01

    Report what is material, not what is flattering

    The topics in the statement should be the material topics. Omitting an unflattering one is visible to anyone who reads the assessment.

  2. 02

    File the evidence before publishing the claim

    Each claim gets a substantiation entry before it appears anywhere. A claim without an entry does not go out.

  3. 03

    Avoid claims broader than the evidence

    “Sustainable”, “green” and “climate neutral” say more than most evidence supports. Specific, bounded claims are easier to defend.

  4. 04

    Treat assurance findings as input

    What the assurer could not verify shows where the underlying data is weakest, which is useful well beyond the statement.

One level in

The components of disclosure

A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.

  1. Sustainability statement

    The periodic public account of material topics, targets and progress, built on a named framework.

    Learn

  2. Claim substantiation file

    Every public environmental or social claim, with its exact wording, supporting evidence and approval.

    Learn

  3. Assurance record

    What an external assurer examined, at what level, what they found and how the organisation responded.

    Learn

Before any claim goes out, ask which document in the substantiation file supports it. If none does, the claim is not ready.

The other modules in responsibility

Impact and materiality

Which of the organisation’s effects matter, judged outward by their weight on people and the environment and inward by their financial effect on the organisation.

Learn

Commitments and targets

What the organisation commits to about its material impacts, measured from a recorded baseline, with milestones close enough to be missed and an owner who would notice.

Learn

Ethics

How people are expected to act where the law is silent or permissive — the conduct standards, the dilemmas already reasoned through, and the response when someone raises a concern.

Learn
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