- The materiality assessment is a fundamental stage in the preparation of the report. It not only serves to determine which standards and disclosure requirements we use in the report, but also defines a large part of the report's content. After all, it concerns significant impacts, risks, and opportunities. The materiality assessment process is also an area of close interest to the auditor. In the past (under GRI standards), auditors did not pay as much attention to it; today, they check literally everything: methodology, the method of assessing all parameters of material impact and financial materiality, every interview conducted with a stakeholder, consideration of at least all issues from AR16, etc.
- The quantitative data presented in the reports did not cause much trouble, but that is because during 2023 we spent several months carefully breaking down the disclosure requirements and data points into their constituent parts and preparing appropriate systems for data monitoring. The relatively greatest challenge was the data on raw materials, materials, products, and goods, on the basis of which information on resources entering and leaving the organization is reported (disclosure requirements E5-4 and E5-5), as well as organizing data on employees by country and region. However, looking at the report creation process as a whole, all numerical disclosures were not a problem.
- The most time-consuming task was obtaining and appropriately describing all narrative information used for disclosures on policies and actions. In each case, whether it was one of the environmental policies or some actions to improve health and safety standards, it was necessary to juggle requirements from four places in the standards: one of the MDR requirements in ESRS 2 and the corresponding application requirements, and one of the disclosure requirements in a given thematic standard and the applicable Application Requirements. When gathering information to meet these requirements, we often contacted people outside the ESG team, which required translating the specific terminology of the standards into simple language that everyone could understand.
- The audit trail is of great importance in the work on the report. The more accurate and complete it is, the more efficient the certification process is. This was particularly evident when the auditor verified the correctness of disclosures relating to Taxonomy. A solid description of the activities carried out as part of the verification of compliance with the Technical Qualification Criteria or the Minimum Guarantees significantly accelerated the audit and reduced the number of questions asked. The conclusions from the last reporting cycle help us to prepare even better for the next one. I hope that some of them will also be useful to you.
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