Do you know anything about CSRD?
During our Program Director Lab session on June 28, we were lucky enough to get some feedback on the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) implementation underway at one of our strategic committee members. This ambitious directive, introduced by the European Union and due to come into force on January 1ᵉʳ 2025, aims to improve the quality, comparability and accessibility of information provided by companies concerning their environmental, social and governance performance.
To ensure the financing of the transition, the aim is to create a virtuous circle facilitating the orientation of capital towards more sustainable activities. New obligations will therefore be imposed on companies, particularly in terms of reporting. Many of them will have to review their business models, draw up their strategic plans accordingly, and ensure that the commitments they make are translated into operational reality.
In order to move away from a largely financial approach and comply with changing legislation, it seems essential to mobilize governance. Changes must be rapid, even to meet market expectations, and must be imposed from above to avoid encountering too much resistance.
The new European framework gives increasing weight to the extra-financial dimension, which represents a major change for companies. However, not all companies have yet fully grasped the implications. Many continue to think in primarily financial terms. Some take a partial approach to CSR, investing only in the social or societal aspects and leaving the subject to the HR department.
It's very difficult to get things moving if the impetus doesn't come from top management. In order to speed up the transformation, some groups have not hesitated to bring together financial and non-financial functions within a single entity, and to rely on managers with recognized leadership within the organization to drive the project forward. This top-level positioning makes it possible to impose themes, review the order of priorities and ensure that they are implemented as close to the field as possible.
Without strong sponsorship, it is often difficult to get changes accepted. However, these changes are becoming essential, including for investors, who are increasingly looking for indicators. Certain sectors, such as luxury goods, are now being challenged on this subject.
In the space of just a few months, a number of texts have strengthened the extra-financial obligations imposed on companies, and the framework is set to get tougher all the time. If it is to be accepted and exploited, and if it is to enable practices to evolve effectively, it must not be approached solely from the angle of compliance. It is essential to highlight the concrete benefits it can bring to the organization.
The new CSR regulations place extremely high demands on companies. Even if the French framework was fairly precursory, further steps will have to be taken, with standardization obligations, the introduction of increasingly varied themes or the consideration of the impact of the entire value chain.
This logic seems virtuous, because it should have a ripple effect throughout the ecosystem. Faced with the multitude of complexities that teams will have to deal with, however, a compliance-centric approach risks discouraging them and giving the impression that constraints will be difficult to overcome.
The key is to highlight the value that these transformations can bring. It's not just a question of meeting obligations, but of making the approach positive for the organization and ensuring that the commitments made, particularly in terms of decarbonization, become credible and concrete. For employees to become fully involved, even though their workload is already heavy, the project must make sense to them.
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