Double Materiality

Assess the Reciprocal Impacts Between Your Company and Your Community. 

A materiality assessment allows organizations to identify key sustainability issues and understand where they can make progress. More than that, double materiality is a legal mandate for companies under the scope of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). 

A meaningful materiality assessment is more than just a compliance exercise and the benefits it can deliver go beyond meeting investor needs. The assessment requires engagement with your clients, your customers, your employees, and other important stakeholders to fully understand your organisation’s impact. This creates a deeper understanding of wider stakeholders’ needs and new opportunities for collaboration. 

In the short term, the output of the assessment can inform communications strategies, ensuring you’re avoiding greenwashing and speaking authentically and honestly about your commitment to environmental and social impact. In the longer term, materiality assessments should lead to deeper leadership discussions about what ‘value’ means to the company (beyond just profit), resulting in rigorous examination and innovation around fundamental business models.