An impact report is a way to present your company’s ESG efforts in a more concise, visual and data-driven way. As stakeholders increasingly look for concrete metrics and signs of greenwashing, relying upon lengthy traditional annual reports can be ineffective in communicating key points to audiences.

ESG reports tend to be reactive in nature and usually show specific extra-financial criteria based upon KPIs under the three areas of environmental, social and governance. The fact that they exist does not necessarily indicate positive contributions to the environment or society, and the report itself, often lengthy in nature, can be hard to decipher.

The impact report looks to rectify this issue by communicating the measurable and positive contributions that your organisation is having upon people and the environment. It lays out several key areas in a manner that is easy to digest:

What are the ESG issues that your organisation is trying to tackle?
How is your organisation addressing these issues?
What additional tangible impacts is your organisation making and what are the supporting metrics?

Making a strong visual impression

Impact reports generally use icons, infographics and imagery to enhance the presentation of its key metrics and messages. This has the benefits of:

Being more engaging for audiences – “Seeing” the impacts through visuals can help improve reader engagement. When accompanied by text, it can also encourage more viewers to read the text to learn more about impacts they are interested in.
Providing a clearer look into what new impacts have been achieved and the future changes sought – Progress and positive impacts can be assessed with a glance depending on the metrics.
Helping with branding – Good visuals can show what your organisation does and stands for. For example, an organisation that works with the elderly may have graphics accompanying a description of their social initiatives.

Benefiting from being concise

The length of an impact report is generally much shorter than full sustainability or annual reports and can be anywhere from one to twenty pages. In the case of longer reports, the highlights can be consolidated into a shorter visual. The concise nature of the impact report:

Enables readers to quickly find and digest relevant information
Narrows down and gives focus towards the metrics that are being included
Reduces the amount of time and manpower needed to produce the report

Enhancing your ESG communications

From a communications lens we see several key areas in which impact reports can help an organisation:

Demonstration of additional contribution – clearly shows how your organisation is finding new and enhanced ways of creating impact backed by robust KPIs and metrics that remain constant.
Good for both internal and external communication – internal stakeholders will be more inclined to view how their work is making a difference, while external stakeholders can learn more about the organisational strategy, values and progress.
Can be repurposed for deployment in a number of channels – the visual nature of the report enables it to be repurposed for channels such as social media, your website, blog posts and more.

We hope you found this article insightful. If you are interested in learning more about impact reports and ESG communications, we can help. Contact us to start the conversation.

How impact reports can bring ESG to the fore