As I get older, my motto has been “less is more.” That certainly works for a mindful lifestyle. And it also works for pickleball, as one learns to hit the ball softly and place it cleanly rather than banging away at it to earn points.
Although there is a broad range of length for sustainability reports, Teneo reports that, among larger companies, the length of these documents has increased for the third year in a row, now averaging 83 pages (up 20% from an average of 70 pages in 2021).
In talking with Cooley’s Michael Mencher, this isn’t necessarily a trend we would recommend, as longer reports often contain unnecessary fluff and are harder to quality control. Long reports also can create more liability risk.
For some companies, this may be evidence of ramping up investments in advance of CSRD and California reporting (and maybe even expectations of the SEC’s stayed rules being real obligations). That being said, it will be interesting to see what companies do with their voluntary reports once they start publishing their actual CSRD/California disclosures – particularly regarding the more marketing-oriented topics and sections that are outside the scope of these regulations but are often included in voluntary reports.
While CSRD obligations have yet to be met, even companies that have not begun to voluntarily align disclosure are often well down the road in making their materiality assessments, which can drive changes to voluntary reporting.
Here are typical sources of increased disclosure:
- Alignment with more reporting frameworks, creating many pages of SASB and GRI tables.
- More sophisticated and granular quantitative – particularly, climate – reporting, with a more detailed discussion of methodology.
- Attempts to focus reporting more on company-specific initiatives and issues, rather than broad generic topics, resulting in multipage discussions – with plenty of marketing gloss – about company programs, including case studies.
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