CSRHub Blog Research on ESG metrics and comments on sustainability best practice

CSRHub Co-Founder and COO, Cynthia Figge, will be speaking at Sustainable Brands New Metrics conference, in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 14-16. Cynthia will discuss The Second Generation of ESG Metrics and the Movement to bring “Dark Data” to Light. New Metrics will showcase the macro, corporate and investor landscapes to help business succeed. During the three day conference, new approaches to valuing risk and impact, company goals and KPI’S and new solutions in data management will be among some of the topics discussed.

Monday, November 14^th, 5:55pm

Rising Waves: The Second Generation of ESG Metrics and a Movement Toward Bringing ‘Dark Data’ to Light

• Cynthia Figge, Co-Founder and COO; CSRHub

Virtually all members of the Sustainable Brands community are asking what changes they can expect in corporate disclosure of ESG metrics over the next few years, and how they can best prepare to transition toward a disclosure landscape that is less confusing, less scattered and more consistent over time. While the first generation of sustainability metrics has been driven mostly by custom self-reported data, combined with hundreds of surveys and ratings, a new wave of ESG disclosure trends is shaping up that promises to meet the needs of all stakeholders. This talk will outline the most important features of the next generation of ESG metrics and explain how ‘dark data’ may play a role in it.

Sustainable Brands:

Sustainable Brands is home for the global community of business innovators who are shaping the future of commerce worldwide. Since 2006, their goal has been to inspire, engage and equip today's business and brand leaders to prosper for the near and long term by leading the way to a sustainably abundant future. They do so by offering news and views from thought and practice leaders, live and on-line events, peer-to-peer learning groups, a robust resource library, a solutions provider directory and more -- all designed to help brand, sustainability and design innovation professionals, social entrepreneurs and the eco-system of value network partners who support them, discover, co-create and successfully execute on new opportunities to profitably innovate for sustainability.

Cynthia Figge is a forerunner and thought leader in the corporate sustainability movement who co-founded EKOS International in 1996, one of the first consultancies integrating sustainability and corporate strategy. Cynthia is COO and Cofounder of CSRHub. Cynthia has worked with major organizations including BNSF, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Dow Jones, and REI to help craft sustainability strategy integrated with business. She was an Officer of LIN Broadcasting/McCaw Cellular leading new services development, and started a new “Greenfield” mill with Weyerhaeuser. She serves as Advisor to media and technology companies, and served as President of the Board of Sustainable Seattle. Cynthia has an MBA from Harvard Business School. Cynthia is based in the Seattle area.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on 16,550 companies from 135 industries in 133 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.

CSRHub co-founder Bahar Gidwani presented to Sustainability Brands New Metrics (#newmetrics) our thoughts about how to close the gap between sustainability and profitability.  More than 1,000 leaders in the sustainability area are attending this well-respected conference, this year.

To see Bahar's presentation, click here or below.

Bahar Gidwani  has built and run large technology-based businesses for many years. Bahar holds a CFA, worked on Wall Street with Kidder, Peabody, and with McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to a number of major companies and currently serves on the board of several software and Web companies. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy.  He plays bridge, races sailboats, and is based in New York City.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on 15,100+ companies from 135 industries in 132 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.

How to Build a Successful Workforce - Webinar
Ideas and Insights from the Intersection of Human Motivation, Digital and
Sustainable Business Practices

According to Gartner, Inc. 84% of organizations have a remote workforce. Forrester Research predicts that by 2016, 43% of the U.S. workforce will work from home. Join us as Cynthia Figge, Co-founder & COO of CSRHub, who recently spoke at Sustainable Brands in San Diego, and Erick Mott, Founder & Principal Consultant at creatorbase, discuss how to build a successful workforce in the age of digital sustainable brands.

Join us, Wednesday 22nd July @ 1pm PDT, as we address the key issues, including:

• What are the top workforce-related challenges that modern organizations face and why?
• How can employees, regardless of where they work, improve their individual and team performance – and be happy in the process?
• What will the future of work look like with more automation and digital systems across business processes – how should companies and employees prepare, now given current research?
• Questions from the community asked in advance via Twitter; use #WorkforceSuccess15

We hope you can join us, register here and you will receive a confirmation email from GoToWebinar with all the details.

Please feel free to extend this invitation to your colleagues. The more people attend, the more diverse the conversation!

You can also participate in the conversation and post questions via twitter @elcomCMS #workforcesuccess15.

Presenters:

Cynthia Figge, COO & Cofounder, CSRHub
Cynthia is a forerunner and thought leader in the corporate sustainability movement. In 1996 she co-founded EKOS International, one of the first consultancies integrating sustainability and corporate strategy. Cynthia has worked with major organizations including BNSF, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Dow Jones, Noranda and REI to help craft sustainability strategy integrated with business.

Erick Mott, Founder & Principal Consultant, creatorbase
Many years of value creation as a consultant, executive, individual contributor, and entrepreneur at companies including creatorbase, Selectica, Oracle, Ektron, Sitecore, Lyris, Return Path, Nokia, Creator Connection, Mark Monitor, Cisco Systems, GlobalFluency, Sun Microsystems, Philips N.V., Pandiscio Design, Elm Products and CBS television. A patent holder with agency, Fortune 500, media, and startup successes; degree in Business Administration from Notre Dame de Namur University.

Annette Dockerty, Marketing Director, Elcom
Annette’s experience in digital technology, from both a marketing and innovation perspective, spans over 20 years working with major brands, universities, government and the start-up community.

Join us as at Paradise Point in San Diego, CA, June 1-4 where brand, sustainability & design leaders find inspiration, tools and partnerships to drive business success and positive impact.

Our Cofounder and COO Cynthia Figge will speak on June 2. Cynthia will present “More Proof That Sustainability Drives Operating Performance.”

We look forward to seeing CSRHub members at SB’15!

For more information and to register,click here.

Cynthia Figge is a forerunner and thought leader in the corporate sustainability movement. She is COO and Cofounder of CSRHub, the world’s largest database that aggregates and organizes data and knowledge on the social, environmental, and governance performance of 14,000+ companies to provide sustainability ratings to the marketplace. In 1996 she co-founded EKOS International, one of the first consultancies integrating sustainability and corporate strategy. Prior to founding EKOS, she was an officer of LIN Broadcasting / McCaw Cellular, and led new businesses and services with Weyerhaeuser, New York Daily News; and with New Ventures. Cynthia is Board Director of the Compassionate Action Network International. Cynthia received her bachelor's degree in Economics and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She lives in the Seattle area.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on 14,400+ companies from 135 industries in 127 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.

By Bahar Gidwani

Sustainable Brands kindly invited me to speak at their Boston New Metrics ’14 conference.  They asked me to lead a panel called “Tapping the Crowd for Insights and Solutions: Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding, and the Personal Data Economy.”  I got to work with three experts: Gwen Nguyen, Cause Director, Indiegogo; Reki Hattori, CTO, Datacoup, and Dr. Thomas Malone from MIT’s Climate CoLab.  It was fun to work with them and I think both I and the audience learned something from our presentations and discussion.

We at CSRHub had recently posted research on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and crowdfunding.  However, the SB folks wanted me to talk about how crowd data could influence sustainability metrics.  This is a topic we care about deeply—we have already integrated more than a quarter million pieces of crowd data into our database.

I started by pointing out that we already have many good sources of sustainability information.  In fact, there are almost too many for anyone to track via normal means.  CSRHub currently lists >330 sources in our system, and that number grows by three to ten sources per month.

CSRHub gathers all this data into one place, harmonizes it, and makes it useful to sustainability practitioners.  We’ve recently grown our coverage to include more than 9,000 companies in 106 countries.

Ten years ago, only a few large (or very socially-minded) companies issued corporate responsibility reports or reported their performance to groups such as GRI or CDP.  These days, thousands of companies have employee-driven community service programs, recycling and carbon reduction targets, and sustainability areas on their web sites.  As you can see below, after twenty years of progress, more than 90% of the Global 250 issues CSR reports.

KPMG Survey of CSR Reporting 2013 Shows That Most Big Companies Have CSR Reports

Hundreds of thousands of middle-sized and smaller companies—many of whom are privately held or not-for-profit organizations—are starting to report their social performance to their customers (via sustainability supply chain systems) or to local or national government organizations.  In contrast to the situation with bigger companies, most of the new data that smaller companies generate is never made public.  This has left a big gap that we believe crowd data can help fill.

For instance, we have already integrated sources that provide data on as many as two million companies.  (In fact, AMEE told me recently they may be able soon to track more than 10 million firms.)

Crowd sources monetize in various ways.  For instance, Ekobai charges companies to list on its site, WeGreen captures a small part of the consumer purchases it helps direct, and Glassdoor sells job ads.  To generate the traffic and attention they need, crowd sources typically cover both larger, well-studied companies, and smaller ones.

We already use the data on one company to standardize and normalize the data on other companies.  We can therefore use our non-crowd expert sources to understand and adjust the ratings we get from crowd sources.  As a result, we should soon be able to track at least 50,000 companies and hopefully soon have ratings on hundreds of thousands of companies, both public and private, from around the world.

Sustainability ratings and metrics are vital for making a number of business decisions.  By broadening the number of companies that can be rated, we should be able to enable faster and more accurate supply chain management, improve private investment decision-making, and encourage consumers to shift their purchases towards more sustainable products.  Most people seem to feel that consumer rating and credit management systems have improved our ability to make business decisions.  Broad-based sustainability ratings, based at least partly on crowd data sources, should generate similar long-term value for everyone.

Bahar Gidwani is CEO and Co-founder of CSRHub.  He has built and run large technology-based businesses for many years. Bahar holds a CFA, worked on Wall Street with Kidder, Peabody, and with McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to a number of major companies and currently serves on the board of several software and Web companies. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy. Bahar is a member of the SASB Advisory Board.  He plays bridge, races sailboats, and is based in New York City.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on 9,200+ companies from 135 industries in 106 countries. By aggregating and normalizing the information from 348 data sources, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that links millions of rating elements back to their source. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.