An EcoVadis rating serves as a critical yardstick, influencing everything from customer relationships to investor perceptions. But here's the thing – getting an EcoVadis rating is not a one-and-done deal. As the sustainability landscape constantly evolves, so must your company's efforts. Continuous improvement is the fuel that drives you to maintain and enhance your sustainability credentials over time.

Having been in the trenches supporting companies on their EcoVadis journeys, I can tell you firsthand that continuous improvement is both important and challenging. It requires ongoing commitment, cross-functional collaboration and a willingness to push through apathy and resistance. 

In this blog post, we'll explore why continuous improvement is the most important muscle to build to achieve a high EcoVadis rating. We'll explore the key drivers, the common pitfalls, and some practical strategies you can use to keep raising the bar. Excellence is not a destination—it's a never-ending journey of progress and betterment.

This is a comprehensive post, so sit down, grab a coffee and let’s get cracking.

Why Continuous Improvement is Essential to Improving Your EcoVadis Rating

Stahl is a world leader in speciality coatings and treatments for flexible substrates (such as paper, plastic films, or other materials used in flexible packaging, labelstock, and other applications). Their story demonstrates the power of continuous improvement in driving progress in EcoVadis performance over time. 

Stahl’s EcoVadis journey started through the encouragement of one of its suppliers. Their first assessment got them a Bronze medal in 2015. From there, they slowly worked their way up the ranks to Silver, Gold and eventually Platinum in the last few years. This means they are in the top 1% of all companies assessed worldwide. 

In the fast-paced world of sustainability, what was considered cutting-edge a few years ago is now simply par for the course. EcoVadis ratings are not static diplomas; they are dynamic reflections of how well your company keeps up with the ever-evolving expectations and standards. This means that what earned you a Gold rating last year may barely merit a Silver this year as the bar continues to rise. So you have to keep going.

But be careful about focusing too much on the outcome – precious Platinum. The American journalist Sydney J. Harris once said that the greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation but false progress. In the context of EcoVadis ratings, false progress can be seen as making superficial changes or plain fabricating evidence to achieve a higher rating without actually improving or changing practices. An unhealthy focus and desire for a high rating may lead to this false progress, which can be a real danger to your reputation. 

What is less risky but still detrimental to progress? Complacency. If you rest on your laurels after achieving a specific EcoVadis score, you risk seeing your rating decline over time. No matter how impressive your past efforts are, they quickly become the new baseline. 

Ingrid Weijer, CSRD Reporting Manager at Stahl, explains it like this: “While creating a new policy will earn you ‘brownie points’ in year one, you need to follow that up with concrete actions in year two, and tangible results in year three.” 

Continuously pushing forward with new initiatives, more robust programs, and better performance is a standard requirement. Even to merely maintain your score!

By consistently striving to do better, you send a powerful message about your dedication to responsible business practices and your refusal to be content with doing the bare minimum, check-the-box, effort.

Continuous improvement means keeping pace with the escalating expectations of customers, investors and other key stakeholders. As sustainability becomes more integrated into purchasing decisions and investment strategies, companies that show increasing EcoVadis performance are better positioned to build trust and win business. Failing to improve can put critical relationships at risk.

Stahl has done this, too, setting a target that by 2030, all EcoVadis-rated suppliers must achieve a minimum score of 45 points before they will entertain doing business with them. 

Stahl is not alone in this approach. Julia Salant, General Manager for Carbon at EcoVadis, sees a growing trend of companies using the EcoVadis platform to make supplier sustainability performance a core dimension alongside cost, quality, and delivery in business decisions, RFPs, and contracts. Which is a good thing given that it was a core element of EcoVadis’ raison d’etre.

The global EcoVadis theme scores are trending up, so all platform participants are getting better (on average). Regularly benchmarking your EcoVadis score against peers provides valuable insights into areas for improvement, opportunities to gain a competitive edge, and the chance to differentiate as a leader in your industry.

Commit to continuous improvement to:

• Maintain your competitive advantage
• (Re-)align with new and evolving standards
• Mature in parallel with customer expectations
• Keep up with the trend of increasing average EcoVadis scores
• Become a better sustainability professional and advance your career.

Key takeaways:

1. Continuous improvement allows you to (re-)align with evolving global standards.
2. The opposite, stagnation, leads to falling behind in ratings, market position, and lost revenues.
3. “The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.” – Sydney J. Harris

How the EcoVadis Methodology Promotes Ongoing Improvement

One of the great things about the EcoVadis assessment process is that its design supports and encourages continuous improvement. The methodology provides a structured framework for regularly evaluating your sustainability performance, identifying areas for enhancement and implementing targeted initiatives to drive progress.

The annual reassessment cycle is a core feature of this framework. You complete the assessment every year and measure your improvement against the results from the previous year. Just like Pringles: Once you pop, you can’t stop! This built-in cadence ensures that sustainability remains a top-of-mind priority and keeps your team focused on making tangible advancements in policies, practices and performance.

EcoVadis periodically updates its questionnaire and scoring criteria to reflect the latest sustainability standards, regulations and best practices. This means you are evaluated against the most current and relevant sustainability benchmarks every year, pushing you to stay at the forefront of responsible business practices.

If you focus on doing the work, strengthening your management systems, and implementing new initiatives aligned with the EcoVadis criteria, you will naturally generate evidence and increase your scores. These score improvements are tangible evidence of your progress on your sustainability journey. Use them to showcase your company's commitment and achievements to customers, investors, employees and other stakeholders.

Embrace these EcoVadis methodology features to drive continuous improvement:

• Annual reassessment cycle
• Regular updates to scoring criteria
• Stay close to the frontier of sustainability so you can thread more ambition through your management systems.

Key takeaways:

1. EcoVadis provides a structured framework for consistent improvement.
2. Harness the framework’s continuous improvement features to get your company moving and keep it moving.
3. Use your last assessment to show your improvement. Make your CEO’s passion for platinum and the looming deadline of your next assessment a magnet for continuing the journey.

Navigating Common Challenges to Improving Your EcoVadis Score

While the importance of continuous improvement in EcoVadis is evident, progressing can be challenging. 

One common obstacle is competing priorities and limited resources. After the EcoVadis assessment, you may struggle to maintain momentum for your sustainability initiatives due to many other demands on company time, budget, and attention. Without dedicated resources and clear accountability, it can be difficult to keep making meaningful strides year after year. 

Siloed efforts across different departments or business units are another challenge. Sustainability is cross-functional, requiring collaboration and alignment across the organisation. However, companies sometimes find that different teams work on isolated initiatives without a holistic view of how they contribute to overall sustainability performance. This fragmentation can lead to duplication of efforts, missed synergies, and a lack of integrated progress. That’s why communication is so essential: to repeatedly tell how everything fits together, driving accountability and responsibility of teams. 

Not all company cultures fully embrace sustainability as a core value and strategic priority. Getting the cross-functional buy-in and engagement needed to drive ongoing enhancements can be challenging for them. Without leadership support and employee commitment, sustainability efforts risk becoming a box-ticking exercise rather than a transformative journey.

On a more tactical level, some companies struggle with the time-consuming process of crafting and gathering more, and better supporting documentation each year for the EcoVadis assessment. As expectations for evidence increase, teams can find themselves scrambling to track down policies, procedures, and performance data across multiple functions and systems. The administrative burden can drain limited resources and distract from more strategic improvement efforts. 

According to Julia Salant of EcoVadis, only 20 percent of suppliers have some carbon data when their customers first ask. Establishing robust processes that generate comprehensive data can take SMEs 12-18 months and large organisations two years. 

Following that, you must act on the data you generate to achieve emissions reductions, energy efficiency, or more training hours. Implementing the actions that affect these metrics often requires significant operational changes, technology investments, and behaviour shifts that can take years to implement and yield measurable results. The slow pace of progress can be frustrating and demotivating for teams working hard to drive improvements. Patience is your friend.

In the next section, we'll drill deeper into practical approaches to tackle these challenges head-on and maintain momentum. 

Practical Strategies to Enhance Your EcoVadis Score

Securing executive sponsorship for your EcoVadis efforts is important, preferably from the CEO. Failing that, having a C-suite champion who understands the strategic value of sustainability and is committed to embedding it across the organisation is critical for ensuring that it remains a company-wide priority. 

With leadership buy-in, you can more quickly unlock the resources, alignment and accountability needed for continuous improvement. Stahl expanded their EcoVadis assessment team from two or three people to seven, including colleagues from different divisions (Procurement, HR, ESG) to provide their specific expertise.

To translate that executive support into action, set clear annual goals and assign responsibilities to the teams that own the content of each EcoVadis theme. Break down your overarching improvement objectives into specific, measurable targets and initiatives for the year ahead. Then, ensure each department or business unit understands its role in contributing to these goals and has dedicated personnel assigned to drive progress. This structured approach helps combat siloed efforts and keeps everyone rowing in the same direction.

Maintaining momentum throughout the year is necessary to achieving your goals. One effective way to do this is by conducting monthly or at least quarterly progress check-ins with all involved teams. These regular sessions provide an opportunity to monitor actions, track evidence gathering, identify challenges and course-correct as needed. They also create a cadence of accountability and keep sustainability top-of-mind amidst competing priorities.

As you hit milestones and make strides in your EcoVadis performance, don’t forget to celebrate these achievements along the way. Recognising the hard work and progress of teams across the company helps maintain motivation and reinforces the importance of sustainability. Whether it's a company-wide email, a team lunch or a formal Sustainability Champion Award, taking time to acknowledge success keeps everyone engaged and energised and a chance to repeat your company’s sustainability narrative.

Incremental progress is still progress. It is easy to get discouraged if you don’t see dramatic leaps in your EcoVadis scores or KPIs. But you have to remember that every improvement counts and compounds. Most importantly, with every assessment cycle, you learn something new. 

“The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organisation’s ability to learn faster than the competition.” – Peter Senge

Sustainability is a marathon, not a sprint. Stay focused and keep inching forward. Over the long haul, those small steps will add up to significant strides. The payoff is well worth the effort. With each passing year, you'll build a stronger, more resilient business, equipped to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Strategies to overcome common challenges:

• Secure executive sponsorship 
• Conduct quarterly progress check-ins.
• Set clear annual goals and responsibilities 
• Celebrate achievements through awards and recognition.

Key takeaways:

1. Strategic commitment and clear goals help overcome sustainability challenges
2. Regular review and recognition boost motivation.
3. Focus on the process and what you can do next. Don’t focus on the outcome. Focusing on the outcome does not lead to improvement.

Embracing Continuous Improvement for Long-Term Success

Continuous improvement isn’t a choice – it's an imperative - if you want to keep pace with rising expectations, drive meaningful impact and demonstrate leadership.

By consistently pushing to enhance your policies, practices and performance, you signal that responsible business is a core value and ongoing priority. Your progress and impact builds credibility and trust with stakeholders who depend on you.

By leveraging the annual assessment process and theme-specific criteria, you can systematically identify gaps, set goals, drive accountability, and measure progress year over year. The structured methodology helps you focus your efforts, mature your sustainability management systems, and achieve better results over time.

To help you navigate the path to continuous improvement and overcome common challenges, I’ve compiled a roadmap of practical actions you can implement to achieve a higher EcoVadis score.

Be patient, stay committed and focused, and keep pushing forward!