Build Business Resilience through Double Materiality Assessments
SCS Consulting is here to help you identify critical sustainability matters to your business and value chain, giving you more valuable insights to where your business impacts society and the environment and how external factors may affect your financial stability.
Leverage double materiality assessment to manage risk and drive business
Gain valuable insights about your business’ societal and environmental impacts, and about external factors that may affect your financial stability, through a double materiality assessment. Double materiality assessments offer a holistic approach to identifying and assessing the severity of your potential impacts, risks, and opportunities across the value chain, unlike business-as-usual risk management practices. SCS Consulting will work with you to:
- Identify key sustainability efforts while managing risks and opportunities within your organization and value chain
- Meet external stakeholder expectations
- Build internal systems, knowledge, and skillsets prioritizing where time, resources, and money should be focused
- Complete ESG regulatory requirements and reporting efforts
- Strengthen communications about key sustainability metrics to both internal and external audiences
- Create a sound foundation for business strategy
Navigate EU CSRD uncertainty
This year, the European Commission pushed forward two major changes under the Omnibus Directive.
- A fast-tracked “Stop-the-Clock” Directive instituted a two-year delay in CSRD reporting for Wave 2 companies (large EU undertakings not previously subject to the Non-Financial Reporting Directive) and Wave 3 companies (listed SMEs and SME public-interest entities).
- Amendments were proposed to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) application thresholds and European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) requirements, which will follow the ordinary legislative process.
Neither of these updates affect the double materiality assessment within the Omnibus; double materiality assessment remains an essential part of establishing the scope and relevancy of reporting. SCS Consulting Services continues to monitor the evolution of CSRD closely. We are committed to supporting clients through uncertainty by providing regulatory updates, adjusting scopes where needed, and helping ensure companies are well-positioned to meet both compliance requirements and stakeholder expectations, whether reporting becomes mandatory or remains voluntary.
Deepen your knowledge and build early indicators
Our experts are ready to step in to help you, regardless of where you are in your double materiality assessment journey. Whether it’s your first or your fifth assessment, we can add value to your process through a thorough approach steered by our context-building framework to deliver more in-depth insights, so you can address issues before they become problems.
How SCS Consulting adds value
SCS Consulting leads the materiality assessment process, performs the heavy lifting, and leverages our 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 along your value chain
- Mapping and directly engaging with key stakeholders
- Designing stakeholder surveys, and collecting and analyzing information that provides insights and evidence relevant to potential impacts, risks, and opportunities to your business
- Measuring relative impacts using global and regional indicators to compare against company material thresholds
- Gathering data through research
- Finalizing the assessment report
Compliance and voluntary reporting
Materiality and double materiality assessment are useful to any organization as these tools provide a framework for decision-making and a roadmap for sustainability strategy deployment, enabling you to reach your compliance goals. We carry out materiality assessments in line with the most up-to-date standards and guidance, and can customize our approach to the framework you need for your reporting goals.
EU CSRD. Our approach is fully aligned with the requirements of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) to ensure that organizations’ impacts on people and the planet are prioritized along with the financial risks of ESG issues to the organization itself.
Voluntary frameworks. SCS understands the value of materiality assessments outside of regulatory requirements and can support you in identifying the type of assessment that works best for your business goals. With decades of sustainability expertise, professional acumen, and tools that streamline the process, our team can efficiently identify areas of focus most relevant to your organization across frameworks that you already work with, such as:
- Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
- Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)
- International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
- Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
Choose SCS as Your Materiality Partner
More nimble than the Big 4 and more experienced than pop-up ESG consultancies, SCS Consulting Services’ expertise is based upon four decades of SCS sustainability industry experience. As a pioneer and leader in the assessment and certification of operations across a variety of industry sectors, SCS has built its reputation around an unwavering commitment to scientific rigor, credibility, and transparency. Allow us to lead you step-by-step through the materiality process, making it hassle-free and results focused.