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REPORTING & DISCLOSURE
Discover our reporting and disclosure services:
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Climate-related disclosures
Why choose Proxima?
Reporting frameworks and benchmarking indices can appear complex and feel overwhelming. Even the sheer number of frameworks and acronyms is confusing! Our role is to remove that pain, ensure great reporting outcomes and build your confidence to manage future reporting tasks internally. That's what we've done for a wide range of clients over many years.
Proxima brings a real depth of experience and familiarity with recognised frameworks like GRI Standards, <IR>, the Future-Fit Business Benchmark and the SDGs; as well as indices like DJSI and CDP. Whether you need help with your first stand-alone sustainability report; independent support to carry out a materiality assessment or stakeholder engagement, or more technical support with a specific sustainability index we can help.
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Simplify: we understand the wide range of reporting requirements and support you to identify those that add most value to your organisation and your stakeholders.
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Experience: you are unique. Reflecting that uniqueness authentically will add value. Our experience across many industries and in different parts of the world provides us with a solid understanding of reports that work – and aspects that don’t.
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Credibility: Proxima is the only licensed training partner for GRI in New Zealand and the only provider of <IR> approved training courses in partnership with Enact, an International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Foundation Partner. Over the last 15 years, we have worked with the majority of organisations in New Zealand which use a recognised reporting framework.
Impact and materiality assessments
At the heart of all good reporting and disclosure is a clear understanding of what to focus on and why. Whether you're just starting the sustainability journey or reviewing your current report, we'll work with you to review your most significant impacts - both positive and negative (handprint and footprint) - to help you tell your stories and improve future decision-making.
Impact and materiality assessments can be stand-alone pieces of work or part of broader process where we support you to create or update your work on sustainability. It's a useful process to raise awareness and understanding of your most pressing sustainability issues, so we encourage you to involve others.
Impact and materiality assessments are tailored to your specific needs and might include:
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Scope: determine the scope of the assessment and any specific objectives.
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Benchmark: agree any specific standards, indices frameworks for benchmarking and reporting against. Examples might include the GRI Standards, DJSI, CDP, B Corp, Future-Fit Business Benchmark, The Natural Step or other industry specific standards.
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Discovery and research: review existing data and information from current measures and reporting.
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Stakeholder engagement: involve people with relevant information, expertise or interest. Read more about our approach to stakeholder engagement here.
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Materiality: prioritise impacts using a recognised framework or tailored scoring approach.
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Guidance: sharing useful insights and findings from the process in a concise report to inform decision-making..
Climate related disclosures
The XRB's Aotearoa New Zealand Climate Standards took effect on the 1st of January 2023. They require listed companies with a market cap greater than $60m - referred to as 'climate reporting entities' (CREs) - to disclose how they are managing risks and opportunities from climate change. The standards are based on the recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-related Disclosures (TCFD), which are being adopted in jurisdictions around the world.
Our team has extensive experience with climate related issues including:
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GHG accounting: developing and assessing GHG inventories
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Mitigation: advising on mitigation approaches and offsetting
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Assessment: climate risk and opportunity assessments
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Data integrity: stress-testing data for assurance readiness
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Disclosure: preparing disclosures for compliance with Aotearoa New Zealand Climate-related Disclosures (CS1, CS2 and CS3)
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Capability: building internal knowledge, understanding and confidence to manage climate and carbon related issues in-house
GRI Standards
There are five powerful benefits of using the GRI Standards:
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Credibility: The GRI standards are the world’s most widely used and recognised sustainability reporting framework, used in 90 countries for over 20 years.
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Accountability: As a standard, your GRI sustainability reporting can be independently audited and assured by a third party.
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Relevance: GRI provides a strong foundation for defining what sustainability means for your organisation and how to measure and communicate your sustainable performance in ways that enhance decision-making.
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Effective: The materiality principle developed by GRI is essential for effective reporting non-financial performance and a fundamental input to a coherent sustainability strategy.
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Consistency: GRI provides an easy to follow process for identifying, measuring and communicating your most material sustainability issues.
Proxima is the approved GRI training partner in Aotearoa New Zealand and a member of the GRI Gold Community.
<IR> Integrated Reporting
<IR> can be used alongside other reporting frameworks and approaches, including the GRI Standards and Future-Fit Business Benchmark. There are five powerful benefits of using the <IR> framework:
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Communicating value creation: <IR> provides a comprehensive and robust framework to explain how an organisation creates value today, and how it will create more value tomorrow.
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Informed decisions: The six capitals model at the heart of <IR> offers simple clarity about the relationship between what an organisation does and the value it creates.
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Integrated thinking: <IR> is a catalyst for, and should not be separated from, more integrated thinking and solutions towards genuinely sustainable value creation.
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Strategic success: By putting your business model under the microscope, <IR> provides valuable insights into the strategic choices that will secure long-term success through short and long-term value creation.
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Leadership: The holistic nature of <IR> is focused on the key challenge for organisations – their ability to prove their ability to create value for the organisation itself, as well as others.
Proxima is accredited to deliver approved <IR> training in partnership with Enact, an International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Foundation Partner. Course participants will receive a certificate of completion from the IIRC.
Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs or Global Goals) set out a universal agenda to achieve sustainable development globally, known as Agenda 2030. Aotearoa New Zealand is a signatory to the SDGs and achieving the 169 targets is a national commitment that sits with the government. However, the private sector and civil society can help.
In their annual reports, a growing number of companies report some sort of contribution to the SDGs, yet there is plenty of room for progress. Most SDG reporting reflects existing sustainability programs, rather than a larger commitment to making progress on priority goals and systems transformation to reflect the underlying values of the SDGs.
If you want to demonstrate impact using the SDGs, we can help:
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Materiality: identifying the specific goals and targets where your organisation is best placed to make a meaningful difference.
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Authenticity: develop an appropriate impact reporting framework that shows what measurable difference your organisation's contribution is making.
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Alignment: making sense of the SDGs alongside other non-financial and sustainability reporting frameworks like GRI, <IR>, Future-Fit Business Benchmark or indices like DJSI and CDP.
DJSI & CDP
Our team has global experience and intricate knowledge of the DJSI and CDP indices. If you are looking to report on and /or improve your rating as part of your sustainability goals, the Proxima team can provide practical and useful support:
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Understand: provide insights into how scoring methodologies for DJSI and CDP ratings actually work.
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Improve: Identify areas where you can gain additional points to lift your rating.
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Action: develop a clear plan for work to improve your rating.
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Coach: provide any required support to implement your plan
Future-Fit Business Benchmark
The Future-Fit Business Benchmark provides a clear line in the sand for sustainability. It's a powerful science-based framework that, through measurement against a definition of sustainable performance, provides actionable insights for business model development and continuous improvement. The Benchmark collates he most credible and robust third-party resources into one unified methodology.
The Future-Fit Business Benchmark measures both footprint (Break-Even Goals) and handprint (Positive Pursuits); and can be used in conjunction with other reporting frameworks. Have a look at our own Future-Fit Business Benchmark dashboard as an example.
We can help you:
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Gap assessment: quickly perform a health-check on your organisation to give an indication of priority Break-Even Goals, Positive Pursuits and the alignment with current performance.
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Focus on priorities: identify the priority Break-Even Goals and Positive Pursuits across your value chain.
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Measure: assess data and information needs to calculate your progress for Break-Even goals.
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Actionable insights: provide a summary of insights from an initial assessment against the Benchmark's Break Even Goals.
B Corp
B Corp Certification is particularly valuable for companies wanting a public-facing certification. It shows that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. In order to achieve certification, a company must:
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Demonstrate high social and environmental performance by achieving a B Impact Assessment score of 80 or above and passing a risk review.
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Make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
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Exhibit transparency by allowing information about performance measured against B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on your B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.
B Corp certification is not exclusively focused on a single social or environmental issue. And the process to achieve and maintain certification requires engaging teams and departments across the company. Taking company size and profile into account, verification involves documentation of the company’s business model and information about operations, structure, and various work processes, as well as review of potential public complaints and possible site visits. Recertification confirms these standards continue to be met on an ongoing basis.
Proxima has been through the B Impact self-assessment, and despite achieving sufficient points, decided not to proceed with evaluation and verification. So we're familiar with the process. Here's how we can help:
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Advise: help you assess whether B Corp certification is the right fit for your business needs.
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Support: provide guidance and support with the B Impact assessment process.
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Develop: help your team develop processes and policies to meet B Corp certification criteria.
Sustainability report review
As required and expected standards continue to evolve, it's important for your reporting approach to keep up to speed. Whichever reporting approach or framework you might be using, we can be your critical friend when you're looking for honest, constructive feedback.
Our broad knowledge and experience means we can quickly identify areas for improvement and make suggestions that will keep up with stakeholder expectations and good practice principles:
Here's how we can help:
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Honest: provide honest feedback in a constructive way. That's what friends are for.
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Practical: offer realistic and practical ideas for improving and evolving your report.
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Coach: challenge your thinking to ensure you're getting the most from your reporting investment.
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Technical: support you to comply with specific technical requirements of different reporting frameworks and indices.