Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility How to do a Materiality Assessment - Anthesis

How to do a Materiality Assessment

October 2, 2018 | Guidance,

We help our clients bring sustainability risks and opportunities into the mainstream of their business strategy and reassure their key stakeholders that they are addressing the right environmental, social and governance topics that could impact their business.

How To Do Your Materiality Assessment

Materiality assessments should inform more than your sustainability report. Done well, materiality plays a critical role in risk mitigation and provides an effective and rigorous methodology to identify and assess the potential impacts of emerging issues on your business. Materiality helps you:

  • Integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities into the commercial strategy
  • Respond to interest and pressure from stakeholders, including customers and investors.
  • Meet demand for greater transparency on material ESG risks.
  • Maximize return on investment by focusing on the most strategic and impactful issues, including those that mitigate risk, reduce cost, improve market differentiation and enhance brand value.
  • Meet the requirements of standards and indices, including GRI, SASB, CDP and DJSI, and make a meaningful connection between your priorities and the global agenda of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Anthesis Approach

We have carried out materiality assessments for over 40 organizations worldwide, from some of the world’s largest corporations to companies taking their first steps in sustainability. Our approach has four key features:

Tailored to Your Needs

Every organization faces different pressures and opportunities. We develop an evidence base, method and engagement process tailored to your needs and the decisions you want to inform.

Balancing Opinion with Evidence

While soliciting opinions of your key stakeholders is critical, we find ways to bring a measure of objectivity – whether that is through footprinting data, risk assessment results or other evidence-based research – to your exercise to ensure you are focusing in on what matters most.

Using the Power of Data Visualization

We use interactive dashboards to enable easy and effective analysis of materiality survey outcomes with our clients, who in turn use these dashboards to present outcomes to their leadership teams in a professional and engaging way.

Aligning with Existing Processes

We collaborate with your enterprise risk and strategic planning teams to align with their processes, to identify opportunities, and to ensure sustainability risk makes it into the company’s mainstream management process.

Contact us

We'd love to hear from you

Anthesis has offices in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Finland, Colombia, Brazil, China, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, the Philippines and the Middle East.