You've decided to sign up and start working on your Ecovadis sustainability assessment journey. What happens now? Here is what you should expect.

 

Have you ever relocated to a new country? During my first 22 years on this planet, I never lived in one country for more than 5 years in a row.

 

Moving abroad is exciting and a privilege—at least, that’s how I’ve perceived it. However, navigating unfamiliar environments, languages, daily routines, diverse social interactions, behavioural expectations, and separation from your support networks presents challenges.

 

Many people experience culture shock when moving abroad, driven by the gap between their expectations and the reality of life in a new cultural and physical environment.

 

Navigating culture shock provides a helpful analogy for the EcoVadis journey of a new subscribing company.

Just as individuals experience and adapt to culture shock when moving to a new country, companies undergo similar phases of adjustment when adopting the EcoVadis solution. This journey can also be compared to the stages of the Gartner Hype Cycle, which describes a similar experience curve and from which I’ve borrowed some naming.

 

We’ll refer to our experience journey as the EcoVadis Adoption Curve.

Understanding this curve will help you to:

• better prepare for the ebbs and flows
• set realistic expectations focused on process over outcome
• drive your company towards improvement, quicker

   

 

 In this blog post, we’ll explore the five distinct stages of the EcoVadis Adoption Curve:

• Hopeful Beginnings
• Peak of Inflated Expectations
• Trough of Disillusionment
• Slope of Momentum
• Plateau of EcoVadis Mastery.

 

We’ll explore the experiences, challenges, and best practices associated with each stage, providing actionable tips and examples to help you succeed.

 

Let’s get started!

 

Stage 1: Hopeful Beginnings – the Assumption of Impending Success

 

The start of your EcoVadis journey is often an external trigger, such as a customer request for information about your company’s sustainability performance or an internal evolution leading to a decision to prioritise sustainability.

 

If your company is like most, you’ve been receiving more and more sustainability questions from customers through the marketing and sales functions but lack the consistent, sufficiently detailed, and standardised response that the EcoVadis Scorecard enables.

 

Your scorecard can help meet the information needs of multiple customers at once. For customers active on the platform, you can share your scorecard at the press of a button. You can share the PDF version for those not active on the platform.

 

Moreover, establishing and improving the management systems and governance required for a high EcoVadis score allows your marketing and sales teams to present a more compelling narrative beyond price and quality.

 

What’s not to like?

 

Similar to the initial excitement of moving to a new country, there is a sense of enthusiasm and optimism about the potential for positive change. You start learning the language of EcoVadis, its assessment methodology, and planning the next steps.

 

  

Stage 2: Peak of Inflated Expectations – Tempering Over-enthusiasm

 

You are energised and eager to make rapid progress. Just as you might develop unrealistic expectations about quickly adapting, learning the language, making friends and fitting into a new home abroad, you may overestimate the ease and speed of achieving a high EcoVadis rating.

 

Having done a quick gap analysis of the sustainability criteria EcoVadis has activated based on your industry. You know what is necessary and have initial meetings with colleagues in other functions. Everyone is excited. Based on the discussions so far, you expect quick wins and easy buy-in from colleagues. Senior management is excited, too. They expressed their “support” for your efforts early on.

 

There is a feeling that achieving a high EcoVadis rating will be reasonably straightforward, especially since your company is firmly committed to sustainability. After all, your marketing literature repeats the mantra that “sustainability is in our DNA”. Everybody believes it, including your senior management. You are at the peak of inflated expectations.

 

So you carry on. You plan to implement numerous sustainability initiatives and policies simultaneously. You’ve communicated ambitious targets and timelines for implementing these initiatives, updating policies, procedures, and the assessment process itself to senior management and other stakeholders.

 

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years” - Bill Gates.

 

Perhaps you promised:

• a quick reduction in carbon footprint
• a smooth labour policy implementation across different regions
• a swift global DEI training roll-out
• immediate buy-in for new ethical guidelines
• a quick campaign to improve supplier sustainability performance
• a rapid ISO27000 certification

 

Engaging colleagues, building systems, collecting relevant data, and implementing meaningful changes across the company require much time and effort.

 

Unrealistic expectations and common EcoVadis mistakes are beginning to cause friction.

 

 

Stage 3: Trough of Disillusionment – Facing Inevitable Setbacks

 

Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

 

The realisation of the complexity involved in establishing policies, implementing actions, gathering data and engaging stakeholders across the company sets in. Welcome to the freefall down the trough of Disillusionment. You encounter more resistance from employees. It looks like they didn’t view sustainability as a priority after all.

 

Their excitement evaporated, like a puddle under the sun, at the first sign of doing the work.

 

They’ve started viewing this endeavour as extra work. Something that gets in the way of delivering on the personal and departmental goals they committed to as part of their annual performance management process.

 

They are getting tired of your questions.

 

You begin to lose momentum and grip over the program. You don’t want to ruin the goodwill you’ve built up. Even senior management has started criticising the slow progress and a lack of tangible results (medals). They demand to know what is going on and how things will be turned around. When will we get Gold?

 

Are you facing challenges in your EcoVadis journey? Click here if you need help navigating these challenges efficiently

 

Everyone seems disappointed and questions the current approach. The overwhelming amount of work that needs to be done and the breakdown of support and engagement lead to a high burden of stress on your shoulders. The challenges and setbacks revealed the need for a more diligent approach, more training, and more support to navigate this journey effectively.

 

The danger of the trough is that most people find it difficult to peer through it to the other side. But that’s precisely what you need to do. 

 

Don’t get stuck and languish in the trough. You have to go back to the drawing board and regenerate momentum.

 

Starting over you begin to prepare for a new, in-depth gap analysis. When you first started, you only identified gaps between the sustainability topics Ecovadis expects you to manage and those you were already working on.

 

Had you spent more time analysing the depth of each of these topics back then, you would have had a clearer insight into the gaps and how much work it would be to implement new policies and actions and report on performance.

 

It’s a good thing you started over.

 

 

Stage 4: Slope of Momentum – Building Sustainable Systems

 

Your new, in-depth gap analysis reveals significant gaps in your company’s policies, practices, and processes. Researching, interviewing, and analysing these gaps and identifying how to close them has been tedious and time-consuming. Addressing these issues will require substantial work, but there is now clarity on what needs to be done, how to do it, and who to involve.

 

Your new-found clarity boosts morale and enables a more strategic and realistic approach to sustainability management, driven by the lessons learned from earlier challenges and setbacks.

 

Your in-depth gap analysis highlighted which Sustainability Criteria are in scope for your industry but also to what extent you need to address them:

• Comprehensive policies, including commitments, objectives and targets
• Documented procedures to standardise processes
• Effective controls to ensure policies and procedures are followed
• Regular oversight, including audits and risk assessments, to identify further gaps
• Performance dashboards to quantitatively track progress against goals and targets
• Acquire third-party certifications to validate the quality of your management systems.

 

One of the most critical aspects of this stage is securing genuine support from the CEO and senior management. Your efforts need budgets and resources behind them. Responsibilities must be assigned to the applicable functions, and projects must be managed and reported on. Without this clear and explicit support and implementation capacity, it will be impossible to integrate sustainability into the core business processes and collaborate with key departments.

 

You also need to set more realistic timescales for implementing actions and develop something akin to a roadmap that covers multiple cycles of EcoVadis assessments. For example, Julia Salant of EcoVadis explains that it can take SMEs 12-18 months and large organisations around two years to establish robust processes that generate comprehensive data (in this case, she was only discussing the topic of carbon).

 

The Trough of Disillusionment has flattened out. Your efforts begin to pay off. You’ve traversed the roaring river at the bottom of the valley and can see the path up the Slope of Momentum.

 

The organisation clearly understands that continuous improvement requires multiple cycles of EcoVadis assessments. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are your management systems.

 

You collaborate with key departments, implement data-driven approaches, and celebrate incremental successes. You seek guidance from peers and experts and realise the importance of change management throughout this process.

 

You expand on your reporting, using it as a flywheel for continuous improvement and start working with suppliers because your company’s sustainability performance depends on theirs’.

 

“Reporting for the sake of reporting is one thing, but when you’re using data to really improve performance, to report and adjust your emissions based on your suppliers’ performance improvement. This is exciting. This is real impact.”

– Julia Salant, General Manager for Carbon at EcoVadis.

 

You’re moving in the right direction.

 

 

Stage 5: Plateau of EcoVadis Mastery – Sustaining Long-Term Success

 

In 1942, after the Allies won their first battle against Germany (The Battle of Egypt), Winston Churchill said:

 

“Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning”.

 

Reaching the Plateau of EcoVadis Mastery is a significant milestone in your company’s EcoVadis journey. But it is only the end of the beginning.

 

Your EcoVadis rating is already rising, attracting recognition from customers, investors, and potential employees and solidifying your company’s position as a sustainability leader in your industry. But you’ve only completed level one.

 

Here, at the end of the beginning you have built a foundation – your sustainability management systems. Now comes the hard part, to put them to increasingly good use. To thread real ambition through those management systems. To ensure sustainability is ingrained in your vision for the future, your purpose, your company culture, where employees actively contribute to continuous improvement efforts. Sustainability has to be a core value, a magnet for innovation and a driver for growth, opening up opportunities for sustainable products, services, and business models. Because your company’s future depends on it.

 

 

Key Takeaways: Preparing for Your EcoVadis Journey

 

There is nothing new under the sun. Whenever our expectations are not met by reality, we will experience this curve of hopes, over-optimism, disappointment, overcoming the challenge, finding our footing, finding our path, and walking it. We experience this every day in countless situations. 

 

The key is to prepare for your journey so you know where you are, what’s coming and the common EcoVadis mistakes people make. To develop the skill of tempering your expectations (and those of others) and instead focus on the work that needs to be done. To underestimate what you can get done in the short term.

 

 

Now that you have a better understanding of the EcoVadis Adoption Curve, make an honest assessment of your company’s current position on the curve. Identify the specific steps you can take to drive progress towards EcoVadis Mastery.

 

Practical Steps for Each Stage

 

If you’re in the Hopeful Beginning stage, start by educating yourself on EcoVadis’ methodology and criteria, and work to secure genuine support from senior management.

 

If you’re at the Peak of Inflated Expectations, focus on setting realistic goals, engage colleagues strategically, and manage expectations. Don’t try to do too much, and don’t overpromise.

 

For those in the Trough of Disillusionment, remember that challenges and setbacks are to be expected on such a journey. To turn it around conduct thorough gap analyses, seek training and support, and maintain motivation by celebrating incremental successes.

 

If you’re on the Slope of Momentum, continue to develop a strategic approach, collaborate with key stakeholders, and implement data-driven systems to track progress and make better decisions.

 

If your company has reached the Plateau of EcoVadis Mastery, congratulations! Your hard work has paid off. You’ve reached the end of the beginning and met EcoVadis’ requirements for robust sustainability management systems.

 

You now have a foundation on which to build your sustainability programs. Now it’s time to layer-on ambition. Focus on continuous improvement, explore new opportunities for innovation and growth, and share your knowledge and experiences with industry peers.

 

Are you facing challenges in your EcoVadis journey? Click here if you need help navigating these challenges efficiently