Mastering EcoVadis:
A Comprehensive Guide To
Improve Your Sustainability Assessment Score and Rating
Updated: June 2024
Introduction
Whether you need an EcoVadis introduction or take the next steps to improve your EcoVadis rating, this comprehensive guide provides the tips, tricks and insights you need to ace your next sustainability assessment.
You'll learn:
- The EcoVadis methodology and scoring
- Which documentation and evidence to collect
- How to fill in the EcoVadis questionnaire
- How the EcoVadis assessment process works
- How to interpret the EcoVadis scorecard
- How to improve your EcoVadis score
Why should you read this EcoVadis guide? Because corporate sustainability has evolved to become a critical factor in building reputations, financial stability, and customer trust.
EcoVadis has emerged as a pivotal tool in this transformation, offering a flywheel to rapidly improve your company’s sustainability management systems and practices.
- A high EcoVadis scoring can boost your company's market competitiveness, attract investments, and influence customer choices, leading to financial success.
- Conversely, non-compliance with new sustainability regulations and standards can lead to significant legal and financial repercussions. EcoVadis can help you avoid this.
Drawing from extensive experience in achieving EcoVadis Platinum and a deep understanding of corporate sustainability, this guide will help you navigate the complexities of acing your EcoVadis assessment, improving your EcoVadis scores, and building sustainability management systems that align with societal expectations and economic objectives.
Accelerate Progress | Enhance Reputation | Build Customer Trust
Let's dive in!
About the Author
Rutger is a sustainability expert with 14 years of experience in corporate sustainability management, strategy and reporting across logistics, chemicals and non-profit sectors and has an MSc. in Strategic Sustainable Development.
Training Certifications:
- EcoVadis Solutions Practitioner Program
- GRI Certified Training Program
- IIRC Certified Integrated Reporting Program
Rutger's LinkedIn
Sustainability Creates Value and Improves Risk Management
First let's explore the business case for sustainability. There are only so many ways to create value in business. You can either:
- Reduce the downsides (reducing costs, reducing risks).
- Increase the upsides (driving revenues, building intangible assets).
By using sustainability as a magnet for innovation you can affect both of these.
Sustainability is inextricably linked with long-term value creation. Depending on your ambition and tenacity you can:
- Increase Revenue: through product differentiation, new product development, innovation of new technologies, enhanced brand reputation and increase market share.
- Improve Margins: such as staff motivation & retention, pricing power (due to stronger brand and stronger product), and cost savings through efficiencies.
- Reduce Risk: such as quality and security of supply chains, reduced regulatory risk, reduces risk to reputation and social license to operate.
- Risk Premiums: sustainability efforts lower market-, balance sheet-, and operational risks. This creates opportunities for greater access to-, and lower costs of capital, financing and insurance.
Those who leverage sustainability and achieve strong EcoVadis assessment scores will steer towards innovation, new opportunities and success.
Those who ignore sustainability choose the path to diminishing returns and decline.
Understanding EcoVadis Scoring and Assessment Framework
EcoVadis is a rapidly growing provider of sustainability management system ratings. It was founded in 2007 and is an online platform to assess companies' environmental, social, and ethical practices and performance. The assessment process gives you insight into the quality and maturity of the processes and systems you have to manage sustainability topics. This is captured in your resulting EcoVadis Scorecard.
The EcoVadis scoring methodology is built upon international sustainability standards, regulations, and best practices to drive transparency and continuous improvement across global supply chains. Your EcoVadis rating is dependent on the strength of your performance and score.
The Sustainability Assessment Covers Four Themes
Environment
Environmental policies, energy use, carbon emissions, water consumption, waste management, and pollution prevention.
Labour & Human Rights
Labour policies, working conditions, career management, training, forced labour, child labour, diversity, and human rights.
Business Ethics
Ethics policies, corruption prevention, responsible marketing, data privacy, fair competition, and sustainable procurement principles.
Sustainable Procurement
Supplier screening, supplier audits, environmental and social clauses in contracts, and sustainable procurement policies.
For tips to enhance your score in specific themes, explore the mini guides on improving your EcoVadis scores in Environment, Labour & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement.
Within these four themes, companies are evaluated on their policies, implemented actions, and quantitative results through a standardised methodology aligned with global sustainability standards such as GRI Standards, the UN Global Compact, and ISO 26000.
The assessment methodology uses a combination of supporting documentation provided by you, as well as public information and stakeholder sources. Through a rigorous analysis, you'll receive an overall score on a scale of 0-100 and theme-specific scores. We'll explore the criteria and scoring methodology in more detail throughout this guide.
Purpose and Benefits of an EcoVadis Assessment
There are several reasons why companies choose to complete the EcoVadis assessment:
- Drive sustainability performance improvement - The EcoVadis assessment comprehensively evaluates your company's sustainability management systems, allowing you to identify gaps and target areas to strengthen policies, programs, and practices to improve your EcoVadis scores.
- Identify strengths and weaknesses - The theme scores provide insights into where your company excels and which areas need work. This enables a data-driven approach to building robust sustainability management systems across all four themes.
- Benchmark against peers - The overall score allows you to compare your maturity against industry averages, best practices, and top-ranked peers.
- Meet customer and regulatory requirements - More and more multinational corporations require suppliers to complete EcoVadis assessments. It is an integral part of their responsible sourcing programs. High scores mean meeting these sustainability standards and customer requirements and winning more business.
- Highlight achievements - You can leverage your company's EcoVadis rating and scorecard as credible evidence of your efforts. Use these assets to communicate with customers, investors, and other stakeholders.
But let's be clear. A high EcoVadis rating does not automatically mean your company is sustainable. EcoVadis helps you build your management systems. The level of ambition your company chooses to thread through those systems is a different matter.
The EcoVadis assessment provides a comprehensive framework for your company to demonstrate your sustainability practices, commitments and programs transparently. Leverage the rating and benchmarking to meet procurement requirements, identify improvement areas, and highlight leadership.
A good EcoVadis rating can help you generate more business with existing customers. Some customers require a minimum EcoVadis rating from their suppliers to get their foot in the door. The number of companies introducing such rules is growing. If you want to continue playing with them, you should get cracking.
If you are struggling to get your company to work on sustainability, the annual EcoVadis assessment process may be what you've been looking for. It will give you the internal leverage to get the ball rolling and keep it moving. You can use EcoVadis as a trojan horse to get your company on the treadmill of continuous improvement through annual assessments.
How to Use This EcoVadis Guide
This guide is a comprehensive reference for people like you who manage or are otherwise involved in sustainability and the EcoVadis assessment process.
Here is what you can expect:
- Guidance on the assessment steps - from registering and completing the questionnaire to understanding the methodology, improving your score, and sharing your results.
- Best practices gleaned from top-scoring companies on establishing sustainability policies, implementing programs, collecting evidence, and demonstrating leadership.
- Tips and strategies for achieving a high EcoVadis rating by targeting improvement areas and strengthening management systems.
- Guidance on effectively communicating your EcoVadis score and sustainability achievements with stakeholders.
This guide aims to be the definitive handbook for any company going through the EcoVadis assessment. It provides insights and expertise to improve the maturity of your sustainability management systems so you can raise your performance and increase your score. Use it as a playbook each year before your company's reassessment and leverage the advice to improve your scores further.
Section 1: Getting Started with EcoVadis
This section will cover everything you need to know to initiate and prepare for your EcoVadis assessment, including signing up on the platform, understanding the customisation options, assembling documentation, and getting your team involved. Having the right plan and resources in place will set you up for success.
Registering For an EcoVadis Assessment
The first step is to create an account and purchase an assessment on the EcoVadis platform:
- Go to ecovadis.com and click Sign Up to create an account. Select if you will participate as a company or as a procurement organisation. The former allows you to assess and rate your company, and the latter enables you to rate your partners and suppliers. As a rule of thumb, the sustainability team usually manages the former, and the procurement team manages the latter.
- Choose your assessment package. Select a one-time or multi-year package to get periodically recurring assessments. There are also industry-specific assessment options.
- Enter your company details and payment information to complete the purchase. EcoVadis will send you a confirmation email with your account activation link.
- Log into your EcoVadis account to access your dashboard. You can view your assessment status, manage users, and access support resources from your dashboard and the user menu in the top right corner.
- Click Activate Assessment to initiate the process. You will then go through a guided setup flow to customise the assessment for your company.
The registration process is quick and easy to get you started on the platform. Contact the EcoVadis support team if you have questions during sign-up or activation. You're now ready to customise your questionnaire and criteria.
Understanding Your EcoVadis Questionnaire Customisation
One of the benefits of EcoVadis is that the assessment is customised based on your company's industry, size, and location:
- During activation, you will select your industry classification (ISIC) and sub-category, determining industry-specific risks and priorities.
- You will provide details on your company's operations, revenue, assets, and number of employees. Your company size affects the material sustainability issues in your assessment.
- Provide your geographic operating context. Questions and risk weighting will reflect regulations, standards, and norms for your headquarters location and countries of operation.
- Depending on your industry sector, EcoVadis will activate several criteria within the four themes. Activated Criteria are relevant to your business. This weighting determines how the customised criteria will impact your overall score.
As you can imagine, the customised questionnaire for a financial services company will look very different from that for a chemical company.
Working specifically on the sustainability topics that your customised questions and criteria target for assessment will help maximise your score.
Assembling Your EcoVadis Documentation
Robust supporting documentation is crucial for validating your responses to the questionnaire. Here are some best practices for assembling your evidence:
- Review the questionnaire and identify the specific documents that will be required to support each question. Examples include policies, certifications, audit reports, training records, supplier codes of conduct, and performance data. EcoVadis is quite good at specifying which evidence is required.
- Work cross-functionally to collect the required documents from relevant departments and business units. Key stakeholders to engage include Procurement, EHS, Operations, HR, Legal, and Finance.
- Gather more robust evidence for areas you aim to highlight leadership. For example, provide training reports for human rights policies or data trends for emissions reductions.
Allocating sufficient time for thoughtful document preparation will pay dividends for your score. You can upload supporting materials as you go through the questionnaire.
Involving Colleagues in the EcoVadis Process
Completing the assessment should be a company-wide effort to ensure engagement and demonstrate your sustainability programs in action:
- Engage your procurement/supply chain team early, especially if they use EcoVadis to support their procurement program. Have them help determine your customisation and introduce the process internally.
- Get buy-in from senior leadership and sustainability champions to reinforce the importance of mature sustainability management systems, the upcoming assessment and the need for robust evidence ready for submission.
- Identify content owners from relevant departments who will be accountable for specific questionnaire sections and documentation—for example, HR for Labour & Human Rights, Procurement and supply chain team for Sustainable Procurement.
- Manage internal requests professionally as you ask colleagues to provide policies, data, and other documentation. Emphasise how a high score benefits them and the company. Remind them that the CEO wants Platinum.
- Develop a project plan and timeline mapping out questionnaire completion, evidence collection, and submission dates. Build in review cycles to ensure quality.
Getting cross-functional participation makes the process more efficient. It also enables you to showcase sustainability initiatives across the organisation while further cementing sustainability within the organisation. A robust assessment demonstrates your collaborative efforts.
Section 2: Completing the EcoVadis Questionnaire
This section provides an in-depth look at the questionnaire format and best practices for filling it out accurately and completely. We'll cover the question types, response guidance, uploading documentation, and finalising your submission.
EcoVadis Questionnaire Format and Structure
When I first saw the entire EcoVadis questionnaire, I was intimidated, like staring up at a mountain before setting out to summit it. I realised that I was too focused on the outcome. My definition of success (at the time) was to get a Gold rating. That's what people were asking me about. How do we get Gold? Will we get Gold? We need to get Gold!
I quickly realised that this was the wrong mindset. The only way to approach it is to build and refine your management systems as best you can until the next submission. Focus on the process and your bias for action. That's what leads to points on the board.
The four themes of Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement serve as helpful guides to direct you. They are the four sections you must traverse to scale the mountain, and each requires you to take the same approach. You develop and enact policies for direction, keep taking steps by implementing new actions, and track your progress and performance.
The questionnaire features a mix of:
- Multiple choice questions to select current practices.
- Text boxes with character limits for explanations and descriptions.
- File uploads to provide supporting documentation as evidence.
Some questions are mandatory, while others are optional based on your customisation. Each text box shows the maximum word count for responses. Be concise while thoroughly explaining policies and programs.
Now, let's go over some tips for answering effectively.
Guidance for Answering the EcoVadis Questions
Here are some best practices for answering the questionnaire accurately and completely:
- Carefully read each question and instructions to understand the requested information precisely. Don't make assumptions.
- Reference the definitions and information buttons to access further context about terminology, standards, and expectations.
- Provide enough context and examples in explanations to illustrate your practices clearly. Highlight outcomes where possible.
- For policy questions, summarise the scope, responsibilities, implementation mechanisms, training, monitoring, and governance.
- For process questions, outline the steps, accountabilities, controls, and verifications involved.
- For certification questions, explain the standard, scope, date achieved, and oversight body.
- Focus on highlighting formal, organisation-wide policies and programs. Company-specific language is ideal. Avoid vagueness.
The goal is to demonstrate comprehensive sustainability initiatives and programs through your responses. Clear, detailed explanations will maximise your score.
Free EcoVadis Essentials Course
Dive deeper into how to improve your policies, implement actions and report performance so you can increase your rating.
Uploading Supporting Documents in EcoVadis
Providing robust supporting documentation is crucial for validating your questionnaire responses. Follow these tips:
- Carefully match relevant documentation to the appropriate questions. Required evidence is specified.
- Ensure documents are correctly formatted. EcoVadis accepts files like PDFs, JPGs, PNGs, and many more.
- Ensure documents are translated to languages accepted by EcoVadis. Consult EcoVadis' Help Center articles for more information.
- Consolidate, organise and clearly name documents to match them accurately to the appropriate questionnaire questions. Build a master spreadsheet that maps documents to questions so you can keep oversight of the big picture.
- Only upload directly relevant excerpts if policies are within larger documents. Highlight or extract the pertinent sections and point the analyst to the exact page.
- Include robust evidence on issues you want to emphasise, like multi-year CSR reports for environment metrics.
- Provide updated documents that reflect current practices. Outdated evidence can be detrimental to your scores.
Proper documentation removes any ambiguity and strengthens your responses. Take time to prepare quality evidence matched carefully to each question. This proof is invaluable.
Finalising Your EcoVadis Submission
Once you've completed all questionnaire sections and uploaded documentation, follow these final steps:
- Do a quality check. Review all responses for completeness, clarity, and accuracy. Verify that your evidence correctly meets the requirements of the questions.
- Review the submission summary page carefully. It highlights missed questions or unaddressed errors. Resolve any outstanding issues.
- Read and electronically sign the terms and conditions to submit the questionnaire officially.
- You will receive a confirmation email and can monitor submission status on your dashboard.
- The analyst's assessment typically takes 8-12 weeks after submitting your completed questionnaire.
Take time to thoroughly complete the questionnaire and provide comprehensive supporting documentation. This due diligence will maximise your score. After submission, the waiting period is an opportunity to prepare for effectively leveraging your results and thinking about your next improvement cycle.
Section 3: The EcoVadis Assessment Methodology
This section will cover the evaluation process used by EcoVadis to analyse and score submissions. We'll review the assessment principles, scoring methodology, weightings, and customisation options. Understanding EcoVadis' methodology helps you optimise your submission for success.
EcoVadis Evaluation Principles and Standards
The EcoVadis methodology follows globally recognised sustainability standards and principles:
- The assessment criteria are aligned with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, UN Global Compact (UNGC) Ten Principles, ISO 26000, and other established sustainability frameworks.
- The questions evaluate compliance with environmental, labour, ethics, and procurement regulations in the countries of operation.
- The analysis focuses on risk mitigation across the four themes based on industry, size, location, and other risk factors.
- The overall approach assesses the maturity of management systems in implementing policies, actions, targets, and reporting on key sustainability issues.
This standardised methodology based on leading sustainability frameworks and principles ensures that assessments are impartial, consistent, and globally relevant across all industries. The goal is to drive transparency and continuous improvement.
EcoVadis Scoring Methodology
When I first learned EcoVadis converts all our sustainability work into an overall 0-100 score, I considered it reductive. But, it does facilitate easier benchmarking and richer details are available in the final Assessment Report and Scorecard. EcoVadis uses a standardised methodology to analyse submissions and determine the overall score:
- The four themes of Environment, Labour & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement are weighted based on industry risks and the company's customisation to determine contribution to overall score.
- Within each theme, individual criteria have default weightings tailored by customisation. The issues that are most material to your context and industry garner the most points (so work on those!).
- Both qualitative factors, like the quality of policies and quantitative metrics, like emissions reductions, are assessed.
- Supporting documents, public records, and stakeholder sources are used to validate questionnaire responses.
- Scores reflect the maturity of sustainability management systems and commitment to continuous improvement.
Understanding these EcoVadis scoring dynamics allows you to target priority areas in your submission to maximise points and achieve a higher rating.
Next, we'll explore the seven management indicators that EcoVadis uses to assess your company's maturity.
The Seven EcoVadis Management Indicators
If you're gearing up to start your company's EcoVadis assessment, here's what you need to know about the methodology and its key components. Your submission is scored using seven management indicators.
Let's delve into each of these:
- Policies: Policies your company's sustainability rulebook. Do you have clear policies that cover environmental protection, fair labour practices, ethical business conduct, and sustainable Procurement? It's crucial to have these policies and ensure they are well-documented and accessible.
- Endorsements: Endorsements are about showing your company's commitment beyond its walls. Has your company publicly supported sustainability initiatives or standards, like global agreements or industry-specific guidelines?
- Measures: Measures are about action. What specific steps has your company taken to address sustainability issues? This could range from implementing energy-saving measures to promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
- Certifications: Certifications are like badges of honour in the sustainability world. They show that an external body has verified your company's adherence to specific standards. EcoVadis considers certifications among the highest levels of action you can implement. Therefore, gather information about any sustainability-related certifications your company has achieved.
- Coverage – Deployment of Actions: This indicator looks at how widespread your sustainability efforts are within the company. It's not just about having good practices in one location but integrating them across your entire company.
- Reporting: Transparency is critical. How does your company communicate sustainability practices and results? Information must be easily accessible to stakeholders through sustainability reports, updates on your website, or other forms of communication. The more detailed and frequent, the better.
- 360° Watch Findings: Imagine this as the world's perception of your company's sustainability efforts. EcoVadis monitors media reports, feedback from stakeholders, and other external sources. Negative perceptions or non-compliance in operations, for example, will negatively impact your score for up to five years.
Section 4: Improving Your EcoVadis Score
A benefit of the EcoVadis assessment is receiving concrete insights into the maturity of your company's sustainability management systems and performance. Your EcoVadis Scorecard provides a comprehensive view of your practices across four sustainability themes: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement.
While getting positive results is satisfying, you can only control the process of building robust management systems. You can't control the outcome. So, the most valuable part is identifying areas for improvement while avoiding common mistakes. Before diving into the details, consider reading the blog post about seven common EcoVadis mistakes companies make.
This chapter covers how to analyse your scorecard to fully understand your results, pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, and develop targeted corrective actions.
Interpreting Your EcoVadis Scorecard Results
Your EcoVadis score ranges from 0-100, with 100 signifying the highest maturity. This single metric offers a snapshot of how your company manages the most material sustainability issues.
Although EcoVadis updates the rating scales regularly, often at the start of a new year. The current rating scale includes five sustainability performance levels:
- Outstanding (score 85-100)
- Advanced (score 65-84)
- Good (score 45-64)
- Partial (score 25-44)
- Insufficient (score 0-24)
Suppose your company receives an overall EcoVadis score of 57. That puts you in the top half of companies assessed by EcoVadis, in the "Good" performance tier.
While the overall score gives a quick sense of your sustainability position, the most valuable insights come from analysing the underlying theme scores and question-level details.
Understand Your EcoVadis Theme Scores
Beyond your overall score, EcoVadis will also score each theme separately. Theme scores follow the same 0-100 scale and rating tiers as the overall score. However, they are weighted differently based on your company's industry risk profile. The higher the weight, the more impact that theme has on your overall score.
For instance, a manufacturing company may have weights of:
- Environment: 4
- Labor & Human Rights: 3
- Ethics: 2
- Sustainable Procurement: 1
While an IT services firm may have:
- Environment: 2
- Labor & Human Rights: 4
- Ethics: 3
- Sustainable Procurement: 1
Comparing your theme scores reveals which areas are strengths or weaknesses relative to one another. A theme with a lower score indicates it should be a priority for improvement actions.
Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
Your EcoVadis scorecard provides a breakdown of your major strengths and improvement areas per theme. These highlight specific policies, actions, or reporting that positively or negatively impacted your theme score.
For example, under Environment, you may see:
Strengths
- Comprehensive environmental policy on multiple issues
- ISO 14001-certified
Improvement Areas
- Lack of emissions reduction targets
- No reporting on waste generation KPIs
Focusing on the improvement areas will have a more significant impact on your EcoVadis scoring. The more weaknesses you can turn into strengths, the higher your overall sustainability performance.
But remember to seek ways to keep building on your strengths. Complacency is failure masked as success. The best practice benchmark will pass you by, and your score will start slipping.
When reviewing the strengths and weaknesses, it's important to understand their relative weight in the methodology. For instance, a weakness in Measures has a much more significant impact than one in Endorsements based on how those indicators are weighted.
Analyse EcoVadis Question Scores
EcoVadis does not provide you with a score for each question. But you can dig deeper. You can analyse the question-level details behind each theme. The questionnaire shows each question's impact rating (high / medium / low).
Download a PDF copy of your questionnaire responses to view your answer selections and document associations.
Analysing the questionnaire allows you to pinpoint specific policies, actions or reporting where you lost points, identify answers you can improve upon, or find where you lack documentation.
For example, you may notice:
- A medium impact question on emissions reduction targets where you selected "No."
- A high impact question on water management missing supporting documentation
By combing through these details, you can uncover the most critical areas for improvement. The key is translating this analysis into tangible corrective actions.
Targeting EcoVadis Improvement Areas
With a solid understanding of your EcoVadis results, you can develop a specific plan to improve your sustainability performance.
Prioritise Low-scoring Themes
Focus first on strengthening the themes with lower scores. Suppose Labor & Human Rights is 10 points below your overall score. In that case, improving this theme will likely have the most significant impact.
Within the theme, pay attention to:
- Highly weighted indicators like Measures
- Major weaknesses called out in the scorecard
- Low question scores on high impact topics
Addressing these areas will yield the most significant score increase.
Address Gaps in Policies and Processes
Many improvement areas stem from gaps in formal policies, documented processes, or quantitative targets.
For example:
- Lacking a policy for water management
- No formal processes for ethical purchasing
- No targets for emissions reduction
Developing comprehensive, robust policies and processes should be a top priority. Refer to EcoVadis assessment principles and industry best practices for guidance.
Strengthen EcoVadis Evidence and Documentation
Insufficient documentation is another common weakness. The EcoVadis methodology requires validated evidence to support your questionnaire responses.
Typical documentation gaps include:
- Declaring actions without proof of implementation
- Providing incomplete or outdated documents
- Neglecting to upload documents to support your answers
Carefully review the requested supporting documents for each question. Provide complete, valid evidence covering the latest reporting period. This verification will help you get full credit for your sustainability efforts.
Best Practices to Strengthen Management Systems for EcoVadis Success
Beyond your specific improvement areas, several overarching best practices can help strengthen your sustainability management systems.
Develop Comprehensive Policies
Formal policies demonstrate a commitment to managing material sustainability issues (Activated Criteria). They are the foundation for implementing actions and driving performance.
Follow these tips to create effective policies:
- Cover relevant environmental, social, ethical and sustainable procurement issues, such as energy, working conditions, anti-corruption, and supply chain impacts.
- Set qualitative principles and quantitative targets. Be as specific and measurable as possible.
- Secure top management approval and sign-off to give your policies authority. Put the CEO's signature on the policy.
- Communicate policies actively throughout the company and externally.
- Review policies annually and update them as necessary to reflect evolving priorities. Record these reviews and updates in the review table maintained in the policy.
Free EcoVadis Essentials Course
Dive deeper into how to improve your policies, implement actions and report performance so you can increase your rating.
Implement Performance Tracking
Ongoing monitoring provides the data to gauge progress, identify risks, and drive continuous improvement.
Basic steps for performance tracking include:
- Select relevant sustainability KPIs, like energy use, injury rates, and supplier audits.
- Establish processes for regular data collection across business units.
- Build dashboards to track KPIs over time and analyse trends and performance against targets.
- Report results internally and externally through sustainability reports.
Conduct Audits and Risk Assessments
Self-assessments of facilities and operations are vital for compliance and risk management.
Effective approaches include:
- Regular internal audits against policies, legal requirements, and standards.
- Third-party sustainability audits to identify gaps.
- Environment, health and safety risk assessments of facilities and activities.
- Screening of country and supplier risks based on ESG criteria.
Improve Stakeholder Engagement
Proactive stakeholder communication demonstrates transparency and commitment.
Strategies for success include:
- Seek ongoing dialogue with groups like local communities, NGOs, and regulators.
- Survey employees, customers, or suppliers to get sustainability feedback.
- Disclosing sustainability policies, targets, data and initiatives publicly.
- Participating actively in partnerships, external initiatives, and reporting frameworks.
Following these best practices will strengthen the maturity and breadth of your management systems. It will improve your EcoVadis scores over time.
For more tactics read: 31 Tactical Steps To A Better EcoVadis Rating
Section 5: Sharing Your EcoVadis Results
A benefit of the EcoVadis assessment is that you can efficiently communicate your sustainability performance to customers and other stakeholders. Your results validate your commitment and progress on environmental, social, and ethical issues that are material. This chapter explores options for sharing your EcoVadis scorecard and promoting your sustainability achievements.
Options for Sharing Your EcoVadis Scorecard
Once you receive your company's EcoVadis scorecard, there are several ways to share the results and maximise the value.
Direct Sharing of Your EcoVadis Scorecard With Customers Inside and Outside the Platform
Inside the EcoVadis platform, the easiest way is to invite customers to connect. When they accept, they can access your EcoVadis profile and scorecard. Customers will not be able to access the documents you submitted. Unless you specifically make them publicly viewable.
Outside the platform, the easiest way is to directly share a PDF version of your EcoVadis scorecard via email with current or prospective customers upon request.
This approach helps meet customer screening requirements and demonstrates your commitment to transparency. It also enables you to avoid responding to multiple sustainability questionnaires. Lastly, it helps promote new business opportunities with customers focused on sustainability in their supply chain.
Share in Requests for Proposal (RFPs) and Other Proposals
Include a section on your EcoVadis assessment results in responses to customer RFPs, Requests for Quotations (RFQs) and other business proposals.
Summarise your overall score, theme scores, and the medal (if you have one). Emphasise the strengths EcoVadis recognises in your policies, certifications, actions, or reporting to show credible evidence of your sustainability capabilities as part of your proposal.
Publishing on website and reports
Feature your EcoVadis scorecard and rating on your company website and in sustainability reports to promote your achievements and demonstrate sustainability commitment to all website visitors and report readers.
Options include:
- Publishing your overall score, theme scores, and medals earned
- Embedding a summary of strengths highlighted in your scorecard
- Linking to your complete (or partial) EcoVadis sustainability Assessment Report.
Promoting through press releases
Develop a press release to announce significant EcoVadis assessment results, like a new medal achieved or a significant score increase.
Tailor the press release for both sustainability and general business media outlets.
Highlight your scorecard's validation of your sustainability management systems and leadership and reinforce your reputation as a committed company.
Use Your EcoVadis Rating Effectively
When sharing your EcoVadis scorecard, focus on getting maximum value from your sustainability rating.
Highlight Achievements
Communicate beyond your score and your medal. People are fleetingly interested in shiny medals, awards and accolades. Demonstrate leadership by showing how you got there and what you implemented so they may learn from your experience. Show your customers how you manage risks and help them be sustainable. So, frame your narratives around the work that led to this successful outcome.
Emphasise the positive elements like your overall score, theme scores, medals, strengths, and any year-over-year rating improvements to reinforce your commitment and progress.
For example, you could highlight:
- Achieving a Gold medal for the first time
- Improving your Environment theme score by 10 points
- Earning recognition for comprehensive employee policies
Benchmark EcoVadis Performance Against Competitors
Contextualise your rating by comparing it to industry averages and top performers to show how you stack up against peers.
For instance, you may note that your overall score is:
- 10 points above the industry average
- In the top 10% of companies in your industry
- The highest score among key competitors
Present EcoVadis Rating Trend Year-Over-Year
Present a timeline showing your overall rating improvements over past assessments. Show the steady advancement of your sustainability management systems.
You could show a chart showing your overall rating increasing from 45 to 54 to 62 over three years. This progress can be a point of pride and gives the reader an idea of where you are heading.
Present Goals to Improve Your EcoVadis Rating
Share internal targets to keep improving your EcoVadis rating to demonstrate your ongoing commitment to performance improvement.
For example, you may set a goal to:
- Achieve a Gold medal for your following assessment
- Improve Environment score from 62 to over 70
- Reach an overall rating above 70 within two years
The more strategic you are about presenting your achievements, benchmarking, progress, goals, and especially how you got there, the more impressed customers will be by your EcoVadis sustainability profile and trajectory.
Communicate Sustainability Performance
Beyond your rating, you can demonstrate sustainability leadership by transparently communicating performance.
Report On Scorecard Themes
In sustainability reports and website content, expand on your accomplishments within the four EcoVadis assessment themes:
- Environmental protection programs and results
- Labour & Human Rights policies and practices
- Ethical business conduct initiatives
- Sustainable procurement achievements
Show your commitment across all key sustainability domains.
Discuss Progress on Key Metrics
Share your performance data on relevant sustainability metrics like greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, safety rates and training hours.
Discuss challenges and highlight areas of measurable improvement over time. Quantified metrics make your sustainability story more concrete.
Share policies and best practices
Communicate details on sustainability policies, certifications, management systems, and impactful programs. That's how you bring your scorecard and rating to life.
For example, elaborate on:
- Your supplier code of conduct requirements
- How you achieved zero waste and the challenges you faced
- How you obtained certifications and the lessons you learned
- Implementation of ethical sourcing training
Tell Your Sustainability Story
Build an engaging narrative around your sustainability efforts. Share inspiring case studies, testimonials, and perspectives from leadership and team members.
Make it personal by discussing motivations, highlighting innovations, and exploring lessons learned. This storytelling makes your performance tangible and memorable.
The more you integrate meaningful sustainability communication as part of your brand identity, the more you become recognised as a leader advancing on sustainability issues that matter.
Your EcoVadis scorecard provides a powerful platform to demonstrate your commitments and achievements to customers and stakeholders. Proactively share your rating and highlight your strengths to differentiate your business and strengthen relationships.
Going beyond the rating to transparently communicate policies, programs, data, and stories allows you to connect with partners on sustainability issues that impact society and the environment. You could catalyse collaboration to scale best practices with partners across the industry and achieve more systemic impact.
As sustainability becomes increasingly central to brand reputation and competitive advantage, strategically sharing your EcoVadis assessment results provides a tremendous opportunity to position your organisation as a leader.
The collective efforts of companies striving to become sustainable will push the performance benchmark higher and define the future business landscape.