What’s a climate impact report?

If you’ve started to make climate-related changes to your business, well done! It’s not just an important thing to do for the planet – it’s great for your commercial success. And so now you need to shout about what you’re doing – and that’s where an impact report can help. Although most businesses are not required to make any kind of impact report, it helps you to show existing and potential customers exactly what you’re committed to.

We understand that most SME businesses just don’t have the time to look at lots of different measures and calculations – let alone write up a detailed report. That’s why we recommend the B Impact Assessment.

This tool helps you to see where you are at the moment, gives you a benchmark against your industry peers, helps you to set goals for continuous improvement and shares best practice. So not only can you measure how well you’re doing to date – you can see where you need to go next.

It’s a really straightforward process. Just enter your company name, location and financial year-end date. You’ll also need to choose your sector and industry so that your results can be reliably benchmarked.

The assessment is split into six impact areas:

•         Governance
•         Workers
•         Community
•         Environment
•         Customers
•         Disclosure

In each impact area, you’ll work through a set of questions that test your current policies and approach. You’ll probably find that the assessment asks you about things that you may not have thought about, and this is a great way to see how you can make an even bigger impact, or have more controls in place to ensure that your business makes the right choice.

Setting goals to improve your impact

Set clear SMART goals to improve your impact and increase your score over time. These don’t have to be huge goals – small, achievable and measurable goals are the best way to go. You can request a copy of our ‘Be Climate Confident‘ e-book to get some top ideas of things you can do today to help reduce your impact on the planet.

Review your progress every quarter and assign the responsibility of delivering these goals. Make sure the individuals have the authority to deliver on the goals. Remember, we are interested in the triple bottom line: People, Profit and Planet.

 

Please note: This is not meant to constitute professional advice. It is generic guidance only and things may have changed since it was written –please always seek specific & tailored advice for your circumstances.