Over the last two years the Hilde team has spent hundreds of hours researching and analyzing thousands of company webpages, blogs & reports. We dig through almost everything a company publicly provides about their impact, sustainability, and social responsibility efforts as part of our evaluation process. To say we’ve seen it all when it comes to sustainability or ethical business content would probably be an understatement.

Besides serving as the basis for our company evaluations and ratings, all of this research and review has helped us crystallize our opinion about what good looks like when it comes to communicating about these topics. Admittedly our perspective prioritizes online content designed to clearly communicate and effectively substantiate how a company attempts to address their impacts on people and the planet. We are looking for credible information that is backed by data and external proof points. That means we don’t pay much attention to social media accounts.

And while we’re not focused on the kind of storytelling that will most effectively convert potential customers, boost sales, or increase loyalty, we also think that the hallmarks of what looks good for our purposes can also serve these business needs as well. In other words, credible content can be both useful and compelling. It is instrumental in creating authenticity for your company and building trust with customers, investors, and employees.  

The good news is that we’ve learned that there is a content formula that is generally applicable across companies and topics: safety, sustainability, and workers rights. Here’s our summary of the types of information that should be included in the content provided on a website and in annual reports.

1. Identifying impacts

Identify and describe the kinds of impacts to people and the planet that are relevant for your company, the products you make and sell, and your supply chain. This may sound basic, but you would be surprised how quickly “mission creep” can occur, diluting the impact and resources to fund and market your programs. A common red flag is when a marketing effort doesn’t clearly align with the products a company makes.

2. Stating your intentions

Clearly articulate your intentions to address the impacts that matter, note the internal policies and standards that guide your efforts, and provide links to relevant documents. Investing time in codifying internal standards and sharing them publicly is one of the most common missed steps and is one of the best ways to drive credibility and reduce risk with marketing your safety and sustainability programs.

3. Sharing your goals

Describe the ways you will measure success in addressing the impacts that matter through time-bound and quantifiable goals.

4. Giving strategic highlights

Tell your stakeholders how you will achieve your goal by outlining the strategies you will use. You don’t need to give anything away to competitors to provide enough information to make it clear that you have a good sense of how you’ll get there.

5. Measuring your progress

Use quantitative metrics along with contextual narrative to explain how you determine if you’re moving in the right direction (or not) when it comes to your goals.

6. Providing regular updates

Give regular updates, at least once a year, that include recent data for the quantitative metrics you’re using to measure progress.

7. Discussing limitations & challenges

This work is complex and difficult so don’t shy away from talking candidly about barriers to progress, unexpected delays, or other challenges that may be complicating your work.

More good news: When you include all or even most of these kinds of information, it really helps build credibility and convey authenticity to your audiences. Those audiences often include external ones like customers and investors but internal ones as well like employees. While we don’t pay attention to company social media accounts, we do think these types of information could be structured to make them suitable for those channels.

Now for the not so good news: Doing the work to put your company in a position to share this information is not easy. But we’re here to help. We’ve crafted more detailed guidance on each of these elements of information in a series of blog posts. The links included above take you to those dedicated blog posts which include specific examples from our research.  

We’ve worked with lots of different companies in lots of different industries with lots of different kinds of impacts and different types of customers. There are always people in any business who will be focused on the risks associated with working and communicating about a company’s impacts. The argument that publicly sharing information about imperfect efforts or unsatisfactory progress will make the company a target of negative publicity is a common one. We read articles and posts about the growing prevalence of “greenhushing” among certain kinds of companies.

We won’t deny that some companies can get negative attention if they engage in greenwashing. But the idea that not saying anything about your company’s credible efforts to try and address impacts is somehow better doesn’t track with our experience. The critical element to being able to publicly share in ways that minimize potential pushback risk is the presence of credible efforts. When companies take real action, share content about it using the types of information we’ve outlined, and discuss their challenges in authentic ways, the risks drops dramatically.

And the flip side of the coin, deciding not to share this kind of information (or simply not doing anything meaningful to address impacts to people and planet), carries significant risks as well. The media landscape has shifted dramatically. It’s up to your company to tell your sustainability story directly to the public. As artificial intelligence continues to populate the internet with slop that erodes public trust and credibility with consumers, it’s never been more important to craft compelling sustainability content. It’s up to you.