More Treats than Tricks
Being Intentional 10/13/21: A look at CSR reports, Halloween treats, and what ESG really is (and is not)
Welcome to the Being Intentional newsletter. Today we're going to talk about a little bit about Corporate Social Responsibility, or, more accurately, Corporate Social Responsibility Reports--Reports that are written by companies to detail all the good things they are doing on various sustainability issues.
These days most public companies publish a CSR report, which can typically be found on a company's website under a "sustainability" section and it's usually available in both online formats as well as a PDF download.
Have you ever read a CSR report? If you said no, you're not alone. In fact, no one would fault you if you didn't even know one existed. Most employees don't even know their company publishes a CSR report, let alone what goes into one! So why do companies bother publishing CSR reports if no one reads them? Well, almost no one, that is. Rating Agencies read them, and that's becoming a very important audience.
Along with quarterly financial reports, CSR reports are used by the rating agencies to help develop Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores and these ESG scores filter into capital market allocations and strategies. What goes into a CSR report can have a very big impact on how a company gets rated, which, in turn, influences things like which fund the company's stock gets included in, which influences where your 401K investments go (for instance). It's now probably a bit easier to see the importance of publishing CSR reports.
CSR reports outline a company’s overall sustainability program and provide an opportunity to glimpse into what a company considers important to them--what’s “material” to them. Corporate sustainability programs are built on “materiality assessments”, which are typically stakeholder surveys conducted once every one or two years or so to try and determine what’s most important to a company. These static assessments then direct the focus for the following year and those issues show up in the CSR report. Unfortunately what most CSR reports fail to capture is you--the customer. Yearly materiality assessments rarely capture what’s important to a company’s consumers. They focus on employees, board members, and vendors, but almost never on customers.
Sustainability is arguably the most important metric of our time and these CSR reports provide a lens into how companies are preparing for, and delivering on, strategies to enhance their sustainability. Although often flying under the radar, CSR reports are becoming increasingly important in terms of corporate strategy, employee retention, and capital market allocations, yet these reports often overlook the single most important stakeholder any company can have: the customers. This is not only a disservice to the companies but also to all of us as customers and as community stakeholders in the future of our planet. Motive is working to right this balance--thank you for working with us.
Halloween is fast approaching and that means the clock is ticking on preparing for trick or treaters. Consider stockpiling treats from Frito-Lay/Cheetos (RS: +29, ↑91%), Pringles (RS: +21, ↑77%), or Hershey’s (RS: +20, ↑76%) instead of Nestle (RS: +15, ↑66%), Mondelez (RS: +14, ↑63%), Russell Stover (RS: +4, ↓52%), or Hostess (RS: -39, lower than ↓96%).
Speaking of CSR reports, take a quick look at those from (Frito Lays, Hershey, Nestle) to get a handle on just what we are dealing with.
Trends in user searches at AskMotive.com are becoming more apparent, and one, in particular, is quite interesting. Searches are demonstrating a clustered distribution over time. Rather than being spread out relatively evenly across days and time, or in a repeating cycle of observable activity across weeks, we are seeing search activity spiking at seemingly random times.
This suggests users are turning to Motive as a result of an event that sparks an interest in a brand rather than during the actual purchasing activity. As an example of this, I am more likely to search for Adidas when the brand has been highlighted in the news or I have been exposed to some impactful marketing campaign than I am when I am actually seeking to buy an Adidas product. It seems we form our understandings of, and likely affiliations with, brands over time, and perhaps more deliberately, than we do though actual purchases. Buying is part of shopping, but not all shopping results in buying.
From our blog:
A new report circulating through the financial press highlights just how empty so many of the green promises of ESG and Sustainability funds truly are. Before you can make sense of what these funds are selling though, you need to come to terms with what you want from ESG. ESG is a universe of information to help guide decisions and lead to outcomes. The appropriateness of these decisions and outcomes depends on the motivation and anticipation you, as the protagonist, have in making them. Read more…
Following the themes introduced in the last blog, we reiterate that ESG is data and not impact. Far too often ESG is being used--even by storied business management consultancies--as a synonym for impact of sustainability, and this is misleading. ESG is remarkably powerful data, but it can only accomplish what it is we want it to accomplish when we apply it within an appropriate framework...and we each need to identify for ourselves what ‘appropriate’ is. Read more…
This past week brought about a milestone in US Federal Government climate action. Twenty-three federal agencies and departments released their Agency Climate Adaptation and Resiliency plans for public comments pursuant to President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.
There’s a lot to read here, and we are making our way through every plan. If you can find the time it is an interesting adventure as each plan is truly contextualized to each respective agency’s focus. A great step in understanding how climate change touches everything.
Link here
All plans are available from the Office of the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer. (In case you missed it earlier, the USA now has a federal Chief Sustainability Officer as well as dedicated Agency Chief Sustainability Officers in all agencies and departments...sustainability is becoming systemic!)